Gotta learn to love hills

I hate hills, I climb like a rock. But to be good at racing a bike you have to be able to get over hills, mountains, or whatever else is in your way. This off season I have been working hard to learn to climb better. Living in St Louis has been helpful in getting better at climbing, living in Champaign IL, flattest place on earth, made it hard. But still it is very tough to put together a route with over 2000 feet of climbing.

Well my last day to ride in Atlanta I put together a ride with over 4000 feet of climbing! That was great for me, and really put a big hurt into my legs. A lot of work that I have done is to be able to climb standing for longer periods of time. I have a slightly more muscular build as I used to be an elite gymnast and I carry more weight on the top than most cyclists. I have been told that riders with my build would do better to climb in this fashion. With the short punchy climbs we have around here this should help me quite a bit. It basically turns the climbs into a sprint for me. I have also been working on longer climbs that I will sit for half to three quarters of the climb and then stand and hammer up and over the rest. The only way for me to ever test out if my climbing is getting better is to ride with my buddy Mike Rickey and see if I can hang with him on climbs. He will always drop me at some point but the farther I get the better I am doing. Some day I hope to be able to beet Mike up a climb while he is at 100% strength.

The ride itself was amazing! It was the nicest roads and the most picturesque scenery I have seen on a ride. To make it even better it was like that for at 45 miles of it. There was almost no traffic, maybe 10 cars passed me. And this was in the city of Atlanta! The homes along my route were fantastic as well. Hundreds and hundreds of mansions, estates, castles, and every other type of home you could imagine. It was a nice experience to be totally lost as well, not only in my thoughts but geographically as well. I had my Garmin 705 to tell me where to go but I could only see where my next turn was. I did not know where I was in relation to where I started or anything else. I think this really allowed me to just enjoy what I was doing, not worry about how to climb the next hill because I had no idea. I just went up all of them as best I could.

Now it is back to normal STL training, and my continued plan for the start of next season. There is still a lot of time to get ready but it will be here before I know it.

Thanksgiving in Hotlanta

So Katie and I drove down to Atlanta Georgia to visit my aunt Amy, Uncle Dave, their four boys, my grandparents, my parents, brothers, and new nephew. Yah big group! We left Wednesday morning when Katie got off work at Barnes and it took about 9 hours. The trip really wasn't that bad of a drive. We only stopped once to eat at 1 and I had good tunes and almost no traffic the whole way.

I of course brought my bike with me and was really looking forward to some good riding. My aunt and uncle live in a VERY well to-do area of Atlanta so the traffic is low and people see bikes on the road often. This was great because it makes for a much more relaxing time on streets you have never been on.

I found a route on mapmyride.com the night before and loaded it onto my Garmin. This is also a huge help because it makes me feel like no matter what I can always find my way home. That was good because I felt totally lost the entire time, so I just enjoyed the ride and let the Garmin tell me where to go.

I left around 9am and there was a think fog in the air, a slight nip, and a light wind. It looked like it had rained that morning but I didn't hear anything. The nice thing was that it was 65* instead of 25* and raining like back home in the STL. The roads were totally quite, no cars and just a sprinkle of morning runners. The homes I went by were AMAZING! There were some that I thought looked like palaces, with large estates, bridges, rivers running through their front yards, large gates, it was too cool. I think it would have been way too dangerous for me if there had been more cars because I spent most of the time looking at all the great homes. The climbing was nothing bigger than back home in St Louis, I was hoping that my aunt and uncle lived closer to some mountainous terrain but I would settle for new surroundings. The ride really was only 26 miles and I am looking forward to riding more Saturday morning and doing a 50 mile ride that supposedly has 4-6K feet of climbing. I decided to not ride Friday morning as it was pouring rain, and I felt like I had my ass kicked from the family 2 hand touch game I played before turkey day dinner yesterday.

This is really turning out to be a great weekend, I have not seen my brothers happier in a long time. Getting to see my new nephew Will is great! He is only 7 months old but he is a monster! My mom said that my brothers and I were all big kids when we were babies though and now we are really nothing special in the size department. All pretty avg.

I have started looking for a new mountain bike. I will not get it till next fall but I can look and really do some good homework on finding the best ride for me. I think that I want something that I could race but I don't know if I want to really race that often. I am more dedicated to racing on the road. I think I will spend about 4K on a bike, I don' t know if I should build it myself or by a whole bike. I am worried about going carbon because I seem to like to crash so I am thinking titainium. I am pretty sure I will stick with a hard tail as no matter what you are never going to get a full suspension frame that comes lighter than a hard tail and with my climbing ability or lack there of I need all the help I can get. I also think I am going to stay with the 26" wheels. I was very close to going the 29" route but most of my reading says that unless I am riding on a gravel road 26" is the way to go. They are quicker on the trails, going uphill, and even downhill you have not trouble making time. So if I ever needed a 2nd mtn bike and I was going to do a LOT of racing on fire roads or something I think I will stick with the tried and true. Sorry Mr. Fisher but 29" just aint for me.

I am really liking the writing thing.

Let try this again

Sooo yeah been a long time since I wrote on here. I keep wanting to do this more but do people really want to read what I have to say? I don't really think so, so what I have decided is I am writing for myself. I always have these idea or things that I am thinking about and I dont really tell a whole lot of people. So really this is going to be my place to work out stuff that I just usually will just sit in bed and think about all night long.

My racing has made leaps and bounds since my last post back in 2009. I hooked up with a guy that had come so close to being a pro but life just started happening and took 12 years off. I coach a few of his kids at my gym at the St Louis Gym Centre. I feel like we have become pretty good friends over the last year. In the year that I have lived in St Louis I have not made too many friends. I like the people I work with a ton, they are great but no one that I want to hang out with and have a beer anytime, like Mike R or Mike F. Never realized how hard it is to make friends when you aren't going to school. It is cool that a guy named Rob from my racing team in Champiagn moved down here for his wife's work. He lives around the courner practicaly but he has kids like everyone else so like everyone else he doesn't have time to "get a beer".

I see that I have gotten off on a tangent. I am trying to talk about racing my bicycle. So in my last post I was riding a Trek 5200, but back in May I crashed bad and my bike was destroyed. My wife being the amazing woman that she is allowed me to buy a brand new bike and didn't even ask how much it was going to cost. Every now and then she gets mad about the time and money my riding takes but for the majority of the time she is my biggest supporter. My favorite days are days where I race and then we hang out and watch the rest of the racing with each other. She is even getting to know who the good riders are.

So now I race a Pinorello FP3 with a mix of Sram Red and Force. NEVER thought I would buy one, in fact I really wanted to get a Specialized but I couldn't get one in my size and model in time for my next race which was only 5 days away at the time. But I love this bike, everyone that sees it loves it. I love being on a rare bike for this part of the world.

So racing this year went great! In 2009 my racing season was over by early July and I was sucking ass at that time. Well this year I went STRONG into early September and could have gone a couple more weeks. I owe all this to my friend Mike Rickey who coached my through the entire year and was able to see my strengths and really bring them out. Now this year things are looking even better. I had stared a Wild Card Cycling STL team last year but now it has become 708 Racing. 708 is a clothing company owened by a super fast racer named Kurt Fletcher. He is one bad ass dude. We have also brought in a TON of other sponsors. I will talk about them more in another post. So Kurt is now helping me out as well and I am really pumped about it. We are now a team of 6 super fast guys that just want to kick ass. No pussy footing around, we all want to win and will dow whatever we can to win.

I have started my base miles for next year and am in the gym lifting weights. Iwill push my limits and make sure that my year as a Cat 3 is a good one. I will NOT be pack fodder all year long. I hope that if I work hard enough I can make my way to Cat 2. The more high level racers we have the better our money situation will be for the years to come.