"Mountains, Gandalf; I want to see mopuntains again..."

Wow, so I fell behind on my blogging again... Sorry. The excuse this time: trying to plan our eight week road trip to Nationals in California in August. It was pretty stressful but we are finally on the road. First stop: Colorado Springs. We piled into my old van this past Tuesday and drove through the night to get here on Wednesday morning. The van was pretty packed: four bikes on the back, two inside together with stuff for eight weeks. On top of it, Will, Phillip, Corey, Peter and myself had to fit too.

We got some solid riding in, about 30 hours last week. We've got another week before we'll move on to Bend, OR to race in the Cascade Classics. Should be a lot of fun: racing for five days with some of the best riders in the country (Levi, Danielson and Co decided to show up...). After that we'll head on to Idaho for another of the US Crit series races and after that we'll finally make our down the coast to LA for Nationals. I won't be able to start there but it should be fun watching the others and lending as much support as I can.

But there also was a life before the road trip: the weekend before we left we were down in Austin for the AMLI AT&T Crit, also part of the US Crit series. It was pretty hard because I tried to get in a break. I was up there but unfortunately non of them stuck. So it came down to a sprint. I got stuck on the back stretch but still managed to come in 18th. Considering all, I was pretty happy with that. Unfortunately, it didn't go that well for some of the others: Will went down with five to go after some guys in front of him decided to tangle up on the straight and go down; fortunately, he only lost a little skin. Rachel wasn't as fortunate: she went down hard in the women's race and broke her collar bone. Very unfortunate, so shortly before Nationals.

Get well soon Rachel!

Big Mistake!

Ok, so I got a PSP recently and it is great for traveling and killing time... but it can also keep you up way too long at night. Just wanted to through that out there in case you didn’t know ;-) Oh, and by the way, never start playing Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops Plus at night if you are planning on getting a good nights sleep… you’ll be awake a while (im my case until about 3 in the morning).

The last couple of weeks...

Have been pretty packed, so I apologize for not keeping you updated. To my horror I just realized that my last post dates back to memorial weekend so I’ll give you a short rundown of what has happened since.

The weekend after the State Crit we drove up to Tulsa for the Tulsa Tough omnium. Leo and I did the Pro/ 1 race while the rest of the guys did the 1/ 2 races. In hindsight it might have been better to help the others get some upgrade points in the 1/ 2 races as Toyota United showed up and dominated the races. All we could do was to hang on and that was about it. I hope my top 40 finishes were enough to get me some points for the US Crit series overalls (of which Tulsa was a part of) to get invited to the finals in Vegas at the end of the year. Both Leo and I have our sights set on that race and that was also the reason we did the Pro/1 race in the first place although we might have had more fun in the 1/ 2. Well, this weekend we’ll head down to Austin for the AT&T crit, which is also part of the Crit series so hopefully it will go better there.

After Tulsa I flew back to Phoenix one last time. Christine is done with school there and so I helped her move out and all that good stuff. It took us the better part of the week to get that done and then we decided to spend her last couple of days here in the States at the Camelback Inn Resort in Scottsdale, AZ to relax after all the stress. Those were some nice two days, floating in the pool and relaxing (in the process of which I drowned my cell… but after drying it out in the dry Phoenix heat, it turned back on… Nokia rocks!) but unfortunately they only lasted that long and I had to drop her off at the airport to let her fly back home to Europe.

The rest of last week I then spend with loading and unloading my van and driving the 1000 miles from Phoenix to Dallas with what little belongings I had left. It was endless drive but at least the van held up and I made it back to Dallas.

This past weekend I finally got back on the bike to race in the Matrix crits here in Dallas. It was hot and humid as always and the races were hard. I could tell that I had been off the bike for the better part of two weeks but still managed to hang in there and finish 11^th each day; not what I had hoped for but not so bad considering everything else.

So, that’s it for now. This weekend we’ll be in Austin before some of us will head up to Colorado Springs for some good training for a couple of weeks. We are all looking forward to that so it should be a lot of fun.

More on the Texas State Championships in the Ft Worth Star

Link to the Article in the Fort Worth Star

Memorial Weekend

Ok, sorry for taking so long to get you updated on this but I had to take some time off after the past weekend and spend some „quality time” with my girlfriend, Christine, who had come to visit for a little bit. Now I’m sitting in Tulas, OK at the Tulsa Tough and waiting for the rain to pass and race time to come around. But back to last weekend.

The team did the Glickman Memorial on Saturday to practice rotations and the lead out a little bit. Unfortunately, it was very hot and Nathan pulled most of us out in order not to overtax ourselves. By that time the break had gone up the road and the race was pretty much over. The only to guys that stayed in were Leo and myself. We had planned to ride for the team so none of us was in the break; I went with a late attack and we managed to get close to the leaders. At the same time the five guys in the break started to attack each other. We couldn’t quite catch the leaders but managed to catch the remnants of the break to sprint for third. I felt good and went for it. It was a pretty long sprint, but it worked out just fine. So even though we missed the decisive move early on, we still managed to salvage a third place.

But my day wasn’t done just yet: I jumped off the bike and into the car, raced home, took a shower and got into my suit to go to a wedding of a friend of mine. It was a fun party but we couldn’t stay too long because we had a team dinner a little later at Lee’s. It was funny seeing the guys and girls’ looks when we walked in all dressed up (and not in team apparel). It was a fun day.

Sunday I finally got to ride my mountainbike for a change. I hadn’t been on Northshore since it was flooded last year and I had a blast just cruising along. Christine took her brand new Santa Cruz Heckler out for a first ride and loved it. Thanks to Clarence and Gary from Mad Duck for building her such a great bike. She loves it! So everything was good for Monday.

As I saw a lot of you out at the race on Monday, I’ll be brief. The original plan was to keep it steady and all together and set up Nathan for the sprint. Unfortunately, Nathan’s hand wasn’t as good as we had hoped and the tempo was to sporadic, so we had to change our strategy towards the end of the race. I started covering moves within the last 30 minutes of the race, basically just following wheels. With about 20 minutes to go I found myself in a break with Tyler, Ian Dille and Andrew Dahlheim. That was the break. Leo did a great job at shutting down Stephan and we opened up a good gap. We worked together pretty well and it started to look really good. I didn’t have to work at all throughout the first hour of the race thanks to the great work by the rest of the team so I felt pretty good towards the end. With five to go, we flew though the second to last corner; I was sitting third wheel but carried way more speed through the turn than the two in front of me. I hadn’t planed on going that early but the opportunity was too good to pass so I accelerated hard out of the turn and had a gap immediately. From there on it was all about going as hard as possible. The way the course is set up, I knew that I if I made it into the last lap with about five seconds I would be able to stay away, so I went really hard to establish a solid gap with two to go. I was actually able to increase my gap and I think that was when the elastic snapped and the others started to attack each other, which gave me some extra breathing room. The last lap felt weird, I knew that I had it but with all my mechanicals lately, I didn’t feel save until I was over the line. It was a great feeling. There were tons of people at the race, the atmosphere was great and winning put the icing on the cake.

Overall, the team had a great day, with Jenny riding away with the Women’s tile and Rachel winning the 3s.

Ok, so that wasn't that brief after all but I hope you enjoyed it anyways :-)

Let’s play

Memorial Weekend is finally here! Everyone on the team is ready and eager to show what we can do tomorrow at the State Crit. So hold on tight because it will be a blast! Come out and watch; it will be a great showdown. See you there!

Mount Magazine Podium