Blogs by Professional Cyclists - Professional Cycling Unplugged™

I thought, I would start my first post off with a simple introduction of myself and who I am.

I race for the Gary Fisher 29er Crew and my primary focus is on the long distance endurance mountain bike racing. Particularly for the 2009 Season will be the National Ultra-Endurance Series, and my favorite hometown race; The Hardcore 24.

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(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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Posted under NON-BIKE

I had a great celebration with my family in Canberra.  We start the morning off with breakfast, followed by the opening of stockings.  I received a fantastic mullet wig in bright red.  That will definitely be of use to me this coming year.  After stockings comes the present opening, then we get started on preparations for Christmas lunch.  We all ate way too much, but that is what Christmas is all about!  I was by far the best bocce ball player, but I am afraid my gin rummy skills were not the best.  I hope everyone enjoyed the day with their families!

Training has been going well.  I went up to the mountains in Thredbo last week and had a few great days of riding.  The best experience of the weekend was my rental car.  I walked into Hertz and spent more than a few minutes waiting in line, so my patience was already wearing thin.  I finally received the keys to my Holden Commodore…my bright green Commodore.  Let me tell you, this car was the ugliest color I have ever seen.  I don’t even know how to properly describe the color.  You could see me coming from a mile away.  People on the street just stared at me.  Who can blame them?  The interior was roomy, but I just could not get over the color.  See for yourself:

Happy Christmas!

(5 votes, average: 2.40 out of 5)

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Posted under ROAD BIKE

So I just got my altitudetech tent up a bit ago and started sleeping in it last week.  I did a bit of playing around with the altitude tent last year and decided that this year I was gonna take it to another level with this new setup.  I can fit a king size mattress inside and the compressor is quite quiet and pleasant sounding.  It gets up to 8500 ft in about an hour and I actually sleep like a baby inside.  Give it a shot I’m sure you’ll like the outcome.  Check out www.altitudetech.ca

(5 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

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Posted under ROAD BIKE

I’ve been a little slow to write a cyclocross nationals recap due mainly to two factors.  Firstly, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in old English for my Chaucer class.  This was my version of hell.  Secondly, I’ve been working to move out of my room at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs where I’ve lived (and steadily accumulated a LOT of stuff) as a member of the U23 National Mtb Team for the past three years.  With class and the move complete, I’ve headed home to Boulder, CO for two weeks of hiking, nordic skiing, alpine skiing, eating chocolate, and yoga.  More on these “off season” activities to come. 

Cross nationals was a blast.  Unlike mountain bike races, where spectators see racers blaze into the woods and then fly by every half hour or so, the entire cross course is visible.  Spectators can see and literally yell into the faces of grimacing racers as they’re attacking or attacked.  Quite fun, especially when all of your season is over before the elite races and you feel as if any of the burdens of resting and recovering have been lifted. 

With all of the cross training (and occasional lapses in training) that I’ve been enjoying this fall, my legs have been pretty unpredictable.  Such was the case in Saturday’s U23 race, but I was happy with 11^th place given the stacked field.  I think I benefited from the relatively lax start pace of Sunday’s DII collegiate race and was able to ease myself into things and win.  I understand that collegiate fields would be huge if D1 and D2 fields were combined, but this separation strikes me as odd given that hardly anyone (with the possible exception of Ft. Lewis and Lees-McCrae) chooses their school based on its cycling team.  Nevertheless, wins are quite rare these days, and it felt pretty good to raise my hands across a finish line and pull on a stars and bars jersey (I’ll ignore the alignment of those bars).

The link below video is a throw-back to Jingle Cross, and it captures one of the darker moments in my first cross season.  Yes, it takes me far too long to get back up, but I swear I wasn’t just pouting.  I knocked the wind out of myself pretty solidly. 

Jingle Cross Crashes

I should now get back to off-season training; there is a chocolate bar with my name on it.  Merry Christmas! 

(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted under CYCLOCROSS

Every year for one week in December I fly to LA for a track camp. Sometimes it is against my will, but once I am here I get into the track spirit. The efforts are hard and mentally you have to be on top of your game. Coming off of base training and then expecting your body to function when you are going anaerobic is a challenge, but once the pain and suffering has subsided you just head right back out and do it all over again. One of my biggest peeves about LA is the road riding. You are in a city, with way too many people. So imagine how welcomed a group of 15 cyclists cruising down the road is!! Well the other day I finally had a day where I somewhat enjoyed riding on the road here, unfortunately it takes way to long to get north of Santa Monica so getting a good quality road ride in everyday is not so feasible. I took some pictures on the ride to remind me that there is some good in LA, especially when we find a climb that is 5km long and averages about 15% with pitches from 16-22%. This picture is just before we started the climb up. The rest of the group did not know what was ahead.

The view from the top.

Everybody made it, some were smiles, others were just looking forward to the decent on the other side. Fortunately for everyone it was a beautiful day, since for most of us here the weather has finally turned beyond bearable and into full blown winter. Unfortunately for me (and this seems to be the case every year I am here) the weather in Asheville has been gorgeous, a good 10 degrees warmer than Socal, and this is not making for a very happy me. As I look at the extended forecast for home, I am going to be welcomed back to the cold weather that I had just before I left. Thank you weatherman!!! How many more months of winter?

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season, and wish ya’ll a Merry Christmas.

(5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Posted under ROAD BIKE, TRACK