Here comes the new year!

wow. sorry about the lack of posts. i've been pretty busy and my computer has been out of commission for quite some time.

any ways.... life is good. cyclo cross season has come and gone (for me at least. some of the boys are still going strong over in europe right now to prepare for words. good luck to brady, toast, and the rest of the crew.) and i must say it was tons of fun. this was probably my most enjoyable cross season (probably due to my lack of racing). big thanks to ben turner and the rest of the staff for all their hard work.

training is great. thus far, this has probably been my best off season ever. i've lost weight, gained muscle, and best of all i am super motivated for the next season's racing with VC La Pomme. i can hardly wait to tear it up (or at least not get too torn up) in France. my french is coming along ok. not great but, ok. it's strange to think that the new season is just around the corner. it feels like i've hardly been home at all this off season. in fact, i just got "home" today from an 8 day trip to Hawaii with the family. pretty warm down in that part of the world right now, with some great roads that make riding a bike a blast. if you ever go be sure to check out "swimming with manta rays." it was easily the most incredible thing i have done in a long time.

i sure your sick of my run on sentences and lack of punctuation so i'll let you go.

happy holidays to you and your's,

alex

Just to let you know.....

Left hand canyon is impossible to ride right now. The road is under a full foot of snow. Me and Julian found that out the hard way. On the plus side Peak to Peak is clear and sunny!

off season

Well the off season has come and gone. Tour of Guatemala never hapened so i took a trip down to Texas to pick up KT from her euro adventure and we both made the voyage down to New Orleans for Voodoo fest. good times were had by all. Since our return training for next year has been in full swing. With tHe exception of a breef trip to NJ for some cyclocross action i have been on the "rabobank" program by puttin in the long hours out on the road & in the gym w/ their newest team member Tejay.

basicallY, life is good.

happy turkey day!

Back in the saddle

At the time of my last entry (2 weeks ago?) the much anticipated off season was in full swing. My glorious time off has been cut short. A couple of random calls from random guys and some random calls from some very important guys (some of these calls were received at 3am thanks to the time change!) has put me in position to race the Tour of Guatemala (13stages at the end of October in the mountains of Guatemala ) . I still do not know what to think about this race. On one hand it is an amazing opportunity to race a high quality race in a part of the world I have never seen before. However, on the other hand, I am both mentally and, to a certain extent, physically submerged in a thick off season haze. Not to mention I had some cool events planned with KT for those weeks. I guess there is not much I can do about it other than keep my head up, mouth shut, and up the training hours.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is: Is there any one out there that feels like doing 4hr rides with me for the next week?

alex

Wild adventures

(this is one day's worth of tickets)
I am soooo sick of trains. There, I said it. Over the past 2 weeks I have spent close to a total of 48hrs on trains or banging my head against the wall in the train stations. Oh well, at least I will have plenty of practice for next year. It is definitly and easier pill to swallow when traveling with KT but asside from the usuall fun and games the past two days have been super stressful. Both days have started at roughly 4:30am and have gone none stop untill 11pm. On the plus side KT managed to find a really cool little backpackers dorm, were we crashed last night and, a nice little resturant down the street. I on the other hand have not been able to get out of my own way. Awkward train tickets and a 5am run to the airport the day BEFORE my filight have me counting the hours till I can go home and sleep till noon.

Anyway, Nice is Nice and France is.... well... still France. In my opinion, I guess the only way to describe France is with KT's initial words after deboarding the train, "huh.... Why does everyone here think they're so cool?"

carrots and beets,
alex

Spain....

.....Just got hot.

Winding down

The season is over. It feel nice to be done for a while but mentally I am not quite ready to hang up the cleats. My form is really good right now and mentally I am strong as an ox. Unfortunutly there are no more races for me to do over here so I'll be on an air plane in a few days. On the plus side KT is in Spain now and we are having the time of our lives. Off season mean that I have finally taken the opportunity to walk around Girona and play tourist for the last couple of days and I even accepted the invitation of a few new foreign freinds to go check out the disco tecs! Both me an KT were blown away at the crazyness of the Spanish party life style. I don't know how they do it here! They called us panzy Americans when we said we were ready to go home at 2am. Then they said we were whiny Americans when we said we were going home to go to sleep at 5am! They could not understand why we did not want to stay for breakfast! It was amazingly fun but I can not imagine my self doing that again for a very loooong time. The Spanish bells are chiming 11pm and last night did not offer much sleep so it is time for bed. We need our rest because tomorrow is going to be a full day on the beach.

alex

Still in France

This time last week I figured (in fact I was 100% positive) I would be heading back to Girona at about this time and back home to Colorado shortly there after. I guess I was wrong. It all started last Thursday when the team traveled out to the Tour du Gévaudan. A long 4-5 hour drive fallowed by a spectacular ride through the rolling hills of France brought me to the race hotel where I was promptly told that I would not be racing the next day. Or any other day for that matter because I still had a professional license and my participation in an armature event was strictly prohibited. Oh well, shit happens no big deal, right? I was told I had a train ticked for the next morning. No big deal, right? Ha!

My Friday started at 5am. It was supposed to start at ten till 5 but thanks to Kiki's supreme race care driving skills and her mastery of the French roads my P.O.S. alarm clocks malfunction made little difference in my day. Thanks Kiki. After making my first connection successfully I was told at my second connection that bikes were impossible and highly illegal to transport on certain types of trains (apparently this train was one of those types) and that if I wanted to continue my journey home I would have to leave my $7,000 at the train station and proceed. Ha! After 4 hours of confusion (I do not speak French. I am sorry, I really am and I am trying to learn. But, old fat man with the gold chain around you neck (you know who you are) FUCK YOU!) and several attempts to board various other trains I was finally able to continue to a near by town. After that it was all about patience and timing. Patience being the key word. After 5-6 trains (I seem to have lost count) and hours of waiting in various train stations I arrived home at 7pm in the after noon. 13hrs to do a simple 3hr trip. Oh well, could have been worse.

Oh yeah, a shout out goes to my Canadian back packing friends I meet at the station in Marseille: Hey guys thanks for the Leffe and enjoy Portugal!

VC La Pomme....

.... Has been an interesting experience so far. Not much to say about the team so far other than it has been a constant learning experience. So far all the guy I have meet have been super cool (especialy Dan Martin who has taken it uppon him self to make me proficcient in the french culture in only 2days) and a few even speek decent english! I feel like and idiot because I am IN France and the French people speek better English than I speek French. Oh well, I'm learning quickly.

I guess one thing has happened so far.... we killed an afternoon trying to install a new stove. Not sure how I always get suckered into these foreign home improvement jobs but I'm starting to think I should start putting them on my resume.

Ok, I'm going to go make sure the Frenchies don't stick their fingers in the socket,

alex

For those of you who were wondering.....

..... Spain is wonderful

Rollin'

Life in general is just kind of rollin' along at the moment. Plouay (my first Protour race) went pretty damn well. To my supprise I was able to do some decent attacking early and actually spent some time off the front solo! I was even bitterly close to making the main break away (not that I would have been able to keep up with them after 80km anyways). In all the experience was amazing and I am glad I got such an increddible opportunity to do such a prestigious (if you do not think it is prestigious then come hang out in the fully packed grandstands that we finished in or battle through crowds that were 6 people deep on each hill and try and just try and tell me it is not a big deal) race. Thanks Slipstream.

Anyways, back to real life. Right now I am in Spain. Solo. I have never been in a foriegn country all by my sefl before and I have most definitly never had a giant dusty old Spanish apartment with crappy plumbing all to my self either. It is a bit strange to say the least. As I said earlier life is just kind of rolling along. Long hours on the bike fill most of my day and hours of walking aroud town trying to find simple things like batteries and alarm clocks usually fill my afternoons. I have managed to make a number of new friends here (like the girl whos house I flooded when I took a shower and the pipe ruptured) and my spanish is comming along nicely because of it. Although, I think my advancements in Spanish have come at the expense of my English (at least my spelling) and my desperat need to learn French seems to be going unnoticed at the moment. Whoops.

Other than that, not much else to say. Life is good and living in Spain sure beets living in the real world.

alex

Life at the races....

The flying Dutch Man

Kiki has a pretty sweet house

France

Is tough. My legs are finally starting to come around but over here that dose not mean much. Right now I better than I have been for the whole trip but all that means is that I can hang on to the main bunch a little longer and on the rare occasion that they sit up I can go get water for the rest of the team. On the bright side: the rest of the team is starting to come around too. Kiki is an absolute power house right now and Huub Duyn (pronounced down) is the baddest bitch in town. The flying dutch man scored a sweet 4th place yesterday!

With that being said, I am late once again.

alex

kiki's casa

I pulled the plug on the last race. I'm sick for reals. It sucks. Nothing like trying to find a doctor in a counrty where you don't speak the language. Oh well, there is no better place to get better than Kiki's house (team mate of mine). His house is super cool, very suave french style, and he has the sweetest little puppy dog I think I have ever seen. The best part of all is the fact that it is not raining here and you can go fishing just behind his house!!! Hopefully, I can be better in a few days so I can race again.

Till next time,

alex

France

France is wet. Real wet. It hasn't stopped raining since we got here. The race sucked today. Correction: I sucked today. I'm half sick. The kind of sick where you still have to race but you really suck when you do. Oh well it was fun. Kinda. Not really. Anyways.... the break went pretty early and we missed it. I felt like crap so instead of sitting in and getting dropped @ 100k I chased like crazy and got dropped @ 50k. Me and Kiki road like hell to make the time cut (and we did!!!) and that was all she wrote. Everyone else finished some where in the group. Hopefully it will.

welp, time for bed.

alex

Living the life

Yesterday was one of the best days I have had in a long time. Quick list of how it went down:

-Trip to Girona's giant farmer's market. I got locked in and atm booth on the way but that did little to sour the fun.

-Road out to the Med. w/ Pete. The water was nice and warm and all the spanish ladies were letting it all hang out.

-Got a chance to chat w/ KT for the first time in a long time. I think she almost wants to be here more than I do.

-Went out on the town w/ pete's spanish girl friends and learned all sorts of dirty spanish words.

Spain

Spain is pretty rad. Way cooler than anywhere else I've been to in Europe. It feels a lot like home here and it's kinda nice because I can almost speek the language, which makes a huge difference. So far we haven't had much time to do anything other than a little ride and dinner at a sweet tapas bar. Oh and with a little bad luck I mannaged to destroy my glasses on the stairs up to the apt. Guess I'm gonna find out real fast how good my spanish is when I try to go buy a new pair/ repair the pair I have today.

Glasses = Gafas

Wish me luck.

ps- my blog update site is now in full spanish too. so spell check no longer works for my english posts. bear w/ me.

45mph

More info later

YEAH!!!

Mike Friedman takes the win for today!!! I think for today this should be an exclamation mart rather than a question mark.

As for my lame butt I raced my ass off yet just managed to miss the winning break. I also had my arm semi amputated and jacked my back up really bad. Oh well, I can sleep easy knowing that I am the golden child. Every stage race I have done with the team we have won a stage (Gila, Beauce, 'Toona). Hopefully tomorrow I will be more than a lucky charm.

CONGRATS MIKE!!!

Yada Yada

Man the ratio of assholes to non assholes in Pittsburgh is way off from most of the places in the country. I can not tell you how many people have been more that willing to offer their negative opinions about my profession while speeding by me on the road. If your one of the 28 people (yeah, I counted today) who yelled at me on the road today all I have to say is fuck you. Why don’t YOU get on the side walk or go to hell. And to the weird, smelly, gay guy that tried really hard to give me and Taylor directions from the Starbucks to the Amerisuits : Thanks man, we made it home

Angry motorists aside, Pittsburgh has not been too bad. A little Hibachi, and a baseball game have served well to spruce things up. The post game fireworks were some of the best I have ever seen in my entire life. I will give a high five to that. And a big high five to the Houston Astros for whipping the Pittsburgh Pirates. Way to go guys!

wow

wow, we sucked @ nationals. hard core. maybe it was the crazy steep ladder/stairs me and pete had to scale 6 times a day to get to our room (yes it was fun in the cleats!) or i could have been all the toaster treats. or perhaps it was the fact that w/ our sweet argile we were super marked out there and expected to do all the work w/ only 4 guys. i did my best to make everyone cry but the best we could muster was Craig's 4th in the tt and Taylor's 5th in the crit. personally i was happy w/ the way i road and have a good feeling about Toona which is next week.

right now it's just me, pete, craig, taylor, and daimo pickin' our butts in pittsburgh for the rest of the week untill toona. we are making fast friends w/ the ladies down @ the trek shop and quest lab and we got some sweet crabs down @ joe's. i'm not gonna lie: i'm starting to crack a bit. me and pete are so cracked that we both gave eachother really fucked up (excuse my profanity) hair cuts. i look like some sort of nazi ninja and pete had the sweet short bus, sylvan learning center special kid hair cut. it was oh so crisp till he shaved it all off. now he just looks 13 years old. on the bright side we now have internet i should be able to hold off on killing pete in his sleep for a little longer.

roughest chip/seal i have ever ridden on in my life. the pick does it zero justice.

go see my roomate- peterstetina.com

NATIONALS...

Is tomorrow. We did a lap and a half of the course today. Felt pretty good even though it rained like crazy the whole time.

Wish us luck!!!

The good days of crazy hard training have come to an end. It is once again time to throw down.

Nationals here I come

I wish I was here right now!

Hoooo Raaaa!

Off to the Grand Canyon for the 4th of July! Man it is going to be sweet! Even though it is going to be hotter than hell when I am riding my bike.

Big Days

Ever since I was a little tike playing club soccer there has been one technique that out performed all the rest when it came to spiking my motivation: piss me off. Back then all it took was for some wanker mama's boy to stomp on my foot in the middle of a game to get me fired up to maximum goal scoring potential. These days it is a little more complicated. I am not really sure why (although I do have a pretty good idea) but I have been super pissed off at the world lately. This raw anger has morphed into probably the best training I have ever done in my life. Too bad I do not have any big races to unleash my beast on until nationals which is 2 whole weeks away! Oh well, who knows, there are a lot of stupid people in this world and maybe one of them will stomp on my foot again between now and nationals. There should be plenty of fuel for my fire.

Peace and love,

alex

Bad Dead Dog

Dead Dog was a bit of a bust. I had super good climbing legs considering I had been down to sea level for the month leading up to the race and there were two 10,000ft passes to cover. I made it over with the leaders with out digging too deep but fell apart on the 11mile flat run in to the finish. It was my own fault. I thought (or rather prayed) I could do a 85mile road race on 2 clif shots. Total junior move. Oh well. After that the crit sucked and the tt went even worse but I still managed a top 10 over all. Can not complain too much I guess. Big thanks to the race promoters and all the volunteers for putting on a super event!

Right now is kind of an interesting period for me. Both my body and mind are pumped up to race yet there are no races for me to do until nationals. That is two weeks away! I do not really know what I will do with my self between now and then. Hopefully I do not kill my self in training. Yet again, oh well. I seem to be saying that a lot these days. Perhaps that is a habit I should work on changing....

Thanks for checking in,

alex

The Dead Dog

Is comming up this weekend! Lets hope I can defend my crit title from last year!!!

home

it's nice to be home but right now i'd rather be on the road. hard to explain. beauce was pretty cool. the team road great. for a 4 man team we really cleaned up out there. big high five to ian for snagging a super stage win. i personally was just happy to finish my first uci 2.2 stage race.

sorry about the hack typing, but my hands are bruised from the rough roads in canada and it hurts to type.

YEAH!!!

IAN WON TODAY!!!!!

My bad

It's been a while since my last post. My bad. I have been on the road for the past few weeks. Raced CSC, Lancaster, Reading, and Now I am 2 days into Beauce. So far ok. CSC, Lancaster, Reading were ok I guess. Nothing close to great. Just tried to do as much work for the team as I could. Did not finish any of them.

Lancaster was my favorite. The course was pretty tough with some short sharp hills and some sketchy fast descending. The team adopted the buddy system. My buddy got 3 flats. I got to help him chase back from 3 flats. Oh yeah, it rained the whole time. That made it fun.

Beauce is pretty cool. The courses are really hard. I am convinced that flat ground does not exist here. The whole race is rolling up and down. The stages feel pretty long (yesterday was almost 6hrs and today was right around 5) and the roads are REALLY rough so by the end of each day my body feels super worked. Oh yeah, we started w/ only 6 guys. 2 of them dropped out. We are down to 4. Oh well, longer massages.

Speaking of massage.... it's my turn.

k by

ps. sorry about short sentences. I'm beat.

Update

Since my last post a lot has happened with out much actually happening. I'll do my best to spare ya'll from the boring stuff and just dish out the meat.

I got sick. Again. I think it was the same crap that I had after Gila it just never totally went away. I developed into a sweet ear/ sinus infection that required some doctor's assistance to remedy.

I got sick right before the Iron Horse classic. Nothing like driving in the mountains and racing @ 11,000ft with a sinus infection. Opted to do the race any ways because it was my parent's 20th wedding anniversary (they got married up there in Silverton) and my girly was up there too. So ya, race sucked (13th I think) but the trip was awesome. We all stayed at a nice little B&B and soaked in all that the bustling city of Silverton had to offer.

Anyways.... I have a good feeling about the races coming up. For me they will be the biggest/hardest/fastest/coolest races I have ever done in my life. Come Friday I leave my cocoon and fly away. I guess.

Back to the old school style

Raced yesterday and today. Yesterday was the North Boulder Crit. It was pretty sweet I guess. The legs sucked but the crowd was pretty solid and the course was as fun as always. With all the tight corners the field was down to 20 or so in no time. I made it into the group despite some gnarly stomach craps (apparently I'm on my "man period") but, started falling apart and tagged a barrier. I didn't go down but I did fall off the back and never got back on. Too bad, so sad. Today was a little better (just a little). The legs were solid and the wind made for a hard race. Pretty much dragged, what would have been the winning break, back to the rest of us shmucks. Had a faint hope of contesting the final sprint for 4th but a boxed position and some tired legs resulted in me doing the ol' cat 4 funny-man wobble to the line.

Any ways... the title; I think I am going to go back to my old school ways of training less. I'll train harder but I think more rest days and the good old cross eyed junior style of training should see me cruzin' pretty by the time CSC rolls around.

More Couch Time

The sickness has finally left my body but my has inched its way back up on the "oh shit" list. It is not really a big deal but the fact that a slight ache is back scares the hell out of me. It took me months to get over this the first time around and I think I would go insane if I had to do it again. So.... shorter rides fallowed with lots of time with the ice pack have my mind occupied.

Anyways, North Boulder crit is this weekend and I think I should be healthy and racing so come out and yell. Should be a lot of fun.

Damn

Yeah, so.... I'm sick. I guess that is just how it always goes. As soon as the form starts to really come around a bug sneeks in and a few days on the couch are required. Oh well.

Check out some of the better pics from the Gila

For some reason the resteraunt we

went to had a can of whipped cream

on the menue.

Micro attempting to sumit Silver City's massive airport along side my sweet bed head.

The juniors doing what they do best: looking goofy. Daimo does his best to compete but we all know he'll never come close the more proer juniors.

The Gila Monster

Well, I am back home now. The last stage of Gila was super hard. With a little help from Lucas I managed to make it into the early break. The plan was to put me and one of the team's better climbers in the break and have me drive it to stretch the gap and launch the climber up the hill and force the other teams to chase. So... that is exactly what we did. Me and Lucas made the break, got settled in, I drove up the gap as best I could, and Lucas went up the hill like a man with wings. On the first real climb I got dropped and did everything I could to make it over the hill with the main field. The field caught me (Slipstream was flying on the front) with a 1/4 to go and I did my best to bring up the pace and string it out over the top for the team. With my job done, I was done. As much as I would have liked to finish my first NRC race ever I was cooked. Even with pulling out early I had used more energy on this stage than any of the other stages. And none of the stages were close to easy.

Right now I have a few days of chill time before ramping up some intensity to get ready for some more high speed action.

ohhhh.....

Today we raced the crit. Not good not bad. Felt like if I was on a normal day I could have placed well but today there was nothing in my legs and all kinds of funky stuff in my tummy. In hard stage raced everyones stomach and legs get wrenched it is just a question of how bad. Today for me it was pretty bad. Good thing it was just a crit and I did not lose any time. Still got to say thaks to the team for throwing me up so many times at the end. Thanks guys. Next time.

Tomorrow is going to be HARD! Cereally.

Dinna time.

KABOOM!

Today was awsome! The team hit the front 5 miles into the race and after only 10 miles the lead group was down from 120 to 18 riders!!! The ride for today can be summed up by only one word: perfection. Oh yeah, WE WON! Tom Peterson (god among men) launched with 30 miles to go on the stage with 3 other riders and took it all the way to the line! I was a little worried toward the end because the field was rolling up on the break pretty fast so I lined up for the sprint but once I knew we were not going to catch the break I opted to just cruze it in. But hey, I still got a top 10 in my first NRC race ever. Excellent team work, stage win for the team, and a top 10 on a super hard day; can not really ask for much more.

Super cool picture: http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos.php?id=/photos/2007/may07/gila07/gila073/JD_gila07_stg3001

Da Gila

This is taken from the very back!

Nothing like watching TV in a hotel room like a half dead bum after a race. Since my last post I flew down to Silver City, NM (the second flight was a little too sketchy for my taste), race the TT, and raced the first road race. For me the TT went well. I was still running the kaboose on the team but I did drop 3 minuts off of last years time (hell yeah!) and I did not feel too gassed after so.... ya. Not too bad. Today's race was a bit crappy. Felt blocked up and dry all day. I also got tangled up in a really stupid crash and had to chase for quite some time. Once we hit the final hill I went straight out the back after a hard effort at the front for the team. What ever. Good days and bad.





Tomorrow is going to be sweet. That is about all I have to say about the future. I have won the up comming stage 2 years in a row and I do not really feel like breaking that trend.





The team is fast and relaxed. The food is good. The bikes are light and areo. And we have no excuses for anything less than the big W.

Wellp, back to watching Rachel Ray.

Long day

After a hard 5 hour ride in the morning (and most of the afternoon) I now have my hands full trying to pack up everything I will need for the Tour of Gila. It is amazing how much effort it takes to get ready for a trip like this. When you spend a lot of time on the road packing becomes second nature. Everything has its place and nothing gets forgotten. Routines are well rehearsed and smooth running. Once it is all down packing takes 30min. 45 if there is a bike to be packed. However, once you get out of the swing of things.... things get a bit interesting. For example: once I got home I realized that I had not done any laundry in 3 weeks. I had absolutely no clean cycling clothing left. I did not even have any clean cloths from last years kit left! So, here I am at the laundry mat doing 5 loads of laundry at once so I can get packed and into bed by a reasonable hour.

Hey, at least there are plenty of hot college girls here with the laundry blues too!