Life so far...

It's been a while since my last post; since life has been pretty busy. My last post I ranted about having my first crash of the year. Well as luck should have I crashed again the following week at Prospect Park in the cup series. This time I went down in the field sprint; massive pile up where about ten guys went down. I busted up another rear wheel and had bruised up jaw. Couldn't eat solid food for about week. Plus the bruises and cuts took longer than expected to heel, forcing me off the bike for about a week. I walked away relatively one guy needed a CT scan for a nasty concussion and several bike did not survive.

Even better we had senior design day here at Stevens. So that took a few all nighters and countless cups of coffee to have a well received project. I was happy as my group won the website competition at the ASME competition at Drexel a few weeks ago. So naturally my training took a back seat to school. As far as racing goes, yesterday I drove down to Marlton, NJ to to BLP Grand Prix crit to try to race myself back in shape. The best part was this is where the NJ state crit championships are held, so it gives me a chance to preview the course a few times before the big goal of my season this year. I nabbed a top 15, for not having raced in a month or trained seriously I'm pretty happy with that. I'm definitely not in top form, but a few weeks of training and some races coming up I should be back in top form in no time.

Graduation is a week and half away here at Stevens, post grad plans are grad school for me. So I will be back next spring in the ECCC once again wearing Stevens colors. Still unemployed for the summer, but hopefully that will change shortly as a few research positions have opened up here. So only time will tell...

So it begins again....

We are a mere 5 days away from the start of the season at Rutgers this coming weekend. As a wise masters race one put it(I can't remember his name, but I'm sure he's out there somewhere) the season always comes 20watts and 15lbs too soon. Whether we are ready for the season to start is irrelevant, the fact is the season is here. Is my form, weight, mental capacity in any way,shape, or form ready for the season. Ehhh, I really don't know. I know I have put in the saddle time on the road and trainer alike, I've put in the time in the gym, and I've done my part to help my new teammates be ready for this Saturday. Simply put I'll put my cards on the table come Saturday and see if lady form is on my side.

As far as tire decisions go; I had my heart set on the Vittoria's. But due to some unforseen purchases(thanks senior design and a frugal engineering dept) I have had to put off this purchase for another week or two. Thankfully I have set of training tires ready to go for this weekend. Since my last post I have spent my Saturday mornings training in Branchbrook Park w/ my Montclair Bikery teammates. This season with some many new riders, my coach has names me cat4/5 emperor for the team. Meaning they leadout me, I sprint, we win....well sort of. I've mainly just been trying to organize our guys and trying to coordinate training and racing together, the best part is being a 22year old kid bossing around a bunch of hapless 30-40 year olds for 3hrs on Saturday mornings. Its been the highlight of my training so far.

Being on two teams means having to do the same job again and again, so naturally I'm sorta guiding the newbies during the week at Stevens. By guiding I mean, yelling cycling related acronyms such as FTP, VO2max, and ITT during intervals and recounting tales of being dropped while hungover. Hopefully they take my sage advice to heart during the ITT on Saturday morning.

In light of training new teammates and taking a que from Senor Kyle Bruley, I present a very articulate article on proper sprinting techniques and training. The author of a very well respected blogger and BFer(I swear this dude posts every 5min) and his posts have definitely helped me develop as a sprinter and racer alike.

http://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-to-working-on-sprinting.html

On a completely unrelated note; what the hell is the deal with all this snow? Global warming, climate change, book of revelations, blah blah blah, whatever the reason is; I'm sure if some of the ECCC(eh em Joe K eh em) higher ups make some type of sacrifice to the cycling gods we can have some awesome spring weather come Saturday.

Updates and other ramblings

So, its been a while since my last post. The last post was about my prep for the State TT, well sadly I was unable to attend due to a family situation that arose the night before. Nonetheless my teammates at Montclair represented well with two riders taking wins in their respective age groups. For June I was scheduled to race a few times at the watermelon crit and prospect park. That did not happen either due to not getting paid at work for a month, so instead I focused my efforts on my training. I basically spent the entire month of June training with my teammates most days of the week. The majority of the guys on my team are masters 35+ and higher, with our coach being a 45+ racer. The benefit of this is that our Tuesday night training race turns into a balls to the wall hammerfest and our Saturday ride into a 15mile free for all. In one month I figured why my collegiate season this year went less than stellar: lack of discipline in training(school work and beer are blame). As a cat.4 my teammates expect a little more from me than most of new members, so naturally I was to improve my fitness and race awareness during my training.

Now that July is here, I finally got paid which I can race again. My first race back was last Saturday at Prospect Park. The turn out was pretty good, with almost 20 additional racers showing up the day of for the cat.4 field. The race wasn't superfast, but their was a breakaway attempt on everylap. This made for constant speed changes on a course that can take its toll after 8 laps of racing. I got myself into the last breakaway, as their was about a lap and half to go. They were already out there for a lap and had a 30second gap on the field. I figured if this was going to be the one to stick, I better try to get into it. I bridged the gap to breakaway, but it seems that move caused a panick or something in the pack as we got caught on the last lap at the top of the hill. I burned a big match to bridge the breakaway, and didn't have much gas to sprint in the end. A few riders at the end of the race told me if had used that effort to bridge the breakaway in the sprint I would have had top 5, but oh well that;s bike racing.

Next on tap for me is the Giro del Cielo in sussex county, I can't climb as well I used to but at the least it will help my fitness for the remaining races on my schedule.