Longsjo......Stage 2

Well this race was a 25 mile circuit race. The circuit is 3 miles, with one tough hill, the hill is around 500m and over 10%.....anyways the race came down to a sprint as normal. I sat in the whole time, untill two to go, I launched an attack, an got around a 20 second gap. I got got caught right after 1 to go. The Nate (my good friend) countered a got a gap. Poor Nate got caught with around 500 meters to go. Well at least the southern boys made the big teams work! I finished in the pack so I should still be sitting in the top ten. Saturday is the big stage. We will see how my climbing is after that.

Longsjo Classic Stage 1

Okay, for those that don't know, the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic is the biggest junior stage race in the country. Well the tt was 6 miles. The first 5 miles was on a climb that was stair-stepy, with some false flats. It probably avgeraged 4-5%. Me not being much of a climber, wasn't real happy with the course. However I managed to finish 9th place. Not bad considering that this is the biggest junior race in the country. The only rider in the 15-16 year old age group that was in front of me was Nate Brown. He finished 6th. Nick Bax, the reigning USA national champ, won it.

Avery Trace RR/ CRIT

This was a very encouraging weekend. In the road race I played it fairly conservative in the first half. I made it over the day's toughest climb which had me worried. After that there was about a group of 20. On the second to last climb I attacked and got a gap. about 3/4's of the way in the climb Eric Murphy came up to me. Over the top three more people came across. They were Dirk Polmun, Spencer Beamer, and some other dude. I really felt like this was the move that was going to stick.......After all we had four of the strongest guys in the race in the move. But for some reason nobody would work, and we got caught about 8 miles from the finish. When we got caught, I went again on the flats before the climb........I was joined by Spencer Beamer, and we stayed out there for about 2 miles, we were brought back with around 4 miles to go. We hit the finishing hill and I was blown of the back.....I still managed to get 17th place which was good for 35 dollars. The crit was a very good race for me. In the beginning I was once again playing it Conservative, and almost immediately a break of four got clear......Including my teammate Geri Mewwit. Once it was clear that they wouldn't be brought back. I made multiple break-away attempts......Finally a group of six of us got clear. We stayed away for the rest of the time. With 2 laps to go I made a move but the was reeled in just short of one to go. A ended up taking 5th out of our group, and 9th overall, which was good for 85 dollars. Geri took 2nd....So it was a great day for the team. Tuesday I'm heading up to Fitchburg.......My form is really coming on strong so I am really looking forward to nats this year. By the way......I am officially going to Belgium after Nats.

Europe Again?

Well It looks like I'm heading back to Europe again this year........I got an invitation this morning from the USA national team inviting me to do 8 races with them in Europe. I'm going to be gone from July till August.......So much for having a normal summer...........I'm still not positive that I'll except the invitation, but considering that this is a vital move for my future career, I'm not sure that I have much of a choice since I want to continue to progress my career towards being a professional cyclist.
Viva La Belgium Baby

115 mile ride

Today I went and did the Cherohala Challenge. Which is a 115 mile ride, with 10,000 feet of climbing. A lot of people race it as well. The group started out with probably over 200 riders in it. On the first climb me, Spencer Beamer, and Ron Swope set a hard tempo (over 300 watts avg) and brought the group down to 15 riders. The pace was solid until the last climb which was 15 miles long. The first 3 miles I felt great, It was me Swope, Spencer, and Jon off the front. Then I absolutly hit the wall. I guess the hard week I had this week caught up to me, because I bonked hard. I just cruised in after that...........115 miles......avg 19mph.....170avg watts for 6hrs........3700 calories burnt..........All in all a good training day.

Roan Groan TT and CRIT

Well the Time Trial went alot better then I expected. I ended up 16th in the pros with a time of 11:16, with an avg. speed of 26mph, not bad considering it was in a head wind, and mostly uphill. The crit was a great day for our team, we were in all the breaks. My first break came at around 10 minuets and we stayed out for around 5 minuets. Then came the winning break. I don't know how, but i found myself in a break of 7, including Eric Murphy( 2nd to George Hincapie in the ATL 100K Classic), Mark Hekmen( Winner of the 2007 Athens Twilight Crit) and some others. The best part of it was that our team had 3 men in the break!!! It was myself, Chris Harkey, and Geri Mewwit. Mark Hekmen wasn't to happy with the situation, and launched many attacks out of the group. Finally Harkey latched on the one with Eric Murphy............Those three stayed away the entire race and Chris took 3rd. Our break got caught by the field 50 minuets into the crit, but neither me or Geri could drive it since Chris was up the road. I ended up taking 9th in the field sprint, or 12th overall. A great day for the team. I'm really happy with my form after this weekend. I felt great all day in the crit. I have alot of work to do before Nationals, but my dream of being on the podium at Nats. is looking better every week.

btw.......Chris also got 2nd in the tt!!!!

Roan Groan RR

Well the RR was a lot harder then I thought. Normally there are only around 30-40 pro riders that do this race, but this year for whatever reason there were probably around 80 guys, including some pretty damn good pro teams like VMG, Jittry Joes, AEG TOSHIBA......just to name a few. One of our guys got in an early break that stayed away till the final climb. I was able to stay with the leaders on the climb until like 4 miles to go..... I think I might have got top 25 if i'm lucky. Geri had the top finish for our team with top 15. My climbing is certinly not were I need it to be, but it's getting better. I'll post after the tt later

The Eve Of Roan

So tomorrow is Roan Groan, which is a very hard race........It finishes on Roan Mountain, which is a 10 mile climb at 8%. I'm not sure what to expect, if my climbing is as bad as it has been lately then I'm not gonna do very well. But I have dropped close to six pounds, and trained very hard in the mountain lately......... so we will see what happens. I'll give the race report after the RR and tt.

Season So Far

Well since its the middle of the season I figured I would recap my season so far. This year started out with a new team. Hincapie-Binanchi picked me up, and I can honestly say that there the best team in the world! Really the guys are so supportive and strong as hell. Well I raced alot in the begging of the year at the Greenville training series. I had a couple of top 15 finishes there. Then my only decent result at the begging of the year came at the Rock Hill junior crit, which I won despite being sick. After that I went to panama city on vacation, and lost alot of fitness. I then went to tour of virgina, where I was elimnated on the 3rd stage along with hafe the field. My next race was Athens Twilight, where I probably had my best result of the year, finishing 5th in a field of over a 100 riders, ranging from juniors to cat 1's. I got tenth place in roswell the next day. My only result in may was 1st place in the junior crit at highland rim, then I went on to finish tenth in the pro crit and 12th in the pro ominium. Now that june has rolled around, i'm really looking for some good results, I have really stepped up my training. The 15-16 nats, is what i want to peak for. Im training hard and my weight is finally starting to come around, so all you juniors out the better watch out!

CYCLING

Well anyone who hasn't been living on the moon knows that cycling has had some serious problems with doping. That got worse today, the police raided the quikstep houses and it looks like they found alot of crap........I honestly thought that ever since the Puerto crap that cycling was cleaned up, but now it looks like it hasn't changed. Oh well, hopefully all my competitors at Roan Groan this weekend will be clean...lol.
But yea, this weekend is Roan Groan, probably the hardest mountain race in TN. I'm really not exspecting much since I'm not much of a climber. Who knows though, I have really been working hard on my climbing since I got my ass dropped on the climb at Soto, of course Cesar was driving the pace, with Frank Pipp, and big Karl from Health Net, but thats no exscuse is it? Only like three more weekends until nats. After all my mountain training my wieght is now 145, which is encouraging.