winter fun

Ive been skiing 3x since I got my skis and equipment. Hansy and I have been going to the blueberry lighted loop but tried out the fit strip right by my house last time. Its walkable distance and has got a couple K classic loop so I'm in heaven... now if I can just figure a way to attach the loop to my yard.
Now I'm in Chicago and went out for couple rides recently. This pic is of yesterdays VCR ride, we began with 9... this is garrett, my dad, and me. The ride was gross, the more you pulled the less mud you got sprayed in your face, how about that for a training incentive. One more week and its back in marquette.

Discos gone

Somebody should buy one of these... Im holding off for the team bus. :D

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtailwindsportscorp

team spinning

I spun for the first time in over a week. School and work have been keeping my time pretty filled but this time of year I'm not too worried. I'll get back into the groove of it pretty soon. Tom has some xc skis for me so I may be adding another aerobic sport to the menu.
Done with finals thursday then i should be back into the swing of things with plenty of adventure updates.

trainer

Rode on the trainer for an hour with garrett and eric. It's not boring yet. I did my first little test today with the pt. One 5 minute interval, and I managed 315 watts, goal for may: 400 in aero position.

skool

i lurn stuf in skool. But seriously, 2 1/2 busy weeks left of school until next years road season officially begins. I've been studying harder this semester than ever before, and its no coincidence that I have my hardest class schedule at the same time. I will be a few classes short of graduating next may so every half a grade makes a big difference right now. Anyways back to what matters... I may have found myself a coach from smartcyclinginc.com. Steve, the owner of the shop has been great to me ever since I met him 3 years ago. We will be meeting over winter break to go over my season goals and come up with a plan for me. YaY!

heres how the yoop partys after one of our cx races courtesy of andy gregg...

VCR ride

Garrett, Eric, my dad and myself met up with 5 others including koob and kevin from vcr for a solid november road ride. koob was on form as to be expected and kept the pace high. we managed 41 miles in 27 degree weather. this was my second day with the powertap and i got some good info. at the end garrett took off for a sprint eric followed and then me, i got the power a little north of 1000 watts, my only other time doing this i managed 900 so that was cool. It felt great to be outside and ride with a group again. you're lucky because im still figuring out how to get the cyclingpeaks graphs onto the blog so you're spared from the boring data ...for now.

back in action

I recieved my powertap last week!! I put it onto the bike and it works great... one problem. The guy who I bought it from forgot to sent the usb cord so I can see my power but cant analyze it and post graph and graph for your amazement in the near future. Anyways I've now been on one ride and one spin session with it. I like how true it is, theres no lying. And contrary to a heart rate monitor there is no lag in time so intervals can be much more even now.
The NMU teams first practice was yesterday indoors. There was 7 guys and I think as the word gets out there more will show up. My camera which has been broken for a long time should be back in business by the end of the week so I'll get some good pictures of spin practice and the PT.

youtube vid

so i was filming a couple friends skateboarding and my grama is coming to talk to me, watch what happens: grama

cx champs

early in the race

da trying to put time into labar

andy with his boonen legs

is this how you do it?

the heated battle for first (blu eventually wins)

tom thinking about the road season and how much he hates cx

The cyclocross championship yesterday was really tough. The course included lots of trails and lots of braking. My poor technical skillz led to some back and forth action between a couple of riders. I was in front of andy gregg going into the technical section after the finish barrier. i fell off the trail on the steep down sandy section and he passed me. then came an uphill pavement section and i passed andy. we did this back and forth for a couple of laps, this pretty sums up my race. My fitness wasnt bad but my bike handling was. Afterwards was beer, brats, and fire as promised.

Today 6 of the northern crew went out for a 30 miler at an easy pace and did some paceline and sprints, i ride alone a lot so i love getting out there with other people too.

results page

i've added a results page. the link is on the right, here is how the '07 season has gone. CX state championship race is tomorrow...

2007
10/21	Cyclocross race Tourist Park cat A	8
10/7	Cyclocross race BMX track cat A	6
9/16	NMU tt (mtb) cat A	7
9/15	NMU xc (mtb) cat B	1
9/8	Butler short track (mtb) cat	2
Date	superweek	Result
Date	superweek	Result
6/24	Superior Bike Fest Omnium Overall cat 4/5	2
6/24	Superior Bike Fest cicuit cat 4/5	4
6/23	Superior Bike Fest road race cat 4/5	3
6/22	Superior Bike Fest crit cat 4/5	4
6/9	Race at the Base cat 4/5	2
5/20	Tour of Kennsington road race cat 4	10
5/19	Tour of Kennsington crit cat 4	28
5/19	Tour of Kennsington tt cat 4	28
5/12	Wild adventure race	11
5/6	Vernon Hills grand prix cat 4	6
4/22	UW madison crit - B	12
4/21	UW sheboygan rr - B	6
4/15	Purdue rr - B	4
4/15	Purdue ttt - B	4
4/14	Marian crit - B	18
4/1	WMU circuit - B	3
3/31	WMU rr - B	14
3/25	Michigan crit - B	10
3/24	MSU rr - B	9
2/24	OSU crit - B	3

a wedding and a running race??

Friday: Class till 1 then immediately left for MN for the rehearsal dinner. We made about 2 hours of mistakes (thanks to no map) and finally got there just before they cleaned up the food. I barely had enough time to say hi Scott and was handed a bag with a black watch in it. Cool, I think I'm going to like this weekend?

Saturday: First the wedding, then took a bus/limo to the party. Plenty o alcohol on board. Party was fun, DJ sucked tho. We got back and it was time to inhale water to be ready for the 10K.

Sunday: I felt pretty good in the morning, drank some more water and got McD's breakfast for pre race fuel. You laugh, I say it works. Anyways the race went surprisingly well. I got around 47 minutes, I just remember it was a 7:35 pace. Garrett and I were together until 4.5 miles where he slowly put time on me then at the 5 mile mark he picked it up and did most of his damage. I wasnt racing him as much as myself and I couldnt be happier considering my condition right now. I had never run that far before so that was cool. The girls are wayyyy hotter in running I may seriously take that up as a 2nd sport, can I do that?

cool costumes


see what i mean

And on the ride home we hit a deer, it was knocked over and managed to get off the highway before the oncoming semi hit it.

Ok time to think Genetics and CycloCross...

tubby

they say a picture tells a thousand words...the story behind this one must be longer than that.

cx at tourist park

I raced, took 8th. I'll upload pics when I get them. Felt pretty good for the amount of training, need to get faster for the championship in 2 weeks tho. Scott's wedding is saturday so I'll be in minnesota all weekend without a bike. But...I will be running a 10k sunday after the wedding, that should be a disaster, more to come...

oh and I start shadowing Dr. Stang on thursday which is exciting!

sTumpy and I at tourist park

Rainbows

Eric and I went for a 30 miler today. It was nice out when we started, then it began to rain, then it rained hard (we didnt see any rainbows but that would have been cool), then eric flatted on rt 480. So the ride didn't go quite as planned but it still felt great to be back out on the road bike. I wish I could find a race in a month to give me a little motivation and direction with my training. I still have yet to make my off season training plan. I probably need to do some more reading before I do this, got any suggestions? I've read "training and racing with a powermeter" and "the cyclists training bible" so far.

The Zipps... ahhh the zipps, well they didnt quite make it to the reserve, so they're relisted. I'll take anything at this point, the powermeter im getting is 770 so if I can break even its all good.

kick in the butt

Sunday I did the kmk cyclocross race at the fit strip, conclusion = I am out of shape. (thats all you get toph)

I think that was a good kick in the butt for me though because it was so bad that I went for a ride this morning at 7am. When I woke up I realized it was still dark and I didn't have a light. I roughed it and nearly hit a guy on the bike path on the way out so I wont be doing that again anytime soon. Delilah (my roadie) hasn't seen pavement in well over a month. I felt like i was riding someone else's bike, the geometry felt so strange, the handlebars were too far away, its been way too long. Anyways I'm getting back in the groove and I want to have a big year next year so the name of the game right now is maintenance so theres no lost fitness. With the weather as nice as its been lately I plan on getting out often... while its light out!

So long Zipps... Hello Powertap

I'm selling my zipps that I bought last fall so I can afford a powertap. I love new toys. I only got to use the zipps a couple of times tho because I took forever to mount them.

Here's the ebay ad:
Zipps

entry 2

A little about me... I'm a 22 year old college student, prepping for optometry school. I will apply next fall and in the mean time am finishing up all my prereqs. I have to take organic chemistry in the summer but Northern doesnt offer it. So heres the million dollar question: what do I do? Options #1: take classes at tech and race for the new cat 3 Ace hardware team here in marquette. This is tempting since they will probably pay for a lot of things including kits, race fees, and travel... we'll see. Or, #2 take my classes at colorado state and live with my bro ryan. I could ride like crazy out in the mountains every day, cool! My dad has a house in Fort Collins so I can probably live for free. After writing it down, option 2 just seems so cool. Who knows maybe there are race teams out there?

Bloggin it up

I am transfering a Blog I recently started at wordpress. Here was my most recent post:

Saturday was an 18 mile xc mountain bike race in Houghton, Mi. It poured like you couldnt imagine. No ones bike worked right by the end. We rode thru some puddles that our feet were underwater for, these were more like mini ponds. Anyways with barely working brakes and only 2 gears for the second lap, I still finished. I raced B’s and probably got 7th or 8th place. Of the other guys on the team one other finished (Matt) and he took 5th.

matt and I washing off

Sunday was a 9 lap cyclocross race. I raced A’s finally made it through a race with no problems. Roughly 25 showed up for A’s. I felt good at the beginning staying with the front few guys but tired out and rode with position 4,5,6 for a while. With 3 laps to go I was doing everything I could to maintain. It was really sandy, but ultimately, my fitness was the only thing holding me back today, I came in 6th overall. Not extremely happy with the result but I’m gonna be on the cross bike for the next few weeks and see if I can climb the standings a bit

Racin some cyclocross