A long Season Finished

Man what a year! Good, bad, winning, losing. Everything goes into the knowledge bank. Already I am planning for next year. This week though is off the bike. Did one of the hardest ride I had ever done on the 11th of this month. I was part of Illini Pride, a relay team competing at the Cedar Point Iron Man. I road the bike section and was able to help my team to a second place showing. I had never trained for such a race and was really worried about being able to compete at that distance. In the end everything worked out well and I had a lot of fun. I hope to be able to do it again next year.
This year I raced; if I wasn't at work I was heading to a race with my team. Katie was a huge help with my ability to race so much. She was often my support crew and even though she complains sometimes, I think she likes it. We are part of a community of people and we have a circle of friends. Without racing we wouldn't have any of it.
I hope that next year I am able to come close to the number of races that I did this year. I also hope to have more success in the coming year. Most of this last year was spent as a helper to most of my teammates. If everyone works as hard in the off season though I may still be a domestique. Not really a bad thing though if you think about it, it is great to be part of such a great group of guys.
2012 will bring in more change for my cycling. I hope that it will be a change for the better. Really I think it will be and will be the start of something really good. There is a lot of work left to get everything ready and to make it an enjoyable experience for the rest of the guys on the team. When things get more solid I will share but now I want to make sure things are ready to go.
Gymnastics is heating up now that racing is cooling down. Things are looking good, all the coaches are working hard and I think things are coming together better than ever. Still there is room to improve and if I ever think there isn't I should quit. The biggest hurdle I think we are working with right now is trying to get all our gymnasts healthy. It always seems like we have a lot of injuries but I think that is just because we have so many girls compared to what I have known all my life. My level 9/10 team is bigger than the women's team at the U of I when I was there.