A call for help

I've been dealing with something all alone, and I've decided it's time for me to see if I have any experts that choose to read this blog.

You see, I've been occupied by something, distracted by its struggle-causing demeanor and poor attitude. I've been led astray by its behavior and how it always needs to be the center of attention. That's why I have not gotten around to posting anything here. I'm not one to put blame on others, but really, my failures to press the submit button in the past couple of weeks are entirely at fault of this devilish Monsanto-evil type creature that invades our world and pulls at the core of our development as a society. We MUST do something about this, and recently I've taken it upon myself to do something heroic: to save the world all on my lonesome like Jack Bauer (side note, 24 is returning to Fox, and that's exciting news). All this world saving led to lack of blogging and a, if I have to admit, massive failure to defend our world against takeover. That's why I'm asking you - blog universe- to help me in my defense. Gone is the Jack Bauer way of life, traded in for teamwork and strategy. I'm putting together a team: Italian Job, Ocean's 11, and Fast and the Furious style.

Here's where you come in.

I need to build my team. Our enemy? COTTONWOOD TREES. All of them. Our mission? Remove every single cottonwood tree from Washington. Fine, Western Washington.  We move quickly, we attack furiously, and we execute our plan. There will be no hellish topiaries prowling around, ready to urinate their fluffy attack missiles all over the ground, cars, and into unsuspecting cyclist's nasal cavities leading to approximately one month of allergies.

You know how they're such cool trees because they make it look like it's snowing? OMG fun! Well I'll counter that with a description of an animal. I'm sure you're familiar with the movie Monsters Inc. This movie is excellent, and I would like to see Monsters University this summer. In Monsters Inc, the heroes get banned to a snowy, desolate, barren environment. I think it was Ohio. When they are there, they meet a snow monster.

It pretends to be all cute and nice and fluffy:

But what you DON'T see in the movie is hidden in the deleted scenes. This dratsab (spell it backwards) is being nice to Wazowski and Sullivan because he is starving and wants to eat them. Let me ruin the movie for you:

Yeah, I dare you to call Cottonwood trees nice and cute and fluffy now.

Here's how we're going to do it. We work as a team and eliminate the threat. Since I can't be Jack Bauer any more, I'll be Brad Pitt from Ocean's 11. I'll be Jason Statham in The Italian Job. And I'll be a mixture of Ludacris, Paul Walker, Tyrese, and the Rock in Fast and the Furious.

That leaves several positions available for application.

I need:

One "climb the tree person"- You climb the tree and whisper rude, hurtful thoughts into its newest and youngest buds. Everyone knows that the best way to take down a 40ft tree is to start causing some internal conflict. You will be the puppet master. You also will attach the rope that is attached to....

The "Muscle"- You mostly kick the tree, letting it know how you feel about it. Also, the rope is tied around your waist like a belt. You run in one direction (the band) (kidding) (I don't know any of their songs) (I think one of them dated Taylor Swift) and pull the tree from its roots. 

This is a fascinating analysis of life

The "Brains"- Someone needs to plan things. I mean, I've already planned it. But you plan with Google Maps, locate the big trees, hack into schematics and mainframes, change the traffic lights around, disable gate alarms on fancy Cottonwood sanctuaries, make jokes that you laugh hysterically at but no one else does except for the girl who secretly is into you but you'll probably never make an attempt at because you think she is into The Muscle. You are also very stylish and maybe have a rap career outside of this adventure:

The "Getaway"- Have you ever driven down Main street with a 48 ft tree attached to your Muscle who is holding onto your bumper wearing roller skates? You maybe have the coolest/most important job on the team. You get to dispose of the Cottonwood wherever you so choose. As long as the Brain approves.

The "new, vouched for arrival"- You're that member of the team that shows up as a last minute replacement for the person who decided they weren't interested in committing mass allergen tree-removal type "crimes". Are you actually a good person? Or are you a member of the C.T.S.A? (The Cottonwood Tree Survival Allegiance). One way or another, I'll be watching you, because I really don't trust you.

And me? I already described my fused characters. I'm the brains, muscle, looks, comedic relief, and backbone of the team. Duh.

Let's do this. It's time for us to save the world.

Let me know which position you would like to apply for.

Tweet

Tour of the Gila in its entirety

Well, I raced at the Tour of Gila.

First, an important distinction. A gila monster is not the crazy huge thing that you see at the zoo. Those are called Komodo dragons.

Gila Monster

Komodo Dragon

Thanks to whatever deity you believe in that the final stage is not called the Komodo Dragon stage.

Gila is a five-day monsoon of bike racing in the middle of the dessert. We even race on Sundae! There were no blizzards, but certainly a few cones thrown in there. It’s funny because dessert is not a desert. But Silver City is.

The Hagens Berman Cycling team ate 10 dozen eggs in six days. 

Alan Schmitz rode as hard as he could three days in a row.

Doug Sumi got us hooked on dominoes.

In El Paso I had four burritos for dinner. I watched the lady make the tortillas so I had to get another. Three times.

Chile peppers are good.

Stage one is 80 miles of flat followed by 15 miles of climbing. Something like that. To me, it seemed like 80 miles of climbing at the end of the stage. I lost around seven minutes in ten k. Luckily I had no dreams of fame on the Mogollon so I made sure I used all of my energy helping Hornyfest, Sticky Stuey and Utah-Chris start the climb in proper positioning.

Stage two is short, only 75 miles. There are three climbs that in theory should thin the field out, but an early break made sure that we did not gas the climbs too hard. The last 10k of the race is highway-wide descending leading into a corner onto narrow roads in the last 1k. So, in general strategic brilliance, we decided that getting me to that corner as far forward as possible would be the best option. Every other team also had this plan, so it was mildly hectic. Luckily I have a Czech teammate (Staz) who seems to enjoy the positioning game. Staz went into the corner third wheel, and I was preparing to go into it fourth. Falling into the category of things ALMOST going perfectly, one of the Kenda lead out guys was ran into and crashed, careening into my wheels. I chose to brake instead of maybe pushing through his body with my wheel, and with that lost too many spots to contest the sprint. Continuing with the tragedy, I put TOO MUCH salsa on my rice bowl and got a small heartburn.

Stage three involves pedaling time trial bikes, which as of lately I’ve become a big fan of. What I’ve never done is a 37minute time trial at 7,000 feet of elevation. I’ve had lots of practice this year with twenty-minute time trials (Icebreaker, Redlands, Walla Walla) so when I had to continue longer than twenty minutes I was quite confused in the body region. I had a decent enough ride, but I for sure know that I can do more on the time trial bike and will work on making my mind crazier for the next one. Also I found out at the finish line that I had ridden on the wrong side of the cones for the majority of the final 5k. As I went into the finish line where the cars were supposed to go, I did an awesome in the bars SHARP swerve to get into the fenced finish corridor. That was the highlight of my time trial. Also the taco truck burrito that I consumed was quite nice as well.

General bad-assery

Stage four was the criterium. Normally I get quite excited for these criterium contests and Saturday was no difference. We all lined up to race, they did the call-ups, and then announced over the PA that there was an “immediate safety threat and we needed to roll a lap immediately”. So everyone got on their bikes, confused, and rode a lap slowly. We got back to the line and were told that our race was delayed “at least twenty minutes” and to “go away”. So we went back to our van and waited. Turns out that there was a bomb threat in the form of a suitcase left outside of a Goodwill donation bin. We then raced, because it was a suitcase left outside of a Goodwill donation bin. It is truly a bummer that situations like those exist. It’s obviously at a heightened awareness now in the States, but bomb threats happen all the time in other parts of the world. Our world has changed because of Boston, but that doesn’t mean that THE world has changed. I think a lot of people’s perspectives were probably transformed when there was even that possibility in our “perfect” world at a bike race. We then raced and I was ON IT for about one hour. The dreadful news is that this race was an hour and a half. I finished the crit unbelievably busted up: way more tired than any other stage, way hungrier than any stage, and way more uncomfortable than any stage. Odd. It was not bomb.com.

I think I touched the swords in this trinket shop and was cursed by the gypsy working there the day of the crit

 Stage five is the Gila Monster. This is 1000 miles with 100000 feet of elevation gain. Subtract a zero from each of those and you have the actual statistics. I knew going into it that races with “monster” in their names are not equivalent to races with “Mason Lake” in their names, so my hopes weren’t high for personal glory. However, we have this skinny dude on our team whose legs are the size of my index finger. He was all giddy for this stage. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Bro Cal. I hoped to be able to help Jon as much as possible then benefit from a century at altitude. Flatting in the first 10 miles when the field was guttered in the crosswind was not part of the plan. By the time I got a wheel change I was out of the caravan, and I knew I was in for a tough chase. I hit 62 mph going through the caravan and was losing ground on the field! I found myself in a dropped group and spent the next 60 miles debating the benefits of Cattle Guards. I got in the van in the final feed zone. Then got very hungry.

Here are some other important things from New Mexico:

I never caught a Javelina. Lame.

The Buckhorn Saloon and Opera house was awesome. We walked into the door and the two most grizzled and gnarly looking guys at the bar instantly turned around and stared us tourists down. I felt like a tough guy instantly. Then remembered I have shaved legs.

Guarding the bathroom at the Buckhorn. Also scaring the shit out of anyone, making the bathroom unneeded

Our staff works unbelievably hard. I don’t think Alan, Doug, or Burke slept at all. Burke because of his interviews and celebrity status.

Now, after three weeks on the road, I am flying home to Seattle. It is currently 80 degrees and, more importantly, sea level so I am excited. I get to hang out in Seattle for the rest of the month. I’ll be scheming.

Also, I was catching up on Parks and Rec when I got home and I saw that the most stylish guy on the show was wearing a shirt that I own. So there.

 Anyways, I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I can't put it down.

Tweet

Pre-Gila

I’m blogging without the internet, which means I’m basically an author. Of an extremely bestselling book called “Memoirs of Me”. An employee at Penguin books was able to read a copy of this book when I left an unfinished copy on a USB at a coffee shop by accident. I know, silly me. They were moved, and Barnes and Noble bought 20,000,000 copies. Soon they were sold out, but my publisher could not produce any more because there was a paper shortage due to a workers strike at the paper plant. Luckily, with my initial contract I had invested in making it Amazon Kindle friendly. Soon the internet crashed due to so many people trying to download “Memoirs of Me”, and that leads us to our current situation. Me without the internet.

Walmart Life

I’m here in Pinos Altos fighting wildlife. I am also racing the Tour of the Gila. This race has eluded my schedule for the last two years. What I mean by “eluded” is that I begged and pleaded to not be sent to Tour of Gila, where I would certainly perish in the thin air and mountainous terrain. I had heard tales of terror but there was also a small amount of grandeur that kept peeking out and calling to me. “Iannnnn. You must”. Hearing voices was almost enough of a reason to decide to want to come race at the Tour of Gila this year but there was also the tug of having an incredibly Gila-experienced Director. Burke is a celebrity here in New Mexico. I guess having won the Tour three different times and racing it a million times will do that to a guys reputation. I’m fairly sure that if he wanted, Burke would not have to buy dinner once while staying in Silver City.

So after a lot of rambling, you, the reader, have learned that I decided I wanted to race the Tour of Gila this year. I knew some background on the courses, but truly most of my knowledge of the Tour of Gila came from the movie Rat Race. There is nothing to do with bike racing in the film but they do finish their race in Silver City, New Mexico. Confusing name though, because Silver City was home of the Gold Rush and yet it is not called Gold City. If I had internet I would look a little more into the history of New Mexico and its bonkers name. Wikipedia is where I would go.

Back to wildlife. I’ve never been to this sort of desert terrain before so I’ve been looking into what sorts of creatures are running this town. The coolest, by far, is the Javelina. I know a wealth of information about this creature and I learned it in the way of the Stone Age. We’re talking pre-fire source of knowledge. I learned it in a BOOK!

Javelinas are pig-type creatures. Maybe more hog-like because they have a wire mane that flows in the wind about as poorly as a wire mane would. They are really majestic creatures that probably consume a fair amount of house cats, grizzly bears, and steaks. Their name comes from their four Javelin-like teeth of pure evil. They often are seen sharpening their teeth on various items around town: rock slabs, your mom’s Cadillac, and the bikes of anyone unfortunate enough to get dropped early on the stages of the race.

There was only one bathroom in the house. Paradise.

The Tour of the Gila is a five-day race. It marks the closing week of my April Grand Tour type activity of: The Tour of Walla Walla, Joe Martin Stage Race, and finally this bad boy. Stage one is a 92-mile race, basically flat with an evil finish climb at the end of the stage. Stage two is a shorter, 75-mile loop with 6000 feet of climbing. Stage three is the TT. Stage four is the crit, and stage five is a race called the “Gila Monster”. It is 100 something miles and uses if I’m correct, every single road in New Mexico.

Steve just doing Steve. Yolo.

This post is too long so I’ll click the fake submit button now.

Love,
Ian

Tweet

Jose Marteen days 1 2

We're here in Arkansas for bike pedaling and general adventurous times with bros in the sun.

Wait, rain.

And thunder.

Adventurous times however- those have been had.

Arkansas is full of good times. I have no outline or schedule for this post so really, what you are going to get is going to be the result of me not wanting to move from my hotel bed + three coffees this morning. I feel equivalent to the main character from the Pixar movie cars when he bails on his racing career and goes and hangs out with the hillbillies. I'm not calling my roommates David and Danny hillbillies, but I also do not really know where I was going with relating Cars to my current situation.

This is awesome

I just got out of bed and went and did some things. Came back and re-read what I had written so far. Wowwwwwww.

Before I get to the racing, do you think it would be possible to cover this distance via a jump? From railing to the top of the Jamis trailer?

Winger thinks that it's possible, honestly because he thinks that he is the fake-Canadian version of Jason Bourne. It's not possible because the distance is one inch longer than the Women's world record for standing long jump. And letsbehonest, Chris Wingfield is NOT a better jumper than the absolute best woman in the world.

Before we get into racing, here is a sign that was outside a children's playground at the finish line of stage one.

Art is very important in Fayetteville.

Thursday we did the uphill timetrial. I (Doug) took my water bottle cages off in order to achieve maximal weight savings. I forgot that I'm over 6ft tall and don't weight 112 lbs. This means that 3 grams of cages probably didn't make a difference. Not much can be said other than that I hit the watt bag really hard and finished 31st. Colby massively cranked-dat for 20th and earned himself the Best Young Rider jersey.

Important story. Colby and I went to warm up on the neutral trainers and when we got there, there was a woman already warming up for her race. Colby and I did our warmups, our races, a wheel change, a Recoverite fill-up, and then returned to the trainers to cool down. The woman was STILL THERE! I hope she crushed it, because she did at least a two hour warmup.

Friday was stage two, maybe stage one. It's a 110 mile road race with some wind, some terrible weather, and an insanely hectic finish. Rumor has it is that as we were approaching 3k to go, the race radios in the car started blaring:

"We've got cars all over the road. This is mayhem!"

Twas.

We all made it through alive. Well, mostly. Danny was in a four man break for about 70 miles. This means that as I was coasting in the pack, Danny was pedaling HARD up the road. Here is a photo-montage of his afternoon.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Massive props to Danny for making the rest of the team's day relatively simple.

Today we have another road race, and tomorrow is a good old fashion criterium.

Keep it real.

Tweet

Dat Walla Twice Nice

Lots of exciting things happened at the Tour of Walla Walla. For one, Alan Schmitz paid for four tacos at Yungapetis and in exchange for his currency, received eight tacos in return.

It's Lang! He has a big head

Lets rewind and start from the very beginning. There are many theories about where the earth came from, and since I was a Communication major I do not know about them. So we’ll move on from the beginning and focus on Thursday afternoon, when we were driving to Walla Walla. Due to some logistical troublemakings, we had to take three vehicles to Wine-land. This is not the huge warehouse off of 45^th in Seattle, but in fact a colony settled by artists in Eastern Washington.

Winger drove one car, I drove another, and Doug drove the van. Since I’m lazy, I relied on Wingding and Alan’s local knowledge to get us to Walla Walla. Which means that I was in charge of keeping up with Chris’s TDI wagon while I chugged along in the CRV. Which stands for Crane (is) Really Veryawesome. However hard I chugged a long, I’d like to point out that Doug was also going for the caravan technique. Doug was driving a sprinter van. Doug made every single one of the passes that Winger and I made. It’s tricky, like Run-DMC, to maneuver a big ol’ van at TDI speeds, but Doug got it done. This three-car caravan sticking together was a perfect start to the Tour of Walla Walla.

Stage one confused the living hell out of Danny and Staz. It was cold and windy all morning, and while David and I were giddy over the potential of having to start a fire while racing to stay warm, the Californians stressed over future hypothermia. It was 51 degrees.

Stage one was moderate, and the guys were great. A big chase by the HB cycling guys took 1:40 out of the breakaway in the final 20k. Colby and I unfortunately were not able to close the rest of it down in the finish, and we crossed the line in a group two seconds behind the breakaway riders. Important thing to know from this stage: based on my power data, the neutral rollout was the second hardest time up the climb of the race, behind only the finish.
 

Stage two had us hangin’ in a parking lot like the good old days in high school. The TT starts at Walla^2 C^2 and is an 8.1 mile romp, where going all out I was only able to do a touch over 27 mph. This was the windiest TT I think that I’ve done and I was having a good time fighting the wind while trying to stay aero. I rode a TT that I was strategically happy with and finished up the day 2^nd, only four seconds out of the stage win. After stage two, I was second on GC, 18 seconds out of the lead.
 

Credit: Darcy Miller

Clearly losing time at the line. Credit Darcy Miller

Stage three was the downtown crit. We had a pretty simple plan on paper: win the time bonus, win some primes, and win the race. We knew that if I could be up there on the time bonus and finish I’d maybe take the lead, and if not that, scoop up lots of seconds and get closer. The guys, once again, were incredible. We won the time bonus at the mid-point, and after a furious lead-out by Winger/Danny/Staz, David and I passed the breakaway rider (JesseDreams) in the last corner, and I was able to sprint for the win. With that, David sacrificed his record of “My worst place ever in the crit here is 5^th”. We rode really well together, and everyone did his job to perfection. That is not the amazing thing however. The real mind-boggling thing was the speed that Staz took David and I into the third-to-last corner. It was one of those moments where you haven’t actually cornered that hard yet and all three of us, and I’m sure the bros behind us, got a little loose in that corner.

David and I. Credit: Darcy Miller

The time bonus and the finish bonus got me 13 seconds, and going into the Queen Stage I was 5 seconds behind.

This day started out quite appropriately. I was preparing for the stage in the parking lot. Putting sunscreen on, listening to that rap music scene, and getting in the zone. My zone was suddenly a lot buzzier and more aggressive when the one and only Sam Johnson arrived with an ACTUAL power animal for me. Usually I channel imagined things, only made real to me by my imagination and strangeness. Sam brought me an ACTUAL killer bee. At first, my reaction was mixed. Why would I want to be an insect? For this stage I should be something incredibly strong and evil, like a Rhino that stepped on a lego. Something like that. Sam explained to me that there is nothing meaner than a bee. Nothing more agile than a bee. There is nothing else that's entire existence is to sting you violently. I fully jumped on the killer bee train. I became that creature and prepared to pounce.

I told you that Sam brought an actual creature for me

We were here to win, and we figured that the best way to go about doing this was for me to win the stage, get the time bonus, and hopefully win the GC. We knew that if I were to win the stage, the only way I could lose GC would be if the current race leader got 2^nd on the day.

FF’d 65 miles into the race. A break has gone and is 3:40 seconds up the road. No one is chasing. We take control of the race with five guys on the front. After ten minutes of pulling, the guys shattered the field, leaving only 35 guys left to hang on to the massive tempo they were putting out. They kept it up, each riding outside of their minds to chase the break back. HSP was the only team that helped us chase. There were only three teams represented up the road, but only one team lent us some riders. I’d like to think it’s because everyone was so destroyed by the massive tempo that my teammates were setting. The guys caught the breakaway with 4.5 K to go, and turned their “chase the break for an hour and a half” speed into a “we’re doing a full on leadout” speed. They turned it and burned it, and dropped David and I off within the last kilometer where he perfectly set me up for a 200m sprint. I won the stage, which was Goal #1. Now was the time to see who got second.

It was the race leader.

Road race finish. Credit: Darcy Miller

After 7+ hours of racing and four stages, the GC came down to one second. It is pretty easy to look back at a stage race and think about where I could’ve picked up a second or two, but that is truly irrelevant. We rode incredible as a team, and did what we set out to do. I’m usually pretty anti-GoPro videos in races, but this is one weekend where I wish I had one on my bike. I got to witness some incredible riding and winning two stages to back up that riding was the least that I could do.

Also, I ate a pumpkin and squash curry for dinner on Saturday night. It was really good.

From,

Ian

Tweet

Get Rich Schemes Number- Back In Business

It's been awhile since I've had to resort to brilliant ideas in exchange for financial sustenance. Butttttt

These sort of things are expensive. Other examples of expensive things are groceries, gas, shirts with collars, bike tubes and almond butter. You may remember that I have a job now, which is awesome. But it turns out that in order to live a lucrative lifestyle without having a real job you have to reach into the intelligent recesses of your brain and plan oodles of inventions and creations that will positively change the lives of millions of people and in exhange, bring oodles of currency into your kitchen. Wallet.

So with that, I've been thinking of many new ideas that I guarantee you will like and will want to invest in immediately. In fact, let's just take my word on it and you can invest right now before learning about these plans.

Here we go.

1- Razor blade gloves.

I'm lazy, you're lazy, and Danny Heeley is lazy. Shaving is time-consuming and annoying. Who wants to spend such a long time shaving their legs or face or back or head or eyebrows or lower back or armpits? If you answered no one, you're correct. That's the thing about shaving- you commit to it, but then half way through you're emotionally over it. Then you are left with the decision: do you do a hack job for the rest of your process, do you rush shave and miss spots, or do you waste your entire afternoon/sanity finishing the shaving ordeal?

Well my friends, none of the above. I am more than pleased to present my newest invention. These are soft, delightful gloves made of velour or angel hair that you wear while shaving. There are razor blades on each of the fingers. Now you can shave five times faster and with much more dexterity than you have with a massive plastic attachment razor.

I'm not talking about Freddy Kreuger hands, but simply cartridge razor blades that are attached to wonderfully comfortable gloves. Now you can shave safely and efficiently. You are welcome hairless-America.

2- No-nose Winose

That is a brilliant product name, I promise. Once you hear about it you'll agree. It's fun, a play on words, and is super catchy. Swag surfin.

No-nose Winose is a product for people who want to look refined while getting that last drop of wine from their glass. Everyone who knows anything about wine and life in general knows that the older the wine gets the better it is, so I can't stress enough the deliciousness of the last drop in the glass. It is the oldest so it is the wisest.

However, it is impossible to get that last bit without going bottoms up on the wine glass and shoving your face into it like you're some sloppy pig in a trough trying to get at the last bit of compost. Face it world, this is refined wine drinking- you're not throwing back a 4-Loko and you're not drinking a milkshake.

I introduce you to No-nose Winose: A specially produced wine glass that has a cut out for the bridge of your nose, enabling you to tilt the glass at less of an angle to get the last drop. Instead of pouring it on yourself like a bucket of Gatorade after winning the championship game, you can now classily consume that Pinot-No-Nose.

I mean, look at this animal:

It's pretty much the same thing:

3- Paninian's

This is my second restaurant that I'll be opening, behind "Wrap Music".

I will serve paninis only, and they will be amazing.


With regards,

Ian

ps: I'm at the Tour of Walla Walla right now. It's raining and windy. Danny and Staz are sad because it's sunny in California.

Tweet

Redlands day four

I went from posting day-of stage to finishing up four days late. That's because I JUST finished Sunset loop. I was determined to cross that line so I kept riding.

The real reason for my absence is I've been feeling similar to what I imagine those who live in sarcophagusi (plural of sarcophagus, duh) feel like. Immediately after finishing up Sunset, I ate a really disgusting amount of food with Staz. We did not want to waste it, so we ate it. Sort of like how when after lions are done with their jackalopes, birds come and pick apart the remains. Staz was like one of those birds. I was more refined and used a fork.

Then, with food in the bellies, we got in the van to head North. By we, I mean Alan, David, Winger, Staz, and myself. We then proceeded to drive 22 hours until arriving in Seattle. I slept a total of zero minutes. It's a curse: moving things + me sleeping does not equal success. The absolutely amazing part is I predicted to the minute what time we would arrive back in Seattle from the southernmost part of Oregon. The second most amazing thing is the way that Winger managed to sleep in the car. The third, least amazing thing, is that David drove almost the entire way. Wacky.

Midnight snack at In-n-out. I got water.

I just realized I never talked about the crit either. It was good fun. I rode top 30 the whole race, trying to save as much energy as I could for Sunday's Sunset torture chamber. With about 3 laps to go I realized I was thinking like a GC rider, not a crit rider. I got embarrassed by that, but it was much too late to remedy the situation and instead of doing something gnarly to participate in a sprint, I watched from a safe distance.

Winger Studios

Highlights of Sunday (before I talk about bike racing):

- Seeing Honest Gabe. He's still as nice as ever:

- Our host's daughter had a small gathering of friends over on Saturday night. They were playing some drinking game that involved slamming things against the kitchen table and giggling. Here's a photo of the table on Sunday morning!

I couldn't get a photo of our host's expression, but this doll in my room summed it up fairly well:

20 dollar baller

- This was actually Saturday, but while at the coffee shop pre-Crit, we saw this incredible setup. Photo credit to Brad Huff because I couldn't get out of my chair to take a good photo. But you can see us enjoying life in the background:
 

 
Ok, bike racing.


Sunset Loop is a really tough day in the saddle. I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's the hardest day on a bike in the NRC circuit. You start by doing two crit laps. There are sprint points on both of these laps.

Then, you turn onto a wide boulevard to climb 1100 feet up to the circuits. As soon as you get on the circuits, it becomes a narrow and a technical descent, followed immediately by the start of the climb. On the first lap, there were KOM points AND a time bonus at the top of the climb.

What this means is that positioning going into the circuit is unbelievably important. In the years past, I've been completely gassed before even getting to the climb on the circuits because I was using so much energy staying up front. This was the thing that I was most stressed about going into the stage. However, Chris "I will position you" Stastny told me to follow him no matter what, and that he would get me to the front for the beginning of the laps.

So I followed Chris. We were near the back for the crit laps. Near the back for the majority of the climb up to the circuits. With about a K to go before the circuit, Chris started moving up through the middle, ignored the first swarm, and threaded a tiny needle with about 200 meters to go before the loop. All of a sudden, I was 4th wheel and we headed onto the loops with me in perfect position, fresh, and extremely excited. Chris is rumored to have thought to himself "chillll" as he dropped me off into the loops. Thanks Chris!


I was feeling very confident going into this stage. I had been climbing with the top 15 guys at Beaumont and knew that if I had a similar day that I would be in a position for a good result. I crested the KOM on the first lap in ~10th wheel, feeling relatively comfortable.

Unfortunately, that was as far as I made it. Each lap after, I started to fade and the climb + positioning leading into the climb became harder and harder. About half way into the race, I came off the front group of ~45.

It was just not a good day of pedaling. I did as much as I could and had full support from my teammates, but I could not capitalize.


I initially was really bummed with how things turned out. It was a huge group that sprinted at the end of the day. On paper, I should've been in that group and had a crack at the finish, but that wasn't how things turned out. Looking back on Redlands from the past, I've gradually improved each year. I lasted way longer in the front group than I had in the past, and even though I didn't last the whole race it was much better than before.

I would have loved to have some magical ride, but I am content with how the weekend went. I got my first top 10 at an NRC race and our team worked very well together. There is nothing but positives that can be taken out of our first big race of the year. I expect to see us turning some heads over the course of this season and I look forward to sharing those moments with you.

Next up for the team is the Walla Walla stage race followed by the Joe Martin Stage Race. These are races that I like. I like all races actually. Bike racing is cool.

Tweet