Back on the Bike

After enjoying some three weeks of laziness, complete with tons of home-made food, sitting around in coffee shops and just plain what-ever-you-do-don’t-touch-your-bike time, I’m ready to get back to work and hop on the bike again. Today was a beautiful day here in Heidelberg, Germany (low 50s but sunny) so I joined one of the local group rides with some friends to rediscover how it feels to ride your bike. Now, for those of you who have never done a group ride outside the USA, this ride was a real no-drop ride, i.e. easy pace and multiple regrouping points which we didn’t even need as the whole group stayed together (yes, even on the 1000+ foot climbs). It was a great ride, giving me a chance to chat a lot with friends and catch up with what is happening on this side of the ocean. Despite the easy pace I was ready to call it quits after 2.5 hours (and cold feet) but decided to switch bikes and go for another easy mtb ride with my girlfriend Christine. Turns out that even an easy ride isn’t quite as easy if you have ridden a couple of hours with a group before it but the views at to top of the climb and the following downhill were well worth it.

Right now we are packing up and I’m getting ready to drive Christine back to School in Freiburg (about a 2h drive). If the weather holds, we’ll go for another ride in the morning. Freiburg is one of the coolest places in Germany for cycling with a lot of pros living there; riding there is pretty good and the weather usually the best in all of Germany. So, I’m looking forward to another day of fine riding.

Home Sweet Home

I know, it has been a while but I’ve been busy getting everything sorted out before leaving the States for Europe for the winter. I’ve been on a packed schedule but, after sleeping off my jet-lag, things finally seem to quiet down a bit. But first things first.

We didn’t stop racing with Metro after HHH (something you might have thought as that was my last post…). We raced three events since then, the TX Tough GP, Cotton Patch Classic and the USA Crit series finals in Vegas. We had planned on doing the San Francisco Twilight instead of Cotton Patch but unfortunately half the team, including Andrew, went down hard at TX Tough and we decided on staying in Texas instead. That being said, TX Tough didn’t go too well for us.

Cotton Patch was pretty good, Peter got some upgrade points and Andrew got his long-awaited first win of the season. After that, it was off to Vegas. Las Vegas itself was pretty cool, we saw some interesting new things at Interbike and the crit, the main reason we went there, sucked big time. Apparently it was my turn to take extensive ground-samples and break some wheels. It was a rather sketchy course but the main issue was the sketchy riders. I didn’t even make it past the first turn in the first lap without hitting the pavement (even though I was sitting top 15 or so). Got up, changed bikes and jumped back into the fun, only to have the same thing happen to me a couple of laps later: turn one, some highly-skilled-rider swings wide and runs squarely into my rear wheel (take notice: we were already THROUGH the turn, I was already standing up to accelerate out of the corner…). Well, the bike stopped again underneath me and I went flying again. Fortunately, I only ended up tearing my skin suit to shreds and loosing some skin but no major injuries. I even managed to finish the race (after Nathan “persuaded” to get back in and sitting out another lap or two). So, the crit was not so hot. We had a lot of fun after that though…

After Vegas I flew back to Dallas, packed the rest of my stuff and hopped back on the plain again. Right now, I’m back in Heidelberg, Germany. How I have missed the European fall (NOT!!!): 45 F and rain, perfect.

Well, for now I don’t need to ride my bike, so I get to enjoy some off time. Not that I would get bored though: it’s been over a year since I’ve been home, so I’ve got a lot of catching up with friends and stuff like that to do. Besides that, it has been a long season anyways and a little time off the bike feels pretty good right now anyways… but, then again, I’m already itching to get back on the bike and get ready for next spring.

Change of Plans

After racing the last two weekends at Hotter N’ Hell and 100k, we had planned to fly out to Philli this upcoming weekend to start in the Univest Grand Prix. It is an invitation only race and the team got the invite but we couldn’t gather enough people to get the required 8 starters… so no racing this upcoming weekend :-(

This might not be that bad though, as we’ve been busy racing the last two weeks. Hotter ‘N Hell was a great race for the whole team, even though I’m not a big fan of the course. Nevertheless, the team did an awesome job and we pulled out a win and four top ten finishes. For a complete race report use this link to go to the FCS homepage.

Last weekend we drove up to Atlanta, GA for the 100k Classic. It was a weird race with a (too) early start and bad roads. The fact that we were 180 guys at the line didn’t help safety either. So there were a lot of crashes but all of us managed to stay upright. Andrew had to drop out though due to mechanicals (his crank arm came loose) and that messed up our tactics quite a bit. We adjusted on the fly though but got caught out at the sprint because we were following the wrong wheels. Well, that happens. I wasn’t too happy with the whole weekend, spending some 26 hours in the van and racing for only 4 hours with nothing to show for it. At least I know what to expect next time.

Now we’re back in Dallas for a while, getting ready for the Texas Tough Grand Prix at Victory Park on 9/11. This is going to be an awesome race! If you can, come out and watch (or even better: come out and cheer us on ;-) )

A week without the bike (kind of)

It felt good to finally have a race-free weekend and some time off the bike. I only rode a couple of hours last week and I feel ready to rock now again. I also did a threshold test, as I always do after my off-week and the results were encouraging. So I’m really looking forward to this upcoming racing block, starting with Hotter Than Hell this coming weekend and continuing with 100k and a lot of other fun races still further away. It will keep us on the road pretty much all through the end of September but it should be fun.

Unfortunately, they are patching up the course for the “Tuesday Night Worlds”, so no racing tonight. Bummer! I was really looking forward to that. But oh well, at least that gives me some time to update my blog. Hopefully the weather will hold tomorrow, though, so that we can go out and play at the crit in Ft. Worth.

Tornados and Air Travel don’t Mix.

My stay in LA was shorter than anticipated as Leo called my up after just a couple of days there and asked me to meet him up in Chicago for the Tour of Elk Grove, a two-day event with a separate cat 1/2 race and a lot of money. It didn’t take a lot of convincing on his part and so I found myself at the airport Friday morning at 6 (thanks Corey for getting up so early and driving me there). Problem was I was flying standby (can’t afford anything else) and so I spend pretty much the whole day at the terminal until I finally made it onto a flight in the afternoon. That put me in at Chicago at around 10 pm. It was then that I found out that we didn’t have a hotel for the weekend… So, after a couple of phone calls and a 30 min cab-ride I finally arrived at the race venue, where Carlos (Vargas) and John let me share their hotel room (thanks again). I think it was around 1 am when I finally lay down; not the perfect preparation for a race.

Racing this weekend was ok, I finished 10th and 11th, which put me in 9th overall. I wasn’t too happy with the results as I had hoped for a little higher placing but it made me enough money to at least pay for the trip.

On Monday it was back to the airport to get back home to Dallas (finally). The problem: Monday morning a pretty decent thunderstorm came through the area and a lot of flights were cancelled. So what happens to you if you are on the standby list? You are pretty much f*?%ed. With all the extra people trying to get on flights, I ended up somewhere in 160^th place on the standby list… no way to make it onto any flight soon. So I settled in for a long day at the airport (PSP is the best invention EVER!) but it got even better. At around 10 pm storms picked up again and the weather got so bad that the authorities even issued a tornado warning… So we had to move away from windows into the food court (which had a glass ceiling…). Needless to say that ended all my hopes of getting out that day and so I settled in for a good nights sleep in one of the corners of terminal 3. I finally made it out the next morning after rebooking my flight to go through Newark and than to Dallas (otherwise, I would probably be still in Chicago as we speak).

The rest of the week was rather eventful, being stuck at a friends place without a car (the van is still out in LA with the boys at Nationals). I did race at Rockwall this past Saturday though, which was a rally but with money for the first three. As was to be expected, a lot of people showed up and it was a good race. I felt pretty good that day and ended up in a break, soloing in for a win with 2 km to go. Thanks to Gary at Mad Duck for pointing this rally out to me, I had a blast. Oh, and the best thing besides winning on Saturday was that they had free ice cream at the finish! I’ll be back next year, you bet!

LA is Shaking...

What a way to start our stay in LA! We only got here Sunday night and pretty much next thing you know, we are in an earthquake. Interesting. I must say, we were a little dumbstruck at first, just looking at each other as no one of us had been in one before. It took us a couple of seconds to realize what was actually happening but by that time it was almost over. Fortunately, it didn’t do any damage to our host house. So we survived an earthquake.

Besides that, nothing much has happened here in LA so far but we raced in San Marcos last weekend. It was a 1.6 mile circuit with a decent climb in it…and a really stellar field. Healthnet, Jittery Joe’s, Successful Living, Toyota United… yep, they all send at least a rider out there. It was a really hard race and none of us made it into the final move that stuck. I finished 10^th, second of the first chase group and Corey came in with the second chase. Unfortunately, Will and Phillip both got dropped. Peter is still healing up. He’s getting better and is out riding but last weekend was too early to get back in a race. Hopefully he’ll be good to go for nationals.

For me it is already nearly time to say good buy to California as I will be flying out to Chicago this Friday for Elk Grove. Leo is coming too, so we should have some fun. I’ll keep you posted.

California

We finally made it: We are in California. After leaving our great host family in Bend, we drove down to Sacramento where we stayed with yet another fantastic host family for a couple of days before we moved on to San Luis Obispo. We got here last Friday in the afternoon and jumped on our bikes to shake out our legs a little bit. Turns out "a little" ended up being nearly two hours but at least we finally got a glimpse of the Pacific. Yep, apparently the ocean is further away than we thought... Unfortunately, we didn't have that much daylight-time left, so we couldn't stay long but maybe we'll have some time today on out off day to hit the beach.

The reason we decided on San Luis Obispo for our next stop was that there were two races this weekend: a circuit race on Saturday and a crit on Sunday. The circuit race turned out to be pretty hard with on short but very steep climb and one more sustained climb. The fact that quite a few pros showed up didn't make it easier. Also, we had to observe the yellow-line-rule. What was that again? I've been racing on closed roads for the last couple of months (pretty much ever since Mississippi in May) so that was interesting again (by the way, I still don't like it). The plan was to ride for Corey and get him some points but one of the Successful Living guys took off and was never seen again... so we raced for second. Still enough points, so I got to the front on the last climb and set a steady tempo which I had to keep up pretty much all the way from the climb to the finish too, as no one else would do it. So I ended up pulling the last 5 miles of the race and then leading Corey out. We were sitting pretty good in the run in to the finish but unfortunately got boxed in a little at the end. Ultimately, I couldn't start my sprint early enough to really launch Corey and actually came in in front of him... bummer. Still, 5th for me and 7th for Corey wasn't too bad.

What was really bad though was the fact that Peter crashed hard and separated his shoulder. That's even worse as we are getting close to nationals... At this point we don't know if his ligaments are just stretched or torn... Let's hope for the best! So I spend most of my Saturday afternoon in the Emergency room with Peter... at least, nothing broken (including his head; looking at his helmet, that was NOT a given).

So Sunday, we were one short for the crit. We still did ok, Phillip did pretty well during the race and I managed to come in 8th against some pretty tough competition. You would think that all those pros got something better to do than show up at all those local races but apparently not. Still, it was a good race (no crashes for us). Corey couldn't quite perform at his best though because his shifter cable started fraying and he couldn't get into his lower gears... not so good in a fast crit. I had some technical trouble myself as my chain skipped in my 11. Also, not so helpful in the sprint. Oh well, better luck next week.

We will probably stay the rest of the week here in San Luis Obispo and then make our way down to LA. The road trip continues!