A combination of deciding last minute to race at Cyclocross Nationals, finals, and winter break have led to no time for postings.
Cyclocross Nationals: Left on a Friday from Fort Collins, Co to head to Kansas City, KS. The trip was supposed to take 9 hrs or something along that time frame. Reality was different. Stuck in a blizzard, spinning my car on the highway and being stuck in Hayes, KS for the night made the trip take over 15 plus hrs. The trip there was epic but not as epic as the race conditions. The weather was in the teens, snow and ice covered the course. If it wasn't ice then it was the classic wagon ruts that tried to do you in. The Men's Collegic field had over 180 riders, largest race I have been a part of. Started fast like it should, the first turn I got stuck in a pile up. Once un-tangled I got back into the top 50 or so. When I finally got settled into the race and began catching the front riders I had a mechanical. Basically, I was stuck in one gear (wasn't the best gear). In the end it came out to be a good learning experience.
Home (Pennsylvania): Finally getting back in PA took a while. Once home I wasn't really sure what to think. It had been 6 months since I was last there. The holidays turned out to be good as always. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. Cycling back in PA was a challenge. First, the weather was around 5 degrees everyday, there was no one to ride with, and people just don't like bikers. I think within the first 15 minutes of getting on my bike I got honked at twice and almost run off the road once. When it came to cycling it was pretty much nonexistent.
I traveled back to Fort Collin's two weeks early. The first week I had planned to relax and get some quality time on my bike before heading south to Tucson, Az. for the week of training. On the way back I had stopped in Iowa had some good fun and met some really nice people.
The First week back in FoCo was fairly warm (30-40 degrees) so I was able to get some good long rides in. I did a couple 60 miles rides, and a Century. The century was the worst I have ever done. It was flat with a head wind for basically the second part of the ride. I did it solo (also why it was the worst).
Tucson: I had never been to Arizona so it was interesting seeing the different style of living it was compared to my past. The Riding was amazing. We arrived on a Monday (we relaxed, ate food, got situated and planned out the week).
The room situation was alright, I slept on the floor because I am too nice. The bikes were stashed in a corner of the room and everything else took place on the other side. We really didn't do much in the room because we were on our bikes almost the whole time (that was the point of the trip!)
Tuesday, we rode up to the Observatory with a group of guys we met who were fully supported so that made things easy. The climb u
p was amazing. There were views every where, the weather was in the upper 60's.We mainly did climbing base miles (if thats possible). Mt. Lemon is now my favorite ride. You are able to climb for 20+ miles with no down hills. Erick Carlson and myself did Mt. Lemon twice in one day. The first time up was paced nicely around 10mph (moving along), and the second ride up we were averaging a little over 13mph (the last two miles really hurt).
I met up with my friend Tiffany, who I went to H. school with and haven't seen since. We had dinner, drank some wine (Aaron picked it out) and caught up on somethings. Overall a good surprise.
Friday, The last day of riding we got word about a group ride the makes all other group rides seem quite amateur. Known as the "Shoot-out" there were an excess of 250 ride
rs. It started as an easy roll-out and turned into a full-out race. I made the lead pack (all pros) till half way up the climb when they turned it up. I was able to get into a chase group where all of the riders were CAT2's but me. We chased for about 40 minutes before catching the leader group again. Then it ended in town with all of us getting pulled over by cops and warned about taking up the road (how couldn't we...there were over 50 guys in this part of the group).Erick and Myself then drove straight Through to get back in Fort Collins around 2am Sunday morning.
Now, I am back in my routine of class, riding and trying to have fun.
