boulder cup

boulder cup race tomorrow at the rez. be there.

SunTour

My legs have never hurt like this before in October. Ouch. FunTour... HA! Yeah right!The last 2 days have been full on. WINDY!!! No worries though mates. Today was a good day, picked up some more KOM points to strech out my led in that comp (cross your fingers! Tomorrow has some big points.) and I saw my first kangaroo today! It was dead, bloated and stiff on the side of the road and we blew past it going 50km an hour but I saw one!!!

Did I mention we won today to?!!!! Congrats to our boy Sutton. Good on ya mate!

4 more days of racing left this season,
alex

OZ

made it to Australia. What a flight. 16hrs from LA to Sydney is a bit rude. Especially with short flights on either end. As they say though, "no worries." All is well here. Kinda nice being in a foreign country where I'm fluent in the language. Race starts Sunday. Bring it on!

350.org

L'Avenir, Italy, Worlds

Ok, ok. I know, it's been a while. Unfortunately it's not over either and I'm still running in the red so I'm going to have to keep this brief.

L'Avenir was tough. 9 days in northern France racing against the best u23 riders in the world is not exactly easy but team USA got along just fine. We ended the race with Tejay taking a big 2nd over all, a 2nd in the tt, 2nd on the 3rd stage, and a 3rd on the final stage. Not too bad. Only issue with doing that well is how close we were to winning something big. So close. Tejay lost the damn race by one second! So close. For me personally it was a good experience. Made the break on a couple of days, did plenty of work to make sure captain Tejay and Pete were where they needed to be and managed to have a good time doing it. Looking forward to trying to get some legit results for myself there next year.

After L'Avenir team USA made a quick trip to Belgium to drop off/pick up some stuff, did a sweet, "beer ride" and quickly made our way down to Lucca, Italy for a little R & R before heading to Switzerland for Worlds. Before moving on to Worlds I just want to say that if you ever get the chance to visit Lucca, take it. The area is an endless maze of bike path sized roads winding through, around, and over every little hill and mountain in the area. Damn good riding. Great place to be after suffering in northern France eating crappy over cooked pasta for breakfast and dinner for nine days.

Worlds. Nice hotel, fun atmosphere, beautiful area, crazy course, less than stellar result. What can I say? I had a blast but I am definitely less than satisfied with our team's performance in the U23 race. Broken spokes, and a few flats offer a couple of excuses. But for those of us that didn't have any bad luck I can't really offer up any reasons for the less than stellar performance other than the fact that it has been a long season. I'm cooked.

I may be cooked but it ain't over yet. I have one week at home then it's off to the Suntour in Australia on the 6th. Race is from the 11th to the 17th. Should be a tough one. Cool part is, is that I will be racing with the ProTour boys. No shame in getting bottles for Mr. "4th place at the Tour De France" Wiggens.

Pretending to rest,
Alex

L'Avenir

L'Avenir started today. Wild circut & tough competition but I think we should fair well. Going to be a long 9 days though...

http://vimeo.com/6193111

Tour of Utah.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sooo.... The Tour of Utah was pretty good to me. Scored my first NRC win on the queen stage!

Best Young Rider's Jersey, King of the Mountains Jersey, 4th over all, and a stage win! Not too shabby!

YouTube of final 300 meters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njr2eTjQ-mw

Post race interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NnrVr2SYLw&feature=related

Need Some Work On Your Cross Skills?

If you need some work on your 'cross skills and you live near Boulder check it out. It's run by the same guys that taught me everything I know about serious 'cross racing. Good guys and heeps of fun. I'd be there helping but it looks like I might be racing USPRO Championships that weekend... Cross your fingers.

Been Ridin' Bikes...

I've been riding bikes a lot. Hope to be ready for Utah and anything that may come up after. Not sure what my September will look like. Hopefully, I won't be on the couch...

cyclingnews...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/slipstream-building-the-next-generation-of-american-champions

Forgot to put this up last week...

http://www.podiuminsight.com/2009/07/23/catching-up-with-alex-howes/

?????

Photos by Ethan Erickson

Did I just win again??? I did! Damn, that one was cool!

Took off on lap 3 or 4. 56km in the break. Jumped away with a lap an a half to go. SOLO VICTORY! Excluding local junior races from back in the day I think this was my first solo win. Pretty rad.

HUGE THANKS to all the Felt/Holowesko/Garmin riders and staff. Couldn't have done it with out y'all! Lets go get some more gold at Utah boys!

Crit Nationals Today

We plan on finishing this week on a high note. Won the road race, won the TT, --- the crit.

Side note-

I joined twitter because I'm dumb. Come listen to the dumb things I tweet about @alex_howes.

NATIONAL CHAMP!

Photos by Ethan Erickson

So far the team has earned 3 jerseys and 3 podiums at Cascade and a national championship along with a 4th and a 5th.

Looks like team camp helped....

Team camp in the books.

Here we come Cascade!

training camp is hard

i'm tired

Holly Crap...

Photo from Lyne Lamoureux. Checked out podiuminsight.com?

Has it really been since Pilly that I last updated this thing? Ouch, sorry. No matter, here is the scoop:

Philly- DAMN! Good legs all day. Came into the finish ready to dump 5 buckets worth of sprint and ended up dropping anchor when a few guys stacked it in front of me. boo to crashes at the front.

Beauce- WHERE IS THE FLOW???? Had really good legs all of Beauce, but just could never find the flow. Hit 5 moves, 6th one goes... Spend all day killing it trying to get something going, nothing goes... So frustrating. Oh well, it was a good learning experience.

And the fluff- Since Beauce I have just been laying low soaking up all the supreme radness of Boulder, Colorado. Summer has been good to me. Been training hard (had THE BIGGEST day on a bike ever last week) but not too hard. Mentally fresh and physically fit. That's the way to be. Made a trip to Dead Dog. Raced my little booty off and got in some fun high altitude camping. I have decided that pasta is only worth eating when cooked over an open flame and mixed w/ beans and tuna. Doesn't hurt when a cute girl cooks it either...

The Future?- "Training Camp: Goin' Colombo '09" officially kicks off this evening with the "Aero Dinner." We are going to slam it in prep for the second half of the season. Motor pace the valleys and race the climbs; that's how we are going to get our babies off Top Ramen. After camp it's Cascade, Nationals, Utah, and hopefully Missoura.

Hopefully update sooner rather than later,
alex

P.S. Walker was the very deserving winner of the mustache competition. Well played good sir, well played.

Brotherly Love

Little interview with me and Holloway after Philly. We did the interview at a pub after 6:30hrs of racing and a couple of brews so be warned...

http://www.podiuminsight.com/2009/06/09/daniel-holloway-on-his-philly-adventure-or-if-you-wave-we-will-drink/

Philly Prep '09

Couple of long rides between Roubaix and Philly. Jet lag is gone. Head is great. Legs are good. I have plenty of Clif bars, agua and an atitude. Got nothing better to do other than rock the socks off of Philly.

Bring it.

Roubaix '09

This race is stupid hard. Made it through the first few pave sections with the group no problemo. With about 80km to go I heard Kirk yelling, "HOWES!!!!!!!!" from about 20 riders back. Flat tire. Boo. Seeing as he was one of the leaders on the day my front wheel was now his front wheel. I sent him on his way, waited for the cars (loooong wait) then chased until I though my poor little heart was going to pop. Rolled up on Holloway who was in the early break and tossed out the parachute. Even with just rolling the last 50km my legs were still trashed the next day. Not to mention my hands and back. Huge props to Taytay Phinny for winning in the velodrome. Guess all that time on the track paid off.

Training for Philly/Beauce right meow. So ready to get back on the road and in the races!

alex

Just A Little Warning If You See Me Sometime In the Next Couple of Weeks...

ANNOUNCING the First Annual FELT-HOLOWESKO PARTNERS-GARMIN
Mustache Growing Contest!

Grow your 'stache! Impress your friends! Alienate loved ones!Any rider, staff, or sponsor welcome to comptete in the First Annual F-H-G Mustache Competition. There will be only two categories - Men and Women. The competition will end on June 14, 2009 and correspond with the final stage of the 2009 Tour de Beauce. If unavailable to attend the final judging ceremonies in Quebec please send detailed photos and Mustache CV via email todaimowrench@******.com. Daimeon Shanks (beloved inventor of the exclamation point and mechanic for Felt-Holowesko Partners-Garmin) will be judging the competiton. Although Daimeon will be recusing himself for the competition, he will be growing a 'sympathy' mustache.Mustaches will be judged on a variety of categories including (but not limited to):
- Volume
- Moxy
- Stick-to-it-tuiness
- Longevity
- Frenchness
- Swagger
- Firefighterness
- Dancability
and others!

Winner will receive an All-Expenses-Paid trip to their local barber for a mustache shave!*Please forward this email to any appropriate colleagues or interested parties (my email address book is NOT complete!).

Sincerly,

The Commitee for the First Annual FELT-HOLOWESKO-PARTNERS Mustache Growing Contestc/o Daimeon Shanks

Pic From Olympias

April and May

Dang, it has been a while since I have updated this thing eh? Sorry about that. I guess I just kind of forgot I even had a blog. Thanks for the reminder ma. Ok since it has been so long I will revert to bullets to save us all precious time and to save me the effort of organizing things in to paragraphs.

• Sea Otter- That race is a zoo! So many people out there. Great trip all around. Road tippin' out there with Daimo and the BB guns was heaps of fun, crashing at Holloway's was easy on the body and mind (thanks again to the Holloways for putting me up!), and the races were just the right kind of hard. Highlight of the racing was spending over 1/3 of the race off the front solo. Didn't win but it was still rad.
  


• Dana Point- Amazing part of Cali. Got the full Dana Point tour from Steve Blick. Muchos Gracias senior. Big thanks to Coryn Rivera for letting me and Holloway crash there for a couple of nights! The race was... well... a crit. I survived just fine and bridged up to the late race break away. We got got. FYI if I bridge up to a break it will get caught. Happened at Sea Otter and Dana and it will happen again I am sure.
  


• The Gila- What a race. France Armstrong and crew decided to show up along with every Armstrong fan in NM. Pretty cool seeing one of my favorite races blow up into such a spectacle. Even cooler is showing up with the legs and head to pull off a couple of podiums. Stetina was riding real fast like and the whole team rose to the occasion. Aside from racing old man Stetina home, I would say the highlight of the trip has to be having out team running around Walker's beat up Subaru before the TT tying to get everything together with the Astana crew set up right next to us in a giant plush bus. Nothing like stealing raisin bran from the hotel so you can throw blows with Levi, Lance, and Horner. Oh, and a HUGE thank you to Dale Stetina and Steve Owens for all there help at the Gila. Those two did the work of 5 staff members and did it well.
  


• Between Gila and Europe- Thought it might be worth mentioning since there might be some questionable photos of me popping up on the internet, graduation season is awesome. Almost makes me want to go back to school. Almost.
  


• Olympias Tour- That race was nuts. Give a man an inch and he will take 10 miles. Going into this race I figured it was just another race. Turns out it was the Dutch world championships or something to that effect. Just thinking about taking a drink of water would put you in the cars and moving into the top ten required the fee of a first born child and a brain aneurysm. Regardless, the race was a relative success. We took 4th in the TTT, Raymond only finished outside of the top 10 once (that kid is a f**king rocket!), I won the most aggressive rider jersey on the 5th stage, and Caleb had an AMAZING day on the last day to pull of 2nd on the day and 6th overall.

So what is up next? Paris-Roubax! The team is wicked motivated and there are good legs all around. Aside from a couple of little head colds, we're all firing well. Tomorrow, we will be previewing the course with the national team and possibly with the Livestrong crew. After that it is off to Philly and Beauce. Really, Really motivated for both of those. If all goes as planned, I should be going mach 10.

Bueno. That is all I have for now. I will let y'all know how Roubaix goes down.

Cheers,
alex

God Bless America

And American bike racing! Can't wait to kill it out at Sea Otter!

On the mend

Double toast to Redlands!

Doing my best here in CO to patch up the holes in my left side. The road rash is coming along nicely but I've been having some issues getting my hip flexor firing on all cylinders. It'll come. Best part about healing up in CO is the snow. Yes, I know I've pissed and moaned about the snow a million times but when rest is the order of the day, the guilt level hardly tops zero when opening the shades to see the world sleeping under a cold quilt of snow.

Oh yeah, Redlands finished up nicely. We managed to sneak away with team GC, and Kirk tied up the KOM jersey and scored second on the final stage. Man that kid is movin'. The whole team was super solid all week and I think we comfortably accomplished our goal of showing the world we're a team not to be left unconsidered when forecasting future victories. 4 guys in the top 20 of one of the biggest races on American soil. Not too shabby.

MTB bike today,

alex

boo crits.

So far, so good out here in Redlands. Sittin' pretty in the top 20. The whole team is riding well and looking strong and we're all super pumped to put our big fat armature stamp on one of the biggest pro stage races in the states. Today is supposed to be a 17 on the, "If I go any harder I will bleed out my ears" scale of one to 10. Can't wait. Only thing I can complain about is my spill in the crit yesterday. Hit a water bottle mid corner and washed out the front wheel and I was on the ground before I even knew I was crashing. Straight up bad luck. Nothing like crashing in 10th position because someone has crappy bottle cages then having 150+ guys go flying by. Got knocked back down twice trying to get up. Oh well.

Chicks dig scars,
alex

The Dimas

Hanging out in Cali right now. Just finished up the San Dimas stage race. It went ok. Finished up 15th overall. Pete was 4th. Caleb beat me by 2 seconds. What a jerk.

This is the only photo I've ever actually considered paying money for:

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?evgroupid=0&userid=clinster&gallery_id=1477218&image_id=244

Redlands starts on Thursday,

alex

Road Trippin'

The desert is rad.

Tucson

Hanging out in Tucson right meow. Drove down for the 23rd running Tucson bicycle classic. Cool little race. Here's the break down:

Long drive. Camped out in the woods w/ the bears. Seriously. There were tracks up there. Looks like mild winters mean bears don't hibernate as long. Decided to eat a pop tart instead of making bacon and eggs for dinner...

Stage one: I really need to learn to TT...

Stage two: Go from the gun tactics always work. Back in the race.

Stage three: Straight up death match. Showed up with the plan of ripping my own legs of. Plan executed to perfection. Can't remember the last time I've gone so hard for $60 and a t-shirt. At least the t-shirt is cool. Finished up 5th overall.

Now I'm just hanging out with Chad and Peter waiting for the weather up north to turn around before making the trek home. Planning on squatting for a night in Sadona and Arches national park on my way home. Maybe swing by the Grand Canyon too just for kicks. Definitely looking forward to all dat.

Enjoy your lunch today,

alex

Turbaconucken

This is what us real men eat after a hard days training...

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, all wrapped in bacon.

Kidding of course. Or am I?



Sorry about the lack of posts but life hasn't exactly been all that exciting these days. Been riding myself into the ground trying to get ready for this season but that's just what I do. Nothin' special.



Went to the Garmin training camp in Silver city. That was cool. We road bikes, bitched about not eating gluten (yet failed to fully apriciate how spectacular every meal was thanks to Chris Grealish and his small army), got sun burns, and mailed a bunch of watered down piss to USADA (they have this new rule were the spicific gravity has to be w/ in a certain range & if it's not you have to hang out & keep trying until it's good. In the good ol' days after two shots you could go home. Thanks to the new rule USADA has 8 jars filled w/ pure rocky mountain H2O filtered through yours truly. I hope they apriciate the fact that I was up until 2am making that damn water for them).



Other than that here's all you need to know:

• Kirk is riding fast. There, I said it.
• Julian Kyer signed on w/ Trek Livestrong. Tumbs up hombre!
• My knee still sucks but I'm past the point of caring. I still ice & everything but it's going to have to REALLY hurt to make me give a sh*t.
• A strict diet of rice, beans, eggs, and ginger snaps WILL get you down to race weight.
• The Dodos make me feel good
• DZnuts really does protect your junk.
• Colby Pearce is going to coach me into the next superstar. Just wait, you'll see.
• Lesbians will not steal food if they have to cook it. Ginger snaps are pre cooked...
• Me, Julian, and TK switched Facebook passwords. First one to cave & ask for their password back has to put up a personal ad on Craigslist and go on a date. Only sexy movie stars search for love on Craigslist right?
  

Yup, thats that.



alex

January

Pic from Cx Nats by Mia Sullivan. Thanks Mia!

Is it really January already? Wowzers.

For me January is the month were thing really start to get rolling. All the crap I've been putting off all off season goes from "eh, I'll do it in January" status to, "wholly sh*t! It's January!" For one reason or another this month always seems to sneak up on me. The start to this year has been even more hectic than years past (if you can believe that... last year I, along w/ damn near everything I owned, jumped the Atlantic, and the year before that I was busy as a box of bees trying to get my crap together to make my debut season as a professional). I'm going to blame the craziness on my 21st b-day and a 100% stupid cruzer bike knee injury.

I turned 21 on New Years day. New Year's eve was rad. Really rad. Like having your 21st b-day on one of the worlds biggest party nights, rad. That was over a week ago though, stop offering to buy me drinks. As much as I appreciate the gesture, I've got some work to do to get back to race weight.

As for the knee...

I wiped out on some ice while riding my cruzer bike to the store. I smacked my knee really hard. This was followed shortly by slipping in my kitchen and smacking it once again. 100% sober, I assure you. Lame, I know. I honestly had myself pegged for some sort of over use injury when I was doing 30hr weeks and lifting 3 days a week back in late November and December. But no, I f****ed up on the way to the store and I'm bad at putting oatmeal on the shelf. That's life I guess. No worries though. It's coming around nicely and right now I'm waiting until it's 100% before really getting back into it. Until then I'll just keep holding my breath while I ride and call that training.

Training camp starts the 23rd for me. I'm excited. Hopefully all joints are ready to go by then.

Happy new year,
alex