Running.

I did the Pueblo Rock Canyon Half Marathon last weekend as an official end to my off season. I had prepared a little for it, did a 10 mile run once, and then got sick the week before, traveled and didn't run at all.

The race went alright, I had been shooting for 1:40, but ended up a few minutes slower at 1:43.03. I decided that day to throw my running shoes away and never run another stride in my life. But....
After finding this picture, that look on my face makes me miss running and I just can't wait to get back out there. False, I will not be running any time soon.

Base started this week, I'm already sick of the rollers, but had a great ride outside and it looks like there will be more of the same today. I just need to remember my iPod this time.

I got hooked on stalking people via "Twitter" on Tuesday as a means of postponing trainer time. I almost started my own account, but then realized, no one really cares what I'm doing every few minutes, otherwise they might read this pile of garbage. To add to that, I don't have a smartphone anymore, so how lame would that be? Anyway, I'm just glad that I can check up on my good buddy Lance and see his every move.

I think that's all, thanks for checking in.

Dog Photos.

I did a cross race last weekend. The course had 3 sets of barriers, two doubles and a triple. I could hop both the doubles, so it made for a fairly fun course aside from the loooongg bumpy flat parts. I ended up with a huge blister on my thumb because the course was sooo rough. Anyway, I'm doing another one on Sunday in Boulder.

If you're not doing anything Saturday you should head out to Red Rocks for the Red Bull Soap Box Race. As I'm sure many of you know, my friend Justin heads up the defending team "The Good, The Bad, and The Nerdy. The race should be a lot of fun, hopefully the nerds will pull it off again. Make sure to cheer for the #2 Pencil.

Now, for the good part.

Karma's new favorite ale.

We heard a loud noise in the bathroom and this is what later emerged.

I found Karma taking a nap the other day in the backyard.

Thanks for checking in, hope to see you at the races this weekend.

Hey Everyone.

I'm back, at least for now. I tried to update a while ago, but it didn't work, I lost interest, and that's that.

I won't piece together my past year for any of you, but I'll catch you up quickly. I raced this summer and I sucked. I moved to Colorado Springs, which doesn't suck nearly as bad as I thought it would. I got a new job at a different mexican restaurant.

Also Jami and I got a dog. Her name is Karma and she's totally awesome.


I haven't gotten to do a cross race yet this year, but I plan on changing all that on Sunday in Fort Collins. I'm pretty excited to get out and do the race, although I'm positive I'm going to get throttled. Oh well.

On a final note, I think I'll be racing with The Rio Grande team again next year. There were doubts about what was happening with the team, but it looks like we'll be around next year, probably on just a local level though.

I still suck, but maybe not for long.

Any of you who have been following my racing or results from this year know that so far this season I've pretty much sucked. I've been battling some crappy form, which makes my lack of motivation even worse, but the last couple weeks I've felt things finally coming around a little. I've gotten in a couple of really good training rides, and actually felt OK in a race or two.

I've been planning all year on going to The Cascade Cycling Classic this coming week, but over the last month it's become clear that I wouldn't be making the 6 man team that Rio Grande is sending. I considered going and paying my own way, but that would have meant buying a return ticket to get home as the team is going on to BC Superweek and I don't have a passport and didn't realize I needed one to go to Canada until it was too late. Since traveling isn't happening, I'll be sticking around Colorado to represent the team at some local crits, then heading home to SoDak for a week or so to see some family and get some stuff for my new house.

Back to the original focus of this, I'm starting to feel a little bit more like myself on the bike lately. Last week at Dead Dog I was able to ride at the front in the crit, be a little aggressive, and contribute (in my opinion) to the team absolutely dominating the race. As a team, we won 4 of the 5 primes, I got one, as well as winning the race with an outstanding effort by Logan Garey and putting 4 riders in the top 7.


Hopefully this weekend will be more of the same for me, although I'll have to get back to my roots of riding crits without teammates and being a little smarter and more tactical than I have been in the past few races. Wish me luck, or come out to Niwot and make some noise on Sunday.

Thanks for checking in.

More Pictures.

Here are some camera phone pictures of the last couple weekends.  I need to start carrying my camera with me more often I guess.

Here is Dan Porters calf (cow) implant.

Sunday after the Rist Canyone Hill Climb, the team and some others continued riding up to Glen Haven.  Here is Dan, the proud owner of those calves.

An unfortunate incident with some sharp rocks and poor communication occurred and ended with a couple flat tires.

Joe decided he needed his race number taken off immediately.  The flat changing had to be put on hold until he was officially no longer a racer.  Joe would go on to flat again, crack at least three separate times, then bonk, I supposebly he finished the ride with a full chamois.

Tito Taylor took time out of his busy pointing and laughing schedule to change a tire.  He won up the switchbacks where we discovered the crew from Cycle America.  They were probably some of the coolest people in the world at that point as the generously offered us free water, Gatorade, and all the brownies we could eat.

It was a good day, thanks for checking in.

Stolen Photo.

I snaked this photo from another blog.


That's me on the front, followed by some people, most notably, my teammates. The first Rio rider behind me is, Allen "I don't understand Television," "Labrador Recreeper," "Squinty eyed, messed up hair that looks like I don't care" Krughoff. Behind him is Logan "poops in his hand" Garry, then Dan "My cows rub on my seat tube" Porter.

The photo is from the Rist Canyon Road Race where I was active early, then sucked horribly. I think the team made it's presence known, as the photo shows.

Thanks for checking in.

New House.

We don't move in until July 15th, but here are a few pictures of the outside.


That's our house on the left, just across the street from it is Boulder Park.




That's Memorial Medical Center on the right hand side of the picture. Jami will be able to walk a half a block to work.

Mt. Hood is over... For me.

Since I last updated, we did a circuit race around about a 20 mile loop, half uphill, then half downhill. We did 4.5 laps, which meant 5 climbs and 4 descents. It started off pretty aggro, but the break went about 3/4 of the way up the first time, so we got to chill out over the top and the next couple laps as Bissell just rode the front setting tempo. The 4th time up I noticed I was slipping dangerously close to the back, and then it kicked up a little bit about 10k from the top and the next thing I knew I was in the caravan. I put on a little chase, and watched the Bob's guy in front of me hang on to a bottle from his car and get dragged away from me up the road. I rode an easy tempo for a while then picked it up to make sure I didn't get time cut.

The Time Trial the next day was by far the coolest TT course I've ever done. I didn't pre-ride it, and since a smoking fast TT would have kept me in last place GC, I decided to take it easy and still maintain my last place.

Yesterday was the Wy,East Road Race. It was 100 miles with like 39,000,000 ft of climbing. It started out so fast. For those of you who haven't been following the racing out here, Rory Sutherland from Health Net took the leaders jersey after the TT, so it was there responsibility to ride the front. I was hoping a break would go early and we could just chill out for a while but instead, groups of like 30-40 kept going away, and Health Net would string it out single file to bring the break back, but since they were so big it seemed like it took forever for them to come back, then another huge move would go and we'd get strung out again.

Meanwhile it's 90 degrees and we're going over roller after roller. I just kept telling myself to hang on over one more roller and then it would slow up, but it never did. Even through the feed zone it stayed single file, so of course I got caught out in the 3rd group on the road. I helped chase back to the 2nd group, but they were still chasing the first group and I came off just as the caught the 1st group. I chased as hard as I could through the caravan because I knew there was no riding the next 60 miles alone. I made it up to like the #2 car in the caravan, but then I blew up for real, and limped it for a few more miles in a little grupetto before I hopped in a car.

Now the race is over for me, the other guys get to do a 75 minute crit in downtown Hood River this afternoon. It's on a .4 mile course with a 180 degree corner, so it sounds interesting. I'll just be hanging out, getting ready to put my driving shoes on since I'm sure I'll be the one who gets to drive first.

That's all I've got right now, Hood River has been awesome, the courses have been really cool, but I can't say I've enjoyed racing on them that much! Hopefully I'll come out of this week with a little bit of form that I can use later this summer. Thanks for checking in.

I kinda finished again today.

Today was the Mt. Tabor Criterium in Portland. The race was run on an extinct volcano just outside of downtown Portland. The course basically went up one side of the volcano, then wound around the other and back up. Not a flat meter of road, with a 90 degree turn that the group slowed and stopped in every lap, followed by a fast narrow descent, and 135 feet of elevation gain per lap.

I of course started in the back and tried to move up until we came to a dead stop in the corner at the top of the climb. The group strung out right out of the corner, so it was 53x11 the whole way down, with a tiny break at the bottom before the climb through the finish started. Then we repeated that again and again. Sometimes there was more of a break at the bottom, and other times it stayed single file up the climb.

In order to not get time cut you had to last at least 30 of the 90 minutes of the race. I lasted 60 before the kid in front of me let a gap open up and I couldn't close it, and that ended my race. As soon as you were off the back the group rode away sooooo fast it wasn't funny.

I'm not happy with the result, but I get to race again tomorrow, so we'll see how it goes. 80 some miles on what looks to be a horrific circuit.

That's it for tonight. No new gossip. Thanks for checking in.

I finally finshed a race.

It's been a while since I've finished a race, but I did it tonight.

I'm currently in Hood River, OR, here for the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic. Tonight was the 1.7 mile prologue in downtown Portland. It was an out and back on a basically straight road right along the Columbia River. I finished in 3.06, good enough for a hundred and somethingth place. The winning time was 2.45, so I was a good ways off, but on a brighter note, the winning women's time was 3.08, so I would have dominated that race.

Tomorrow is a 90 minute crit in Portland, then a couple climbing road races as well as a long hilly time trial and another crit on Sunday to end the week.

I haven't updated in a while because racing has sucked. I crashed out of Gila on the first day, so I did support the rest of the week. Last weekend was collegiate nationals, highlighted by the guys getting third in the Team Time Trial, and Katie Ronsse's 9th and 7th in the Road Race and Crit. My personal highlight for the weekend happened Friday afternoon after the TTT. Taylor Shelden and I were running our bikes over to Jose Supersteinez's house so the van could take them out here to Hood River. Someone turned out a few cars in front of Taylor who was driving Amy Secor's car in front of me. Taylor stopped, I stopped, but the genius behind me didn't. He rear-ended me, and pushed my car into Taylor in front of me.

My car got a little crunched on both ends, rear bumper, trunk lid, front bumper, grill, front right fender, and hood. Amy's car just got the rear bumper messed up. I've talked to a few insurance people already, so hopefully it'll all get cleared up soon.

I think that's all the news I have for right now. We have awesome host housing which is a huge relief since "Crazy Jack" in Silver City was interesting to say the least. I'll try to keep this updated with results while we're out here, but we'll see how the week goes on.

In other news, if any of you read the comments on this, you may have heard some more gossip, for those of you who don't...

- Supposebly, Contador crashed out Zabriskie at the Giro because he was upset about Slipstreams inclusion at the Tour de France.

- Colin Don has nightmares about waking up, looking in the mirror, and finding a that he has an unfashionable haircut.

- Team Jelly Belly is planning to bring up a new rider from their "farm team" (Waste Management), as soon as they are allowed to adjust their roster. There are rumblings around the rumor mill that the new rider may be none other than Boulder's own Keil Reijnen. But the question is, who will be replaced? Perhaps a rider who needs time for their skeleton to catch up to their musculature.

- Team Tecos, which recently won The Vuelta de Bisbee, and The Tour of the Gila is said to only show up at races stateside when they know that USADA will not be there. According to secret sources, USADA made a surprise appearance in Pinos Altos after the final stage of Gila. Keep your ears peeled for any news on that front.

- Ryan Hamity had a life-changing experience as a young child at the zoo. He witnessed a gorilla vomiting into it's own hand, and later devouring it's vomit completely. Ryan immediately got a bunch of piercings and is now only attracted to women over the age of 35.

I think I'm out of gossip, please leave any good juicy info in the comments section, or feel free to shoot me and email. If it's good, I'll definitely add it to the list.

Also, I started reading Under the Banner of Heaven. It's really good, pretty disturbing, but interesting. I kind of want to read The Book of Mormon now because it sounds hilarious.

That's all for now. Thanks for checking in.

The gossip column.

I was in the car yesterday and I was told that to liven things up around the web log, I could just start posting gossip, mostly lies, but possibly some truth.

- I won't name any names, but a close friend of mine, knows a guy that can honestly say some un-named pros took drugs to get faster.

- Saunier-Duvall was probably paid to not start TDG because it was easier than battling Rock Racing in court.

- There are certain riders in this sport that don't stand a chance of getting a decent result, or finishing a race this year.

- A certain pro team got in trouble for painting some of their old team Orbea's so they looked like the new team GT's, I guess Wal-mart race bikes aren't appreciated by that race organization. Although I would like to add that there are certain riders on that team who are probably too fast to be racing in the states. I actually heard that one guys skeleton was giving up because his muscles are just so damn strong.

- Ryan Hamity had hair transplanted from the top of his head to his joules in order to look more like Alex Candelario and Joe Saperstein (always wearing a hat????) all at the same time.

- This just in from a Euro Correspondent, Kazakhstan is threatening to cut off France's oil and energy supplies following Astana's exclusion from the TDF.

- A certain U23 world champion apparently borrowed and wrecked his team director's car without permission one night, but won the rainbow jersey the next day before he could get in trouble for the car.

- Allen Krughblog.photodump@yourcycling.com/edu-org apparently got dumped this week because he ate his date's entire meal while she was in the bathroom. Sorry Allen.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll get some more juicy stuff later. Feel free to leave more interesting "facts" in the comments.

I suck at blogging.

And I'm ok with that.

I keep getting pushed and prodded by people telling me that I need to update this web log.  Well I haven't.  I haven't written on here because I haven't felt compelled to share anything happening in my own weird little world.  I'm tired of reading about what people ate for breakfast, what they wore on their ride, etc... there is a lot of boring stuff posted everyday on the interweb and I happen to live a pretty mundane life myself.  I figured I'd just do my part to offset the boredom being written on the Double You Double You Double You.com by keeping my boring life to myself.

Moving on.

Training been going, not great, not bad, just going.  I've been riding my new (old) singlespeed mountain bike at least once a week, and that has been awesome.  I've missed mountain biking a lot the past couple years, so I'm making a concerted effort to ride it at least once a week.  Anyone up for tuesday mountain bike rides? I am.

A couple weeks ago I did a road race in Grand Junction.  I got second.  There were four starters. I got 2nd place, finished in the top half, and was last placed finisher.  Hopefully that's the only time in my career that I finish a race with stats like that.  

This past weekend there were collegiate races in Golden.  Colorado School of Mines hosted an individual time trial up Lookout Mountain, then a circuit/crit on Sunday.  The DU team rode well, then we went for pancakes at Ben Quinn's house.  After a full belly of pancakes I went and did my first power test of the year up the Lookout course.  My numbers were right where I wanted them to be, but I'm still a little chunky so my time wasn't too blazing fast.

Sunday's circuit played out the way most collegiate crits have this year.  Small break with no organization behind it.  Steve Forbes of the DU team took the chase upon his own shoulders and drove the chase group averaging 300 watts for the hour long effort.  Not bad for a little 140 pounder.

After the race I cruised to Boulder for the Koppenberg Circuit Race.  The race went well, I got into a little chase group just toward the end of the third lap, and ended up 7th.

This weekend I'm headed to Utah for more collegiate stuff, not sure if I'll get any racing in, but hopefully I can figure something out at least one of the days.  Thanks for checking in, sorry for the lack of interesting content.  

Are there any pictures of Koppenberg out there?

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.