Florida Report

I know it has taken me a while (I have had a busy week back), but here it is.

Florida was fun. Hot, but fun.

It started in Lakeland. My time in Lakeland consisted again, as it did in CT as a lot of Tour de France watching. I got to spend a lot of time with my mom and got to see my other siblings and my grandpa, too. It was a really good time. Here is a nice collage of a picture of me with all of them.
Near the end of the week, I took a drive up to Gainesville to visit my friend Jamie who goes to UF. That was a fun time, too. Not very eventful, just went to a couple bars. Although one was a dancing bar that was called :08 (8 Seconds). If you can't tell yet, it was a country bar. Everyone was line-dancing and it was all country music. I was very surprised to find out that there is a unique line dance for every song that they line dance to- actually pretty impressive.

After Lakeland was down to West Palm Beach and the Keys with my brother and his wife and her family. This was a lot of fun. I already talked a little bit about it. I did a lot of snorkeling and water stuff. I ended up only catching one lobster that wasn't big enough, but it turned out to be good enough for me. Ryan and Erin and her family get really serious when it comes to catching lobsters, so I think I helped the most by staying out of the way.

There were amazing sunsets every night and I think the only pictures of me down there also had a sunset in it. Here is one of them.Speaking of the sun, I actually took my shirt off for a lot of the trip. A week in the Keys with my shirt off still didn't seem to be enough to get rid of my tanlines, so I think it is just hopeless to try.

Overall, I had a great trip in all three places I visited. Thanks to all of my hosts for great times. I am very relieved to be back, though. A month of doing nothing started to make me feel like a bum. Plus I was without a bike for two weeks. So now I am back and working and riding. Back to the usual grind.

And just to mention riding...I rode the super sketchy section of the local loop last night with 7 eggs in my back pocket- in the dark. I went down once, but didn't land on my back, so the eggs were fine and made it all the way from Steve's to my place and were just the right temperature to make pasta.

July Wrap-Up

Due to nine days off and lots of MTB riding, in CT and running in Florida, July turned out being a pretty light month.

I did a total of 338 miles, 2/3 being on the road bike. I did 3 races and was humbled in all of them. I've been running the past week in order to keep up the fitness until I can get back on my bike.

August will be a better month, since I will not be racing until the end. This will be my last chance to get intense training in before collegiate season starts.

I'll be back on the bike on Monday.

Florida

Well, I have a lot of disaster control to do with blogging when I get back, but for now I will just say that I am in the Keys and having a lot of fun. Lots of snorkeling- yes I have been getting in the water (and taking my shirt off). Today was the first day of lobster mini season, so we went snorkeling for lobsters today. I caught one, but it was too small, but overall, we came home with 35 lobster on the day.

I have been running here, since I don't have a bike. I don't really like running. And it is incredibly hot here even at 7 am. So I really miss my bike. I miss it a lot. That is all.

Tales of Connecticut

So, now I am in Florida, but I was in Connecticut with Mike. That was a really good time. It all started with packing up my bike. You can see how many pieces the bike has to be in to ship it.

As I wrote about in other posts, we raced in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York the first weekend I was there and this past weekend we raced at Mount Snow in Vermont. They were both great weekends and both places had very cool (though hard) MTB trails, especially Mt. Snow. In Vermont, we stayed at the Nordic Hills Lodge and I would recommend this place to anybody because it was an awesome place. The room smelled a little funky, but they had free real breakfast every morning and they even got up early to get us breakfast so we could get to our races on time.Besides racing, my time consisted a lot of watching the Tour de France and The Office while Mike was at work during the week. Then we also rode a fair amount and just hung out. The picture below is where I slept while I was there (it is the area behind the closet- a place only someone as short as me could sleep in).

Overall, it was a wonderful trip and I had a lot of fun hanging out with Mike and it was a great trip. Now I am in Florida until the beginning of August. I am taking the next few days off from any excersize. Since I don't have a bike down here, I am going to start running once I get down to the Keys with my brother. Then I am going to do some intense training in the first half of August and ease off before collegiate season starts.

USAC MTB Nationals

I had a great time in CT with Mike, and I will write a little on that probably tomorrow, but here I will talk about my humbling experience at Nationals.

So, going into it, with good results in Michigan, I though for sure I could get a top-ten result and was seriously hoping to be on the podium- I was quite mistaken. After lots of trying to diagnose my problem, I am pretty sure I just don't have the fitness necessary to climb over 1500 feet per lap for three laps.

On Staurday, we did three laps in the XC event. It was a lot of climbing and it seemed like I was just going backwards. I was able to catch a lot of people whenever we started going downhill, because the downhill was really technical and a lot of fun, but it was not enough to make up the almost 20 minutes I lost to the winner of my class, earning me 23rd out of 35 guys.
Sunday was the Short Track event. I was really hoping to do well, because I am fairly good at pushing really hard, and there wasn't really any uphill in the course, just a couple bumps. For the first 7 minutes of the race, I was hanging out in the top 5. Then it just started getting harder and harder and some guys passed me here and there. There were points that my vision started going blurry because I was so in the red zone, but when they told us we only had three laps to go, I just pushed my body to keep going for 6 more minutes. I ended up getting 14 out 24, half a lap down on the winner. It was a slightly better result than Saturday and I was fairly happy with the result.

Mike ended up doing really well in his XC race, getting 18th out of 66 semi-pro racers, so congrats Mike. He wasn't as happy with his Short Track race, getting 30th out of 39, perhaps it was a little troublesome having a day off between the XC and STXC race.

In addition, at Windham Mtn. and at Nationals, Mike and I hung out a decent amount with some of the Bell's team, Joe and Erin, so it was cool getting to know them. Joe did really well in the semi-pro STXC, getting 8th out of 39 racers, so congrats to Joe.
It was also great meeting Mike's racing friend from last year, Nathan Pepin and his family. Thanks to them for the cheers and water bottle support at Windham Mtn and at Nationals.

Anyway, I learned a lot about myself this weekend, namely I am not as fast as I thought I was and I have a lot of work to do for the fall collegiate season and for next year for revenge at Nationals.

UConn Trails

Yesterday, Mike and I rode the trails near the University of Connecticut. I love those trails. We rode them last year and it was the most confident I had ever been on a bike. Riding them again made me feel pretty good.

These trails are filled with rock gardens and tough downhills that made my arms sore to the point where I had trouble lifting things later. It would have been really cool if I had been able to get the research position out here at UConn, because then I would have been riding these and other great trails around here all summer. Oh well, it is awesome right now.

This weekend is MTB Nationals at Mount Snow, Vermont. I am going to try my best to get a higher placing this weekend in the cross country race, and I feel really good about my chances in the short track race on Sunday because my sprinting ability- I will just have to maintain it for 25 minutes.

We're not in Kansas anymore

So on Saturday, Mike and I went to the Catskills in NY to race a Nationals Series MTB race. I learned a lot in the race.
1. People don't care about the hole shot out here- I got it with ease and was feeling good as I stayed away for about 5 minutes, until everyone started passing me.
2. Everyone started passing me because when the race promoters say you climb 1500 feet per lap, they mean you do it all at once. The last race I did (in Michigan) probably only had about 200 feet of climbing at most.
3. When you get the top and people say "It's all downhill from here," they don't mean it is easier, just faster. It actually turned out being just as hard if not harder going downhill. My hands have never hurt so bad.
4. I am not very good at sustained climbs- the short steep ones like what we have in MI seem to work better for me.
5. Being good in Michigan doesn't mean anything at a Nationals level race.
6. The picture to the right is how you know who is passing you (or for others, who you are passing.


So, this race was a very good learning experience for me. The course was very fun and exciting and it was really fun to race at such a big event. I am glad I was able to do this race because everyone says this course is very similar to Mount Snow, which is where Nationals are next week, so some valuable lessons that will help next week are quite welcome.


I ended up getting 9th place out of 15 in my class. Mike ended up not so good, but only because he flatted three times on his last lap. He says he was in the top fifteen when he got his first flat.
Overall- a very good time.