First Post

I am writing this first blog as I am on a flight to Brussels, Belgium. Now, I was thinking about just writing this blog about how I was doing in Europe as I went along, but I figured that it might make more sense if I gave a bit of background on what has been happening this season. So with that said, I will just jump in at the beginning of the year.

I started my 2012 season in the middle of December, 2011, in Tennessee. By that, I mean that in December, I really started training specifically for the 2012 road season. And I was motivated. There is something about the roads in Tennessee that is just special, and that we just don't have in Colorado. I cant say what exactly it is, but I can say that the past two years after starting the season there, I just feel incredible. I came home ready to ride and race. I felt excited to race with my team, juwi Solar, but I was also excited about another opportunity that I had received. A few weeks after I got back to Boulder from Tennessee, I participated in a camp run by USA cycling at the US olympic training center in Colorado Springs. It was a good opportunity to meet the coaches who run the US national team, but I left a bit unsure of whether or not I was going to get invited to race with them at any point in the year. I did know one thing though: I wanted to prove to them that I deserved an opportunity. With all that motivation and determination, I made a big decision. I decided, after the semester had started, to not attend school full time in the spring. So I dropped all of my classes except for some online work to just keep me occupied, and started to give training everything that I had.
So at the beginning of February, I drove to Tucson, Az, for a few weeks to train race. I drove down just as the first big snow storm of the year hit Colorado, so I was really excited. I spent a few great days riding on roads that looked like this:

I felt awesome on the bike, and I am still convinced that during that week, I was the strongest I have ever been  on a bike. But with all ups come downs, and after about a week, I developed a sharp pain in my left knee. I tried to ignore it at first, but after having to drop out of my first race of the year due to the pain, I realized that I needed to get back to Boulder and see a doctor. The day after the race, I was driving back to Boulder and had an appointment with Dr. Andy Pruitt from Boulder Center for sports medicine, or BCSM. Now, Andy Pruitt knows his stuff, and I trust him completely with any injury even remotely related to sports. Him and the rest of the team at BCSM have helped me get over some pretty bad injuries over the past few years. That is why, when the first thing that he said in the appointment was "you are probably going to need to get surgery," I was really disappointed, but also knew that he was right. He said that my medial patellofemoral ligament was too tight, causing it to pull on the bone every pedal stroke, causing the sharp, unbearable pain that I was experiencing. I scheduled the surgery for the next available opening, and started the waiting game. All athletes know what it is like to be waiting to recover from an injury, but those few days when I was just waiting to get the surgery were just agony. It is easy to get negative and expect the worst in those situations though, so I tried to keep everything in perspective. For example, the surgeon told me that I would be back training on the bike within 2 weeks, and racing again within 4; Although that seemed like a lot at the time, in the bigger picture, it really wasn't that much. Anyhow, I managed to make it through the waiting game and got the surgery on February 24th. After the surgery, it was... more waiting. I was never in any pain, my knee just felt really funny, like if it had been replaced by a water balloon. After two weeks though, I was back on the bike.

For those of you wondering, my total time off the bike was three days short of a month, or 27 days. That is a lot of time for anyone to lose when you are going into the season, but my biggest issue in getting back to normal training was that as a result of the surgery, I had lost a lot of muscle strength in my left vastus medialis, the inside muscle of the quad. This caused a lot of issues for me. Since the outside hadn't lost nearly as much strength, when I began riding again, my kneecap started tracking differently then it had before, causing me a lot more pain. This meant that the first race of the season, the Redlands Bicycle Classic, just wasn't a possibility for me. After pulling the plug on that, I just tried to put my head down and get my knee better as quickly as possible. Once again, I owe thanks to BCSM, and I went in to see them almost every day for a week straight. Once they worked their magic, I started to be able to ride again. The weekend before my next big race, I was finally able to start my first race back, a local road race that was just shy of 80 miles long. I felt good, didn't have knee pain for the first time in a while, and things were looking up.

The next weekend I headed to upstate New York for the NRC Tour of the Battenkill, a UCI 1.2 that included lots of dirt and totaled 125 miles long.
Let me break down what those abbreviations mean, because I will probably be using them again later on.

NRC: The NRC, or national racing calendar, is a series of road races and stage races around the USA that most american professional teams participate in. Also, some amateur teams race these events, but they are mostly by invite only this year, so it is actually a good thing to even be invited to these races.
UCI 1.2: The UCI is the international governing body of cycling. For example, it is the organization that puts on the cycling world championships. Here is a good explanation that I found on wikipedia of the ranking system that they have.


"Throughout the season, points are awarded to the top finishers of stages within stage races and the final general classification standings of each of the stages races and one-day events. The quality and complexity of a race also determines how many points are awarded to the top finishers, the higher the UCI rating of a race, the more points are awarded.

The UCI ratings from highest to lowest are as follows:

• Multi-day events: 2.HC, 2.1 and 2.2

• One-day events: 1.HC, 1.1 and 1.2."

So all of that was just a long way to say Battenkill is a hard race. Now, looking back on it, it seems crazy that I even started the race, and I really wanted to finish. However, after having knee pain the day before on our pre race ride, it was seeming like my chances were slim of even completing that goal. The day of the race, I started out strong, but faded pretty quickly, and ended up dropping out at the half way point. I was disappointed, but knew that I had another big race coming up in a few more weeks-- the Tour of the Gila.

Even though it was a hard race, the scenery at Battenkill was increadible

Before Gila though, I still had two valuable weeks of training. That is when things really started turning around for me. The first week back from Battenkill, I was finally able to ramp up my training again, and start doing what I needed to do to get back into racing shape. While I was back in colorado, I did a few races. But the real turn around came the friday before I left for Gila. In the middle of the day, I got an email from the director of the national team asking if I could come do a big block of racing in Europe. I was nervous, a bit surprised, but most of all, really, really excited. I had been training for this opportunity for a few years.
With that excitement, I went into the last local Colorado race that I would do in a while with a strong desire to win. I knew that if I played it right, I would have a good chance. I wont go into the race details, but I will say that the race played to my advantage, and I ended up crossing the line by myself with my hands in the air. This video sum it up pretty well. The whole thing is interesting, but if you want to just see the real action, it starts around 14:20. I am the guy in the pink kit, by the way, I stand out pretty well.

Also, when I attack that guy when it is just the two of us, I am actually going really hard, it just doesn't look like it. I figured I should add that in.

A win is always a good way to go into a big race, so I was excited when I left the following monday for Gila. Gila is a five day, UCI 2.2 and NRC race, with a lot of climbing. I wasn't sure how I was going to fare with only a few weeks of training in my legs, but I was there, so I figured I would go for it. The first day I didn't really go for it because my coach wanted me to try to save my legs for the next day, so I finished around 100th, out of 150 guys. The next day though suited me really well. It was a 80 mile stage, with a bit of climbing, but it had a flat finish for the last 10 or 15 miles. I felt really good, and ended up 7th on the stage-- not incredible, but I was really happy with that finish. Seventh out of a field of 150 of the best racers in the US seemed pretty good to me. This is a picture of the finish:

That is me on the left hand side, in the pink, really fuzzy, just for an idea of what the finish looked like.

The rest of the race was pretty easy for me, as I mostly just sat in the field and got water bottles for guys, but I think that mostly, this race gave me the confidence that I might be able to do well in Europe. Also, my knee didn't hurt a single day!

Anyhow, I am determined to make the most out of the opportunity that I have been given by the national team, and will update everyone to how all of my travels are going!