MTB

Race Report From Norba National:
Cross Country: I have never been happier in my LIFE to get a flat tire. It put me out of my misery. It was raining and real muddy and impossible for me to steer my bike, and then I got a flat so I dropped out. It was fun though. The guys who rip it are absolutely incredible. Those guys suffer more than anyone else in cycling. I guarantee it. Its inspiring to watch.
Short Track: It was fun and fast, I got pulled with 4 to go, and ended up placing in the low 20s. It was a ton of fun and there is a huge learning curve when doing these, so I was glad to do one.

This weekend was just a bunch of fun. I got to catch up with the old paceline posse:


I also caught up with one of my old friends from college and he emailed me some pics of what I looked like in college. Check IT. That is Mark the musician not the Prissy Roadie!

i am going to race mtn bikes

Today is the Norba National XC race at Sugar Mountain. I am currently stuffing my face with food, because it is going to be a tough race. It will be my first Norba National and first pro race on top of that. We went and pre rode yesterday and my asshole is still clinched from the decent. It is SO STEEP, and ROCKY, and MUDDY, and DANGEROUS. So I have decided to not even attempt to ride it. The course is 95% gravel road and 5% singletrack. So I plan on going as hard as I can on the road and running the singeltrack. I can't lose that much time can I? Not as much time as a broken wrist or collarbone. HA. I wonder if any of our road sponsors read this.

I almost wet myself descending the mountain. Rich apparantely does that in my car.



Anyway I would like to wish happy thoughts to DANIELLE and Mark Hendershot. Those crazy people are competing in the 24 hour solo mountain bike championships this weekend. Yes they like to see how far they can ride their mtb in 24 hours for no prize money. Good luck GUYS!!!!!

WHOS A PRO???

So I finally made it. In Mountain Biking, the equivalent of a category 1 on the road is called "pro" so I finally got my "pro" upgrade on the dirt. Just in time for the short track race at sugar mountain this weekend!!!! So now I guess I am technically a pro bike racer. Wow I should have done it this way years ago. Its much easier than trying to massage egos to get that road contract.

Congrats to A&F manager Chad Thompson and his wife Trudi. They had a baby girl yesterday afternoon. YAY!!!! Chad having a girl is a true testament that there is a such thing as karma.

finally figured it out

So I haven't been feeling all that comfortable on my bike lately, just off a bit. So I finally checked my saddle height and the place where i have been marking it was a touch low. Just 2 CENTIMETERS!!! So I adjusted it and had the best ride of the year today. I felt so much STRONGER, holy cow i couldn't believe it.

This weekend MA RECORDS and myself were making fun of Rich about his new car, we thought it was kind of an odd choice of car for him. He seems to love it and says it is a "MANS" car. So we took a picture of him with it. The joke was on us though. HOLY SIX PACK BATMAN

Race report here from this weekend.

UH is coming back this weekend so that will be very exciting!!!! Time to break out the boxed wine and hammocks.

home

I don't have to sleep in a hotel for an entire MONTH. One month of sleeping in my own bed EVERY NIGHT. I am super excited. I even went grocery shopping to celebrate. I will still be racing, but all the stuff is within day trips, so life is good. I guess I should probably finally wash my sheets....
I rode my mountain bike for 3 hours today and I thought that my hands were going to fall off by the end. It was a beautiful day here, low 80s with not much humidity.
This is my third post is three days!!! As a result you can see that I have absolutely nothing to talk about, but here are 3 things that are very important to know
1. I have worn the same pair of shorts for the Enitre month of july so far. I have washed them though, so I guess that doesn't really count
2. I realized I was in the south today when I was in line at a gas station today and the person in front of me chatted up the cashier for about 5 minutes. LITERALLY and then took her sweet time writing a check. You ask who writes checks still at gas staions? It seems that everyone in the south does, especially when they are in front of me.
3. My penmanship is horrible. I guess I haven't really written anything with a pen and paper for a really long time, because I was writing something today and I was appalled at what I was seeing. Is it bad when you can't read your own writing?
Check out MA RECORDS blog for a cool write up and some good pics.

racing

I LOVE RACING MY BIKE. CRITERIUM RACING IS WHERE IT IS AT!!!!!!!!!!
The Boise Twilight was so fast and so exciting, crit racing at its best. We had so much fun. The course was super flat and super fast. We averaged over 29 mph!!!!!
We rocked it kind of. It came down to a bunch sprint and I ended up 7th and marco was 13th. Harper raced his A$$ off but unfortunately ended up flating with 2 to go. Luckily he didn't go down. So I am still leading the series....who would have thought!!!
This race was just so awesome and it was so much fun to race, attacks all the time, super fast corners. It is just so cool to travel to these cities and rock it in the dark. It is especially fun with just a few guys. MA Records, $rich, and myself have such a good time going to these events together.
After the race we went out with one of our favorite sponsors. Tom Coleman of wobblenaught bike fits. That guy fits in with the A&F mentality as we ended up being out with him til the wee hours of the night. It is so much fun racing at night. We didn't get back to the hotel from the race until 1030 which is 1230am est!!! Good stuff.
Anyway I took some pics and I will put them up when I get home as we are in the hotel still waiting to go to the airport.

boysie

We are hanging out here in boise ID and it is so cool here!!! Downtown is sweet and is surrounded by mountains. We are staying at a very swanky hotel that even has a heated bathroom floor and bathrobes, so $RICH$ MA RECORDS, and Myself are all hanging out in them and watching the E channel.


People ask me why $RICH$ is $RICH$, well here is his licence plate:

Speaking of cars, here is Marco's. If you have HORRIBLE credit and need that motorcycle which probably costs more than you make in 8 months AND need it TODAY!! call marco--here is is driving to a race making deals:

We flew in last night and got here about 1130 pm Mountain Time, cranked the ac down to 45 degrees in the room and slept forever. The flight was ok, actually it was absolutely miserable. NW airlines has THE LEAST amount of legroom out of all airlines. Ouch. Nothing like not even being able to put your tray down flat.


So we race tonight. There is a rumor that there is a least a $100 dollar prime EVERY lap. We don't race until 9pm Moutain time which is 11pm est, for those of you who can't do math.

quick update

So Elite TT and NATS were fine. They were fine. I didn't dig deep enough in the TT and got 23rd and I made the final selection in the RR which I was very happy with for 14th. I was happy with that result considering that everyone lining up for that race looked very hungry--they looked like they wanted a cheeseburger or just any food for that matter. Lots of skinny dudes looking like the death squad. Anyway being full figured, I think it is harder to go uphill.
I am home for two days and tomorrow we are flying to boise ID for the Wells Fargo Twilight Criterium which is also the USA CRIT series #6. I am so looking forward to the rest of the season as I have NO MORE road races or TIME TRIALS to do anymore. YAY.
I didn't get any good pictures this weekend, things were too tame. Although I did hang out with Jack Ham of the 80 somthing Pittsburg steelers who evidently is a big deal in PA.

48 hours

So only 48 hours from now until we compete in the Elite Time Trial Nationals in Seven Springs PA.
I guess I should build my TT bike up finally.
Here it is:

After the TT on friday we hang out until monday when we do the Elite Road Race. Yay for 39 miles of continuous climbing in the race without counting the rollers...
We shall see how that goes...
If anyone sees scott chambers tell him that Sirius Satellite Radio is launching a grateful dead channel...he will be very pleased to hear that I am sure...HA!!!!

iron hill

Gotta love bicycle racing. Never a dull moment at least.
Good Race Report Here
and here(scroll down for a bit to see it)
This is all I am going to say.
Saturday evening was the iron hill twilight criterium. The race took place smack dab in downtown West Chester PA, which is an awesome city. The course was terrific, 4 corners with two real tight corners. The corners were so tight that I managed to roll a tire, well actually the base tape seperated from the tire and had to get a free lap. They wanted to dq me right there for having a tire roll, which is in accordance with usa cycling rules. They did decide to let me back into the race.
I managed to finish up in 6th place. Yay!!! Apparently the officials thought I made a dangerous move in the final sprint which is weird because I didn't feel like I did at all. Regardless they relegated me to 30th. NOBODY COMPLAINED!
Enough of that. At this Point it is all water under the bridge, the race was AWESOME, the city is sweet, no broken collarbones, had a fantastic time at the after party, had a great time at the race and I am still leading the series--BARELY. Lets move on!!!
I am home now for a few days until tt and road nats.

Here is the story of the weekend: POLISH WARRIOR NATAHNIEL ZICCARDI WINS "JUMPIN SHIPS" ALLEYCAT BICYCLE RACE.
Yes it is true Nate, bicycle courier extroadinare finally won the diffcult race. After years of getting schooled and finishing second to local rock star Davey Rocket, Nate finally pulled this one out of his ass. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that davey seemed to pull a muscle in his back during one of the many difficult transitions and had to pull out of the race. We have faith that nate would have won anyway...or would he have. We will have to wait until next year to find out.

Congratulations Nato!!!!! I can't believe you are riding gears AND a helmet...what a dork.
For those of you who don't know what an alleycat race is, it is a courier race, you have to navigate through the city and do pick up and deliveries. It is quite the experience and would recomend doing at least one in your life. I did one and saw 2 racers get arrested and got hit by a car, so i figured one was enough. Good times though.

halfway there

I am currently checking my email for the first time in a week. WoW it was a great week.
I am in Newark at sir Rish's house waiting for the playas to get ready to go to west chester.
We should be there by 9 or so tonight and we don't race until 8pm tomorrow.
Grand Rapids was fabulous, got to see ALL my friends and family. I literally saw everyone of my friends who still live in town except this joker:

Tomorrow is going to be sweet, everyone is super pumped, so hopefully we can pull out a podium. We are sure going to try that is for sure.

On my was to MI!

YAY I am leaving in an hour to drive to ohio tonight and then on to MI in the morning. I will be up there all week.
I haven't been home since christmas and i am looking forward to hanging out up there for a week and seeing these guys:

I am also happy to be able to ride in anything but 95 degrees and intense humidity. Although it does get hot up there.
I rode 5 1/2 hours today and drank 230oz of fluid since waking up this morning and am still waiting to go to the bathroom. I should adopt $RICH$s method for rehydrating. He ate an ENITRE watermelon yesterday. Yes one whole watermelon. That guy is crazy.

photos

Here are some photos of the week. I guess the week technically started in austin where $RICH$ found his soulmate. Happy BDAY to $RICH$ he is 30 today. Rich Harper is 30 30 30 HAHAHAHA. Man thats gotta suck.

There was a really cool team doing the race called "Organic Athlete" they are all vegans and real cool people. Their director Bradley Saul has a bike made out of bamboo...really. Bradley and I actually raced on a combine team in 2000 at the 4 Bridges of Elgin. That was a long time ago. But it is funny how small the cycling community is. They did well. Molly Cameron is on that team and is a big crosser. He ended up 4th overall and schooled all the a&fers in the sprint on stage 5. Good stuff.

There were all sorts of A&F crazed women following us and stalking us throughout the week.

Good thing we had marco's buddy VAN driving us around all week and being our body guard.

Here is my boy NATO modeling his teams new kit. He is on Team AWESOME. Yes that really is the team name. That is awesome. Nate was a great host and had a birthday also on sunday. Happy BIRTHDAY NATE!!!

Team Manager for Team Awesome is Mason. He was out at the worthington race cheering and doing some scouting/recruiting.

After worthington there were some parties on the course, us being us, couldn't resist free beer. We were off our legs so it makes it ok.

I tried to get this guy to trade that jersey for a yellow one, but he is so hardcore into masi that he wouldn't

Bennett is so hardcore, really. He is really rocking those shorts for real. He doesn't even care. He didn't even realize they were short. That man has some serious STYLE.

Nate and I were inspired by bennett so we decided to try and rock his style. I think it works don't you? Yes that is a styx album cover on my shirt.

We take this racing thing too seriously. Here we are at a reuion of the 2003 Ohio State Cycling Team. Kyle P, Kieran S, Nato, and myself. We went to ComFest which is a big music festival in downtown columbus. Good Music and big beers. What more do you want out of life. Oh yeah, we got to race the next day. Even better.


The morning after Com Fest we went downtown for the Gay Pride Parade. We were wondering where Chad had been all week, it turns out he was tanning and getting ready for the pararde.

I think this hat speaks for itself.

We did it.

A&F pulled out the victory at tour of ohio on saturday. It was AWESOME. Marco even won the stage.
So all in all we got 1st and 3rd on the GC, 1st in points, 1st in KOM, and won 4 out of 6 stages. Not too shabby for us. We raced as a real team with a cause which made it a ton easier to be competetitive.
I am now currently in wilmington nc hanging out at the beach for a couple days with uh. This place is awesome, I have never been here, but scott chamber would like it because all the hippies that hang out here.
I have a TON of sweet pictures from the week, which are mostly not bicycle related, just cool pics. I will put up tommorow night when I get home--I am on a public computer now and I can pretty much see all the bacteria festering on keyboard...yum.
I can't say enough about how deep those guys dug this week, it was a great experience for all and hopefully we can keep this momentum rolling.
It was a great week for all, but Jimmy Mac took a bit of a spill, check it out here. Thanks to Dave Tingler for videoing a bunch of the races and editing them and everything.
Here is the link: Jimmy Mac Video
Thanks again to Blair Fraley from TEAM ECHELON for the pictures.


I will have a full write up and a bunch of hiarious stories soon.

Stage 4

Won today thanks to a HUGE HUGE HUGE effort by the team. These pics will say it all...A&F has now won 3 out of 4 stages and holds onto ALL jerseys!!!!
It was an epic crit and everyone stepped up huge. We kept it together, made it come down to a bunch sprint, which was super hectic and now we are in yellow, green, and polka dot.
I must apologize for yelling a little bit tonight, i might have raised my voice when things were getting crazy and there is no need for that, but it is bike racing and we needed to get that time bonus tonight. Here are some great pictures from Blair Fraley who is a savage hiller and great photographer. Thanks BLAIR!!!


I LOVE IT THAT ANDY IS AT THE FRONT. I LOVE BENNETTS FACE EVEN MORE. You should have seen the short shorts that m-fer rolled in today wearing. I love this team


Yellow looks alright. I guess you weren't supposed to chug the entire bottle of champagne, but it seemed appropriate at the time.

Nato says Hi to everyone. We went out and rocked OREILYS PUB afterword, my favorite old pub, it was great. Got my grub on with a bacon cheeseburger and a whole bunch of onion rings. Even NATO ate some meat.

The Jokes On Me...not in yellow after all.

so after the race yesterday the promoter gave me the yellow jersey and told me I was the leader, apparently that was just a cruel joke as I was reading today online that dickey is in yellow. HA! I have the jersey in my car, maybe I will just show up with it on.
What happened, I am assuming, other than the world being against me, is that because dickey got a 20 second time bonus and i got a 10 and I had a 10 from earlier in the week we are actually tied on time. So that means since he won a stage and I only have 2 2nds that he is the leader per USA cycling tiebreak laws.
Oh well, I just wish they hadn't given me that jersey and I wish I hadn't told everyone that I know that I was the leader. HA!!! 2 more crits with time bonuses at the finish.

Tour Ohio Stage 3

Todays stage was really f-ing hilly, no joke, it really was hilly, and it hurt badly. Luckily we have a good team and managed to get Tim Swain in the early break and he single handidly set up the results for us.
Lot of crazy stuff happened, but the short version is that the our team is racing full on like a team and the results are showing. Tim went up the road and took over the KOM jersey. I bridged up to him halfway in order to make the other teams chase. The other teams did. Tim Swain rode his ass off so I could wait for the last few climbs. A group of 10 came up to use before the second to last climb. Tim swain rode his butt off some more. Dewey Dickey attacked on the second to last climb. I was able to stay with him over that and to the finish with one other person, chris montileone. Dewey outsprinted me, and I took second but we both got the same time. The rest of the team finished only 30 seconds back.
Tim is now the kom leader and I am in yellow and green, and we have 3 guys within 30 seconds of 1st.
Tommorow is a criterium, thank goodness. Back to what we like, no more extended climbs or feed zones, or having to pee during a race, or worrying about eating enough. Just some good old fashioned bash my head into the pavement for an hour and then its over. Nate likes that too.
After the race, I was checking my myspace account with Nate. Here is how nate and I roll. We are both entertained easily. Nate has been watching me play on the internet since I got here...weird. He is very excited now that he gets to read these posts BEFORE THEY ARE EVEN POSTED!!!!!HOW AWESOME IS THAT???!?!?!

TOUR OHIO STAGE 2

Stage two was yesterday afternoon and it was a tough one. I was an 8 mile circuit with 2 climbs and a bunch of rollers. The team raced amazingly well and we managed to get our kiwi Josh England, aka, CHUNDER, (i think chunder is kiwi slang for poo or vomit, not sure)the stage win AND the kom jersey. I would like to say that we made it easy for him, but we led him out to the bottom of the last hill and he did everything else by himself. He really salvaged it and pulled it out so kudos to that strong dude.
Today is the hard stage, 70 miles in the hocking hills with 7 real climbs. OH BOY. Wish I hadn't eaten all those cheeseburgers this winter now.
We have all three jerseys now, now all we need to do is to keep them.

austin, tour ohio stage one.

I have a lot of catching up to do, I am currently in Columbus Ohio, which feels like home, staying at NATOS, who is my old roomated when I lived here. It is so good to be back in Ohio and doing tour ohio for the 5th time.
So last friday we flew to austin to do round 4 of the USA CRIT series. Austin is a fantastic town and the race was right smack dab downtown. We stayed with $RICH$'S old teammated Phil and his girlfriend danielle. They showed us the best restaurants and took real good care of us, it was sweet. We had mexican for EVERY meal even breakfast while we where there. LOVE IT.
The race was saturday night I raced real aggresivley and ended up getting in a good move with about 35 laps to go. We stayed away until less than one lap to go. LESS THAN ONE STINKING LAP. We got caught, I managed to hang on for 8th with harper 9th and gavic 12th. So it was a good weekend. As a result I still have the lead of the Crit series, but moreover, that moves A&F into first in the team comp. Harper has moved into the top 10 as has Brandon Gavic.
Here are 2 pictures of the race courtesy of Georges Schemagin at georgess.com Thanks



So we raced sat night in austin, flew back to raleigh nc on sunday afternoon, drove back to winston sun night, woke up super early monday to pack, left at 8 am to drive to ohio and was racing the first stage at 630pm. Crazy Traveling.
Tour Ohio this year has 127 racers, that is quite a bit. I love this race and tym tyler does a sweet job putting it together.
Stage 1 was AWESOME. The course was super tight, less that 1 km in length with 8 TURNS!!!! I saw that course and smiled. I love technical crits, they are my most favorite things EVER.
We have 9 people on our team for this race and we are all crit racers, for the most part. We attacked and attacked and attacked to try to get away and keep the pace up, but people kept on chasing and chasing. I ended up winning all the intermediate sprints for the sprinters jersey while marco kept on taking 2nd in them. In the end it came down to a bunch sprint and we lined it out for marco. I had last pull and took him through the last corner and since the sprint was so short only he came around so we went 1st and 2nd.
Our team raced so hard today it was insane. Everyone raced, it was really cool to see everyone throwing down at the front.
That course was so cool. The race started with 127 people, but I think at least 1/3rd got dropped, it was lined out the entire race.
Stage 2 is this afternoon in gambier oh. it is a circuit race with 2 climbs on it. So we will see how our teams "crit" phsyiques holds up in the hills. Today isn't that bad, but wednesday has some big big climbs...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BRAD FLIKKEMA!!!!

I couldn't find of picture of him swimming, but I did find a picture of a gay synchornized swim team.
29 and still rockin it! HA! Almost 30 buddy.