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