Out of moth balls again, AGAIN!!

I'm back, or just showing up for the first time depending how you look at it. So for the next few months I'm going to try to chronicle my life as it relates to the conclusion of my undergraduate academic career and the traveling circus known as collegiate road season.

So what is the collegiate cycling thing you may ask? Well check out the website for the ECCC here, and the blog roll from various teams and athletes in the conference here, for a quick idea. For those who are too lazy to move your right index finger, think of it as one of those things you hate while you're doing it, but miss it when you aren't.

Who am I, why should you care. I am not really sure on either counts but I can at least say, that I had the opportunity to get into the sport, after running in high school, and progress to the highest level of collegiate racing and can be worshiped as one of the few, the proud, the A racers (more on this joke some other time).

Along with the rest of the state, Happy Valley has gotten a fresh new coat of snow over the past couple days which has lead to some awesome cross country and downhill skiing for me, but unfortunately has also lead to a lot of time in trainerville with my ipod and rollers. I am never sure what qualifies as a true form of torture but I am pretty sure trainer and roller riding is only slightly behind water boarding.

At the moment, the sole motivation for training is that the team clothing order has come in, and I have a skinsuit that I need to be able to fit into in two weeks. To heck with being fast I just need to be able to squeeze into my kit before the season starts.

I'll be sure to get more things up such as actual stories of training ride shenanigans, embarrassing and awesome pictures of teammates, and the occasional rant about professors who think it is still necessary to try to teach me how to write business letters and analysis-es (yep made that up) of romantic era literature .

I thought this was spring break...

So not having any money really killed any plans for this week off of school meaning I am back home in the great white north of Pennsyltucky. While the home cooked meals and free wash are great, the sub-freezing temps and the sustained 30mph winds are not. I'll make due with my new 15,000 calorie a day diet and 4hr rides though because no matter the weather it is still better than eating ramen noodles and studying thermo.

And I'm the one with the problem...

So this weekend was the self spawned drinking holiday down here known as State Patty's day. It all started 3 years ago when the university scheduled spring break over Saint Patrick's day to try to avoid the drunken debauchery of a party school on a party day. It was a giant screw you to the administration that year but it has now become as commercialized as any other student created tradition here, think the "White Out", Paternoville, and THON. Now every shop in town is making shirts to sell to celebrate the occassion. I mean there were ads on the radio discussing the State Patty's day weekend! What happened to the true meaning of the day, screw the man lets get wasted? Anyways I have no problem with the occasional drink or twelve but I guess I don't get the reasoning behind the drink yourself to sleep Friday night, wake up for Kegs 'n Eggs at 8am and then continue drinking the green beverage of choice until it runs dry or you hit the ground. At some point the beer just tastes like water only it hurts a whole hell of alot more the next day, ask my roommate. I left for a ride at 10am and town was already nuts, I came back 6hrs later and it looked like a football weekend, atleast I know why the bars want to keep the holiday alive.... Road season starts next weekend which means I will finally have a better excuse than working out and the never ending pile of school work as to why I am not wearing shamrock boxers over my jeans and the obligatory giant hat.

Some things never get old

Now I am not sure if my roommates and I are just acting like 3rd graders or if this is actually entertaining but thanks to a few women in our lives our fridge has been covered in various pictures. We have recently found that the dry erase marker previously used to leave inappropriate remarks for each other works incredibly well on said pictures. Now depending who is the last to leave the apartment, somebody's girlfriend gets a beard, another person get a set of bunny ears and the like... its like the year books of yesteryear all over again! But in this case its erasable so the fun never ends! As the world seems to keep spinning outside of Happy Valley and my drawing on my roommates faces, I guess one of the big things is the whole inauguration of a new president as of late. As was expected Mr. President gave another rousing speech that had the MILLION in attendance in tears and cheering. While I am not on the Obama band wagon I am hoping that with his constant message of Change that some of the big goals of his do get accomplished so at the end of his term the country isn't running him and his family out of Washington like W. and company. On that note I will voice my advocacy for climate change. I am sick of not seeing the mercury get over 20 degrees down here.

Semi-annual update

So I guess I have this webpage/blog thing that I should probably keep updated. In a nut shell here was the past 8 months, raced, worked, went to school, and am currently in the calm before finals week. So I guess since this is supposed to be more about my extracurricular and not school, I got my cat II upgrade at the end of road season. I am now considered an "Elite Amature". That means I can now race in some of the biggest races around with some of the most talented athletes on this side of the country. I am also racing for a new team this coming summer, it will be known as warrenadventures.com/Jamestown Cycle Shop p/b Kwikfill. Nate is tagging along with me on the new team too which means another summer of Boy Wonder and I trying to raise some hell and have fun doing it. Alright thats it, since this might end up linked to warrenadventures.com so I promise to keep it updated more regularly.

Bonking in Boston/ Blue White preview

So this weekend was the Beanpot in Boston. Saturday was the TTT and circuit race. Because we were short on people I got thrown into the TTT while having not done one all year. It was cold and raining and I didn't get a good enough warm up in so I got dropped like a bad habit not even halfway through. The Luke and Gleaves tore it up and still snagged us a win. In what would later turn out to be the major bright spot of the B team this weekend. By the afternoon the sun had come out and it was more July than May as everyone was laying around with shirt sleeves and shorts rolled up working on the tan and cleaning bikes. The circuit race went off and it was going great until about halfway through the first lap when the race crossed a set of railroad tracks. I kicked one of my two bottles of of its cage going over the tracks and it happened to be the one with the electrolyte replenishing beverage of choice in it leaving me a single bottle of water and some gels for the next 50mi. I was all over the front of the race for the first three laps but going into the final lap I could feel it coming and there wasn't anything I could do about it. No bottles left and cotton mouth so bad I couldn't even get the last gel down. Last time up the hill the group jammed it and I hit the eject button, not really by choice though. After the race someone made a dumb decision and we ended up stopping to eat at some shady pizza place outside of Boston. I stuffed my face hoping to get some calories but just ended up getting sick from all the grease. The crit Sunday was super technical and it started to rain for our race so it was slick. After getting bounced to the back of the pack by some guys sliding through corners I was left to hold on for dear life as gaps kept opening as more people kept falling. Ended up finally finding a gap I couldn't close and it was game over. Popular opinion is I need to be more aggressive in crits but I don't really have much body mass to throw around and usually end being the one getting punted. Not going to UVM this weekend so I will be in town for the Blue/White football game/weekend. Should be a good time actually spending a weekend with friends who I haven't seen in months( see: runners) Hopefully this year we won't have a repeat of the Sunday ride to Altoona and back but I would not be opposed to another 8hr day in the saddle and some 100+ odd miles on dirt roads, tractor paths, and rail to trails.

Dodged a bullet, kind of

Well no racing this weekend as the academic ass whooping carried through the weekend and on into this week. I spent the weekend trying to study for this O-chem test from hell so that I don't fail out of school. I THINK I managed to do that, its going to depend on where our professor wants to draw the grade lines as but if history is a good indicator I am safe for now. Its kind of like in every good war movie where the one guy gets shot and isn't killed just severely wounded...I am that guy waiting for someone to drag me to safety before the final puts me out of my misery. Still have another three test this week, which is unfortunate because none of them terrify me and those are the ones that always sneak up on you and land you in summer school.

Forgot about the blog

So its been about a month and I haven't even looked at this thing. Quite a bit has happened in the past few weeks. With spring break and some more racing all going on. In a nut shell, Philly was crazy with the monsoon weather Saturday and a huge crash in the circuit race Sunday. Rode alright and kept the rubber side down. Spring break was uneventful. I needed some R&R after a long week of class and tests so I was back in E-town for the week. Not much riding happened but theres not much you can do with 3ft of snow on the ground. Pittsburgh was the next weekend. Got food poisoning Friday night eating some funky seafood salad so I spent the night and Saturday morning in a rather unpleasant state. No racing for me Saturday. The crit Sunday sucked as I still didn't feel great. Took a flyer with 3 to go only to get caught crossing the line for the bell lap. This past weekend was the big show down here in Happy Valley. The Saturday road race was super hard and after getting beat on by some pro mountain biker and dropped like I bad habit, I managed to finish 7th. I didn't eat enough during the race or over the night so the crit was a disaster as I was still blown from the efforts on Saturday. The guys cleaned house as a team but we need more women riders because thats where we came up short. If any of you folks out there happen to have a few daughters, please get them on bikes then please send them down here to ride...err I mean go to school. This weekend is in West Point but because of academic reasons I will be staying back in St. College trying to get ready for the four exams I have the following week. Guess thats about it for now. The weather is nice today so I will be going for a ride after class then going to the Three Days Grace/Breaking Benjamin concert tonight at the BJC. Hopefully I don't hurt myself crowd surfing...

Rutger's Race Report

So the first weekend of the ECCC road season is in the books. I guess overall my impression is that we are in good shape as a team considering we took second in the omnium while still missing the majority of our stud A guys(Rodney Santiago, Jim Camut, Clayton Barrows all had prior obligations). The freshmen and new members of the team really helped carry the weekend with sophomore D rider Jordan Thompson picking up his first win in his first race in the Crit and then a third the next day in the circuit race. Freshman wonderchild, Sean Melcher, pronounced mel-Ker, Held his own in the A crit Saturday after blowing some spokes out of his rear wheel in the opening laps and having to get back into the pack, then taking down the field sprint behind a break and placing 5th in the road race Sunday. In my races it was a little bit of a different story. Those of us racing B's seem to not be on the same page tactically sometimes which in a field of 70 riders leads to big problems. I will be the first to admit I am not in great or maybe even good shape as of right now so the majority of both days for me was playing the whooping boy and closing down breaks and trying to keep our more fit kids fresh for the finish. The crit Saturday was pretty crazy as 65 riders were in the field. The course was pretty bland except for the fact that half of it was on the equivalent of a cart path that was about 4 bike lengths wide and a killer 120 degree off camber turn at the bottom of the course about 250m from the finish line. Granted it is early in the year so no one is exactly super sharp on their handling skills but that was as scared as I have been in a group in a long time. Missed a big crash that split the field and took down a bunch of kids by about a foot. I ended up finishing about mid-pack not really sprinting but just trying to save my skin for the next day. Sunday was the "circuit race" which is really just an over glorified crit. Again it was fast from the gun this time with 71 riders in the field. The best part being that they used the yellow line rule which makes moving through a field that size almost impossible. Again I spent my time at or near the front working for our two bigger boys, Ryan Smolko, and John Gleaves. The highlight of the race had to be when Ryan took a quick flyer up the road to see if he could initiate a break and I was riding on front just setting tempo and watching him ride away, this one rider from Bucknell pulls up alongside me and I look at him with this ear to ear grin just matching his pace with the field in tow. He then has a little tweak out and asks what the hell I am smiling about to which I just kind of nod up the road and mention that he might want to do something about it. This was quickly followed by a host of low and lower lights. First Ryan sees nothing is really happening so he starts to drift back to the field. So I let some other kids pull through seeing how there is no reason to try to stop my teammate coming back to the field if he is sitting up. The problem is another teammate of mine who I hadn't seen all race attacks over the top of the field bridging the 10sec gap and dragging 2 UVM and a Columbia rider with him. As soon as he gets to Ryan he gets on his wheel because he is shot, the three riders who just got the free ride then go over the top of both of them neither responds, I am not swamped in the field and 3 guys are up the road who really shouldn't be and we have no-one chasing. Eventually it comes back together but we need to iron the group thinking out amongst us...Later in the race a rider from UVM forgets how to corner and is left foot comes out going around a 90 degree right hand bend about 10 wheels from the front. The great part about it was I was 11th. He goes from inside curb to the outside grass taking me and John who was on my wheel with him. None of us actually went down but I had all sorts of bad thoughts running through my head as I saw it happen. Now I was just at the wrong end of the field with our sprinter...mmmm more work. Eventually I finally explode and leave everyone to figure it out in the sprint, that didn't work out so well as our top finisher comes across in 20 something. This up coming weekend is in Philadelphia hopefully we get something right and pick up our end of the bargain on our team.

Time Flies

So what happened to those two months that I had before road season? It's now six days until I will be in the concrete jungle known as Piscataway, New Jersey freezing before, during, and after my races. I know I am not ready for the season as my classes have lead me to the Jan Ulrich approach to pre-race training which involves eating not so good for you food and showing up ready to "race yourself into shape". With a handful of tests starting the Monday immediately following Rutgers I don't see things getting too much better in the near future. One bright spot is that THON is this weekend. For those who don't know what that is, http://www.thon.org/ will give you everything you need to know. My roommate is dancing for the Club XC team so I am spending some time up there making sure he is coherent after 48+hrs without sleep or sitting down.While I am not very involved in the workings of the event like I was last year because of my classes I still think it to be a pretty cool event and do plan on getting back to being a productive member of society next year. Guess that's it for now. I need to figure out how many stereogenic centers are present in a molecule of fluorometholone before heading back up to the BJC for a little more THON action this weekend.

D-Day t-minus 11 hours

That's right folks I have not only one final starting at 8am tomorrow but another immediately following it. Something tells me the Genetics/ Differential Equations combo isn't going to be enjoyable. I guess the up side is that I will be done and on break by noon tomorrow. The question is will I be coming back in January? . But once it's over I won't have school as a reason to not be riding. Instead it will be the two feet of snow that was puked on Northwest PA over the past weekend. Mmmmm more roller time......

Welcome to the Show...

It's 20 degrees out and there is 5 inches of snow all over everything, perfect time to not do school work and watch South Park. Instead of maybe riding rollers to get into some real base mileage or, maybe doing some school work so I don't fail out I am sitting here melting my mind. Seeing as finals are coming up and road season is right around the corner there won't be much more of this in times to come.