I AM COOKIN NOW! I feel awesome! I have been working my ass off this last month on my road bike doing some good miles. I was shooting for 400 miles this month but I have instead put up 539 miles. Granted only about 100 of those miles were outside but who wants to be riding outside. I road outside today and it was hairy in some places. Ice everywhere, and tons of wind to blow you right over. But I felt good, really good. I could have done way more. I have been paying more attention to how I am feeding my body while on the bike and all this other work I have been doing is paying off. This is only going to feed my desire to be even better. Last year I was really getting down on myself because I came into my team as a new guy at the end of the season. These guys were finishing their seasons and they were fast so I would get dropped every day. Well I think that might change this year. I have been doing a lot of updating to my bike and I have some more to do. I think I will at least be really competitive with my group of guys (Cat 5s) at least I hope so. It will be a major blow if I show up to the first real team ride and I still get smoked. Well I have about another 1000 miles to click off before the season starts so I better get to that.

So what I am really into now days in bicycle racing. I used to really be into it when I was a kid. For about 3 years in Jr High I raced mountain bikes with my good friend Corey Steinbrecher. We both raced for our local bike shop, Pro Bikes and Likes. They were some awesome people and I loved to spend all my time there. I even worked there for about a year when I was 13, they never told me what I made an hour and would most of the time try to get me to buy bike parts instead of paying me but I loved it. Then I got into some other stuff and kind of lost interest in racing which was kinda sad now because I had a good shop of a sponsorship if I kept going. I also used to be pretty good at baseball. Played that for 10 years until high school. I got tired of coaches looking at me and never thinking I would be any good because I was small. I wasn't the best offensive player, but I was fast and a great defensive player. I once gunned down a batter from left field at first base. I thought that was cool. So in high school I joined our boys gymnastics team at Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn IL. I got really good really fast and by the time I was a senior I was in the top ten in the state and was going to the University of Illinois to compete for the varsity gymnastics team. While there I competed on Floor Rings Vault and High Bar. We were Big Ten Champs in 2004 and 3rd in the nation twice, 2004 and 2005. So when I got out of gymnastics I didn't want to do anything athletic at all. Gymnastics was a huge part of my life. I put a lot of things on hold to do it and now I was going to just relax. So three years down the road I no longer look like a lean mean fighting machine. I'm looking a little round and my clothes are not fitting so well any more. That is when I decided to climb back on the bike. The problem was that I didn't really have any money to throw down on a new bike. I was putting my wife through nursing school and we didn't have a lot to spare. So my dad gave me one of his old racing bike, and Cannondal 3.0 Crit bike from 1989. I tore that thing down to the metal and rebuilt it into a beatiful looking bike. Jet black. So since last August I have been training my butt off for this race season, I did race a mountain bike race last August and placed 2nd in that, but I want to really make a splash this season and see if I can really kick some butt. I have some good goals set for myself and so far I am breaking them. More on that later.