Blogs by Professional Cyclists - Professional Cycling Unplugged™

This year the start of winter training is actually quite exciting for me.  For so many years winter has brought either school, or in more recent years, World Cups and high intensity training.  Even though I am entering my fourth year as a pro, my previous seasons have all been geared towards having a successful winter of track racing.

 Typically that involved a reasonable break in late March or April right after Track Worlds.  A rude awakening would quickly follow the break as I attempted to jump back into NRC racing and discover that everyone is flying after two solid months of racing.  July I’d typically back it down a little to prevent too much cumulative fatigue, and also to rebuild looking ahead to the winter racing.   So it’s been a vicious cycles, and I am glad it’s finally over. 

 This year I skipped Track Nationals and took a reasonably early break.  I was going to ride the madison at nationals with a good friend of mine, Shane Kline, but in our first day of training together he fell and broke his arm.  I had no personal ambitions at nationals besides trying to get Shane his first elite national title, so I cashed out early and started my off-season that day. 

 The off-season means different things to different people, and it’s meant different things to me over the years.  This year it was an opportunity to hit the reset button and let an entire Olympic cycle of stress and traveling melt away.  It was a nice change of pace to be able to ride when and if I felt like it, and only as long as I desired.  Fall in eastern Pennsylvania is just too nice to let slip by without some breathtaking rides. 

 However, all of that is in the books and I am buckling down for my first full-time road season.  Never before have I been able to do a proper winter of base training, and I am really excited to see what can happen next year. 

 For now, its time to bundle up hit the road.  The thermometer outside my window is reading twenty-nine (thank god I have the luxury of being able to wait for the day-time high) and the wind has died down a little. 

 This weekend I am heading up to the Whitemore’s Landscaping Cyclo-Cross races in the Hamptons, so check in next week for an insider’s report on the action.

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Posted under ROAD BIKE

As the nights grow longer and the days grow colder, I find myself reflecting back on the past year, and what a ride it was.  In fact, it all started just about one year ago on Black Friday.  I caught an evening flight out of Philadelphia, and off I went to Australia to begin a quest to realize my Olympic dream.  96,000 Frequent flier miles, ten trans oceanic flights, four continents, one Olympics and one international controversy later here I sit at my home in Topton, Pennsylvania wondering, “How did I get here?” 

“Get pushed off the apron, go half way up turns one and two, climb the rest of the way on the back straight.   Down the transition, see two to go.  Give it a little gas now, but not too much, take it easy up turn one and roll a little harder out of turn two, gotta have good speed coming in to one to go…”out of nowhere a father and his eight year old fly by me on the track, son tucked into the slipstream.  A bell sounds and the boy springs to life, sprinting around his father to take the win. 

The highlight if my week was Tuesday night.  Dad comes to get me in the big van, and we make the pilgrimage to Trexlertown.  I watch him race, and although I am not really sure what is going on out there I know it must be good.  He takes me for a few laps around the apron after the racing, but usually I am too nervous to ride on the banking.  Not this time.  This time I am going to do it, I am going to ride up high like he does when he races. 

He tells me something about the track but I’m not listening.  Too excited to listen for words of caution or nuggets of wisdom.  I get my feet in my pedals and I am off, right to the top of the track!  This is great!  Suddenly a new world opens before my eyes.  Dad chases me up the track, panicked but excited.

Looking back maybe he knew something changed, but my mother, sound asleep at home, had no way of knowing just what kind of chain of events was set in motion on that evening in June.

Twenty years later I find myself in a dark hotel room in Los Angeles.  By a twist of fate, or coincidence, it is Father’s Day.  “I am turning my phone off’” I told them, “I need to focus.”  I did need to focus, that was true.  But really I was scared, scared of what was about to happen, or what might not happen.

Even when I was little I knew the Olympics were special.  As soon as I learned my Dad had been, I knew I had to go too.  And there I was, about to compete in the Olympic Trials.  After so many years of hard work, success, disappointments, obstacles, and every other emotion one can experience, all that stood in my way was just 12 laps of the track.  For a moment I was overcome by emotion. 

But now it was is time to focus on the task at hand.  The little boy and his father were down on the apron, and up I went, straight to the top of the track, to start my warm up, resume my visualization.

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Posted under TRACK