DU Crit, March 9th @ City Park

Be There.


Download the color version here.

In other unexciting news.

The next person to visit this site will be our 20,000th guest and will receive nothing as a prize. 20,000 hits seems like a lot, but it's been pretty spread out, and I'm almost sure that Scott Wenzel has accounted for at least 12,593 of them.

Thanks for checking in, time to go ride back down to my car in The Springs. Good thing it snowed last night.

It's 10 and I'm not out of bed.

The last three days I would have had at least an hour ride time by now. Last week was a huge training week, so like usual, my life gets pretty dull when I'm riding a lot. I went out and had a beer last night though! One beer and I was wrecked, came home and went to bed.

So, I usually don't update when I don't have anything close to worthwhile to say, but I've been getting pressure to tell people things they want to hear. Last week my milage on the bike would have circumnavigated the globe 8 times. My kilojoule expenditure would have powered New York City for a full week.

Not true.

The riding has been great though, everyday I kick myself for not bringing a camera, but at the same time, I don't think I would have gotten home before dark if I'd taken every picture I wanted to yesterday. The weather here in Colorado has been amazing, and I've been exploring new roads every day. I only hope the weather holds out one more day because my car is in Colorado Springs and I'm riding down to get it tomorrow.

I spent the weekend down there, (The Springs, Colorado Springs, The Land of Christians and Medians) and on Saturday I had the best tour guide ever show me around town. After one day of riding with Daniel Matheny, I feel like I now know the town. Sunday Daniel, and some others Scotty and Brad, led me out of town on an all day death march back to Denver. Instead of scooting up the front range, I went deep into the mountains and actually had one of the best rides I've ever had. I'll definitely have to go back sometime and get some pictures of this one creek I rode along for about 5 miles. All in all it was a great day, I got hot, I got cold, I cracked a little, I got a little caffeine buzz, I met some laid back country folk that were more than eager to give directions, and in true Team Rio Grande fashion, I finished the ride off with a chicken burrito on my way back across downtown.

Today I'm resting, but I work tonight, then back at it for another big week before the first weekend of Collegiate racing in NM. Thanks for checking in, I'd say I'm sorry for being so lame, but I'm not.

P.S. Don't ever eat at the downtown Rio in spandex... lots of weird looks.

Strange Days.

Yesterday this page turned into a chat room I guess. Kinda funny, kinda weird.



On another note, I decided to do VOS at the last minute today only to find it was full. Oh well, at least I want to race, that's a good feeling. Things in general have been strange lately and I haven't been feeling myself. Hopefully some good training in the next weeks and then race season will pull me around.

Thanks for checking in.

I don't know why I'm not asleep right now.

I got a short ride in today, but it was way colder than I expected. I did a little laundry, filed my tax returns, and updated my links on here tonight. I heard there was a football game on TV or something? Anyway, sorry I'm lame, I'm excited for race season to start so I have a little excitement back in my life. I was thinking about racing on my ride today (that happens a lot) and I just got this overwhelming excitement/anxiety/drive that I haven't felt in a long time.

This is going to be a good year. One more month of hard work and then I'll be ready to dust off my racing legs and see how they want to go.

Thanks for checking in, and for those of you who came to the Collegiate Tour Baby, thanks, and I'm sorry?

Oh yeah, my Cannondale is back up on eBay, buy it PLEASE! Item # 290203316678

The Collegiate Tour Baby

Hey everyone,

Hope you enjoyed the NICE weather this weekend out on the bike! This is a reminder about the sweet movie we are going to be showing this Friday, Feb. 1 at 6:00pm in Davis Auditorium of Sturm Hall at DU. This film goes deep inside the 2005 Tour de France capturing behind the scenes footage of Lance's final Tour victory.

In Denver, Friday, Feb 1st
http://www.collegiatetourbaby.com/denver.html

Buy your ticket now!
General admission and VIP (reserved preferred seating, DVD and more!) tickets can be purchased online in advance through the event website at: http://www.collegiatetourbaby.com/tickets.html

Tell your friends and other teammates!
Please forward this email to anyone and everyone you know at school, work, on your other teams!

Need convincing?
Check out the Testrider.com interview at http://www.testrider.com/fly.aspx?layout=player&video=20 or see a teaser of the film at www.thetourbaby.com

Donate to the silent auctions
Even if you can’t make it to the event, you can help out by donating to evening’s silent auction. To donate, please contact Grant Goerzen, 719-331-5640, ggoerzen@du.edu

Thanks a lot and we hope to see you all there on Friday. We will be sending out another email about volunteering in the next couple days.

Thanks,

DU Club Cycling

Sick.

So I was just getting back into a great schedule of training full time, when the weather turned crappy and brought with it a nasty head cold for me. After about a week I'm starting to feel like myself again, but I haven't quite gotten back to training full speed yet.

I'm in Colorado Springs right now, after opting out of the DU group ride this morning. I feel bad that I haven't ridden with them in a very long time, but I wanted to give myself one more day of feeling human before heading outside. I think there is a little trainer time in store for this afternoon, but you can about imagine the rush that I'm in to get started with that.

On an unrelated note, my bike is still for sale, as well as all those parts, so come on people, I could use the cash and the space in my bedroom. I've upped the ante a little on the frame, $400 bucks, I'll ship, or.... if you live in the front range, I'll hand deliver the frame and or build up the frame with your old or new components. I don't think you'll find an offer like that on ebay.

Items for sale. *UPDATED*

Everyone does this, I just thought I'd see if it works.

Currently for sale, I have....

56cm 2006 Cannondale CAAD 8 frame, fork, and fsa headset. The frame is made of aluminum, weighing in at under 2lbs, yet still super stiff. It's colored "raw aluminum" basically clear-coated raw metal, so scratches don't show up at all. There are some minor scuffs and scrapes, but nothing structural and nothing that even gets through the paint. The fork is full carbon, (blades, crown, and steerer), the steerer tube is cut for a zero-stack with a Ritchey stem, and the tabs are filed off of the dropouts. Headset is in great shape, with brand new grease inside.

120mm Ritchey WCS stem. 1 1/8" steerer, with 26.0mm clamp. Great shape, some scrapes and scuffs but nothing bad.

1 pair Ultegra 6500 Brake Calipers (front and rear) the real "Ultegra" marking has been worn off the rear caliper, but both brakes function perfectly. Pads are worn, but only slightly.

2 red (faded to orange) Ciussi Gel water bottle cages.

1 broken, but taped back together Selle San Marco Aspide saddle. Black.

Lots of punctured tubes, road and cross.

2 Maxxis Mimo CX worn out tires.

1 roll dirty white Deda Bar Tape.

$400 for the frame, fork, and headset, I'll pay for shipping.

Make me an offer on the other stuff. Good luck and act fast because with prices like this, my inventory won't last long.

High Rollin.

While at training camp I got a new saddle. It's a whole story in and of itself.

I decided that rather than waste a good SLR (parts of mine were still OK) I'd refurbish it and breathe some new life into it.

Step #1.
I stripped the saddle down to it's shell.


Step #2.
I haggled with a street vender and picked up this faux Louis Vuitton purse for $20.


Step #3.
I delicately un-made the purse leaving a side panel intact.



Step #4.
Using spray on adhesive I attached the "leather" to the shell of the saddle.



Step #5.
I cut around the shell, and epoxied the new "leather" to saddle all the way around the shell.



Now all that's left is to find a rap video that I can feature it in.

Ladies Ladies Ladies.

Corey's Rambling is moving. We'll see how it works out, but it looks good for right now.

The new and improved Corey's Rambling version 2.0

or

http://coreycrlsn.wordpress.com

Click on over and check it out yo.

Thanksgiving.

Quick update.

I haven't been writing on here much, mostly because I haven't been racing much. The Boulder UCI races were fun, I felt great, but that was good enough for placing in the 40's and getting lapped EARLY. Oh well, what can you do when Trebon is lapping into the top 20?

My big news is that next year I will be riding with the Rio Grande - Jose Cuervo team. It should be a great fit as I know most of the guys, work for the sponsor and have the same goals as the rest of the team. More to come on this later.

I've never felt personally touched by a blog...

But for some reason, Brad Huff struck a nerve.

On a separate note, I sucked this weekend.

Rest Weeks.

I guess I took a couple weeks off from updating here. There just wasn't that much excitement happening around here to write about though.

My parents were here a couple weeks ago and saw me race at Interlocken in Boulder and in Evergreen the next day. I didn't have great races either day, and Sunday was snowing and freezing cold.

Last weekend I did a ride with my DU kids on Saturday morning, then rode in their homecoming parade in the afternoon. Sunday was the race at the Boulder Reservoir which is always one of my favorites. It went alright, with me finishing 12th and making 45 bucks hopping barriers. Barrier hopping has become quite lucrative for me lately, hopefully there is an opportunity at the UCI races this weekend.

That's about all. I opted out of the Wednesday Worlds ride in Boulder this morning and stayed warm in my bed. That drive is starting to get to me. I'm off for a run right now to make up for missing a good workout. I wish there was a good ride like that in Denver. Oh well, thanks for checking in, enjoy your days.

Oh yeah, if anyone has pictures from this past weekend at the Res, I would love to see them. There were a few photographers around the course, but I have no idea who they were.

A big congratulations!

Goes out to The Good, The Bad, and The Nerdy for bringing home the gold at the Red Bull Soap Box Derby in Providence, RI this weekend. I was hoping to be able to make the trips with the nerds, but was unable to, and it looks like I was the one who really missed out. All the hard work, lack of dates, and overabundance of pimples has finally paid off.

On a side note, I went 5th and 4th on Saturday and Sunday respectively in Gunnison this weekend. Awesome courses, great weather (for my races) and small fields led to some good racing for me. Hopefully I'll be finishing this high up next weekend on the Front Range.

That's all for now, thanks for checking in.

Karma.

It's a bitch.

So I used to pull this mean prank on UNC group rides. Whenever I was on the front and saw any roadkill (which was plentiful in Weld County) I would slow up, allowing the person behind me to get real close, head straight for the squirrel or whatever was dead on the road, and hop over the dead animal at the last second. This would cause whoever was behind me, usually Brian, to run right through the dead creature. This was always funny, I'd laugh, we'd carry on with our ride.

So. As I mentioned earlier, the barrier hopping paid off on Saturday, but Sunday was a different story. I started strong, too strong. I won the holeshot, lead for a little bit, settled in back a few spots and then continued to drop back as the race went on. The legs that were there the day before decided not to show up, and I kept losing spots as the race went on. With 3 to go, I was told I would get a 2 second bonus for ever successful bunny hop, so I decided to try my luck at the 4 pack of logs next to the pits. On that lap I made it over, just barely, got cocky and hit it with more speed the next lap.

This time, instead of making it through the barrier section, I hopped the first one, plowed into the second, flipped straight over my bars, and landed face and shoulder first on top of the third. It rang my chimes pretty good, but I got up and finished without losing any places, although I did run the barrier section on the final lap, then quickly left with my tail between my legs.

Back to the Karma. Sometimes the bunny hop pays off, literally and figuratively, but other times it bites you in the ass. Hopefully I was simply paying off my debt to anyone who has had a run in with roadkill, and it will be smooth sailing from here on out. We'll see how this weekend plays out.

I'm off to Gunnison for another pair of BCR Cross races so wish me luck.

Thanks for checking in.

Yesterday.

DU group ride at 9:00. I only went an hour so I could get up to Frisco for the first of two cross races up there this weekend. The course was good, nice mix of road and dirt with a little grass. I could have used a little more grass, but what can ya do, this is Colorado and I guess we don't really race on grass anymore.

There were a few barrier sections, two of which utilized logs from the front of parking spots, they were sitting on top of other short logs that supported each end, like Lincoln Logs I guess. Anyway, the first barrier was a real wooden one, on an uphill in woodchips. I hopped it in warm-ups, but after climbing up to it in the race I had visions of crashing like I did in Littleton, so I opted to get off and run. Then we climbed more on pavement, pavement descent (wierd) and then some loose twisty stuff, down to a tight LOOSE turn around some bleachers (which I almost ate a few times), then 4 log barriers really close together. I couldn't get my timing right through these until the last few laps, then a little more tight twisty stuff, a little grass, then a 90 degree left hander into a log barrier at the bottom of a small rise. This is where the excitement of my race happened.

I started top ten, moved up over the first couple laps, into 3rd by the end of lap 2. I was hopping that single log barrier, and it was right in front of Dave and there was a little crowd gathered around it. The crowd started getting into me hopping the log, so I think I got bigger cheers than the leaders. The crowd started handing out money, so I started grabbing it. In the end I walked away 6th or 7th after fading on the climbs, but 55 dollars richer. Boo Ya.

I'm off for round two. Thanks for the pics Greg.

Quick list of excitement in my life.

-Went to a Guster concert at The Fillmore a couple weeks ago. It was awesome.

-Went to Boise for a week with Jami to visit her sister and brother-in-law. Her parents also flew in from Seattle for the weekend. We all had a lot of fun.

-I did a local cross race out there on Saturday. It was right up there in the top 5 best courses I've ever raced. I had so much fun that I almost forgot about the way my stomach and head felt after the late night we had the night before. I still managed a 2nd place, results are here under schedules. There were a couple barriers I could hop which always makes the racing that much more fun.

-Watched the Rockies finish off the regular season in the best possible fashion they could have. We were at a bar just down the street and the whole place was on their feet, screaming the entire 13th inning. I'm just starting to get my voice back.

-I'm now working a lot this week, hopefully I'll make a ton of cash, we'll just have to see.

-This weekend is a set of races in Frisco, CO. I think I had a decent race there last year, hopefully luck will be on my side this weekend as well.

-I'm going to go ride right now with Eric Moore, the cyclocross phenomenon from the University of Denver.

Cross Races 2 and 3.

I sucked this weekend.

Two flats on Saturday in Colorado Springs.

Sunday, (today) was in Littleton, and I just sucked. No power, stacked it up 3 times trying to hop stuff I shouldn't have. On the bright side, I should have some Grade A pictures on the way from Joe over at PelotonPhoto.

Thanks for checking in.

P.S. Whoops..

Cross Race #1 in the books.

Sunday marked the infamous first cross race of the year. I was really dreading this effort, and expecting a pretty bad race, but things ended up going much better than I'd anticipated. The race was at the Breckinridge Nordic Center, so I expected the altitude to play a pretty big role, but I didn't feel it that much during the race.

Things started well with me taking 3rd wheel through the first corner. By the time people were done taking stupid risks and plowing into the barricades as well as each other, I had drifted to 8th or so. I picked off a couple guys, got passed by one, and picked up another place or two due to mechanicals in front of me. I ended 6th, which isn't winning, but I feel like it's a solid start to the season. Last year in the first race I SUCKED and was lapped with like 3 laps to go. Felt good to be lapping people this year.

The course had a couple cool parts, one really short steep run up, a single barrier followed directly by a large hump that you went up and over with a little left turn. I was able to bunny hop the barrier and hold a ton of speed over the top and down the back side, almost too much speed. I passed a guy who had dismounted, and passed him on the outside over the hump, I almost didn't make the corner and came close to testing out the large pad that was strapped to a tree trunk on the side of the course. It was sweet to hear the little crowd standing around the barrier react. There was also an uphill double barrier that I sucked on pretty bad. I think I had 3 bad remounts on it in 11 laps. I definitely know what I need to work on.

If passing the dude as I hopped the barrier and bumped shoulders with him was the "highlight" of my race, then kicking the second barrier in the double set and landing face first in front of a crowd of people was definitely the "lowlight."

Overall I'm happy, not content, but happy. There is still room to improve, but some specific training and the next two months of racing will hopefully fill in those holes. Now it's time to get to work. Thanks for checking in.

It's Ready.

It's actually been ready for almost a week now. I've been riding it more and more and I love it. It feels so good to be on a bike that fits the way I want it to. There are just a couple more things I need to completely dial it in, a new bar and stem, as well as about 18 inches of black SIS housing. I didn't have enough so I had to use a little red. Oh yeah, I'll put my FSA crank from my road bike onto it before the racing begins as well.

Other than that there hasn't been a lot going on. I've been a little lazy recently, but things are starting to turn around this week. I'm headed to Steamboat for a wedding this weekend, so there probably won't be much riding, but I'm planning on doing some running up there since cross is now knocking at the door.

My schedule is still up in the air. I'd like to do Cross Vegas, but it's not looking very realistic right now. I'd love to do some of the Gran Prix's, but with their exclusion of Colorado this year, I don't believe my pockets are deep enough to get there. I will however, be doing the three UCI races here in Colorado, as well as Nationals in Kansas this winter.

I suppose it's about time to dial in my schedule as it looks to be a busy fall of travel and racing. I will be headed to the Red Bull Soap Box Derby in Providence, RI in the middle of October. This does fall right in the middle of the season, but I made the commitment to support The Good, The Bad, and The Nerdy a long time ago.

Right now I think it's time to go get on that new cross bike and do some hard efforts. I was going to do the cross ride in Boulder this morning, but I still don't have mountain shoes, and clipping in with my road shoes and mountain cleats has proven to be harder than I thought it would be. If anyone would like to donate some cash for a new pair of shoes, let me know, I'd be glad to put your sticker all over my bike!

Speaking of stickers, my friend Scotty Boy, Scooter Louis, Wenzel finally made it home from a five and a half month stint in Belgium. He's got a lot of great euro-racing stories, as well as some sweet stickers that he shared with me. Those of you who know me well, know what a sticker feign I am.

Great, I just spilled coffee on my shirt.

I just realized I haven't updated since I officially moved to Denver. I know this is web log is supposed to be about bike racing, but it's mine so I'll write what I want.



I got back from Superweek and settled in a little bit. Things have been going great so far. My new roomate Kari (that's Kari above) and I have been having a lot of fun, and I'm really enjoying living in the city. I'll never be one to talk down about Greeley, I had a lot of fun there, and made some long lasting friendships, but this is just a nice change. I love that I can walk or ride my bike basically everywhere I have to go, and it's usually faster and easier to do than it would be to drive. Work is still just 10 minutes away by bike, and riding in traffic has gotten to be more fun than scary, which makes the commute that much better.


My girlfriend Jami (that's Jami above, I look a little... tired) graduated from nursing school and her parents and siblings came out for a week to celebrate. We went to the ceremony then had a little party in Greeley, then spent another crazy night in Denver, then I got to go spend another night with them, a little more low-key this time at a condo in Vail. The next weekend we headed east back to my old stomping grounds of Yankton, South Dakota, for the nationally observed Riverboat Days holiday weekend. Most of my friends from home were there, so Jami got to see the environment that I'm a product of, and why I am the way that I am.

Now that the crazy weekends have hopefully come to a close, I'm getting pretty excited for cross. I'm not planning on coming out with any huge bang, but like the past couple years, I hope to continue getting stronger through state championships and hopefully I can pull of a decent ride at nationals.

On one last note, I'd like to wish Mr. Evan "E-Strong" "The Sandman" "The Sandstorm" Sandstrom a happy 21st birthday. It was a long time coming (21 years), but now that it's here you better enjoy it, just not too much. I think we might have the next Cat. 4 Colorado State Cyclocross Champion in our midst. I hear great things come from people who start off racing The Squirrely Surly.

That's all I've got folks, thanks for checking in.

P.S. My friend Eric got a Wii and Tiger Woods 2008. It's probably the funnest video game I've ever played and I SMOKED Eric in Match Play and Stroke Play last night. Three under baby, whoop whoop!

What did you do to get ready for cross today?
cyclocross, cyclo-cross, veldrijden