*this will probably be lengthy*

That this is how the year would have turned out. It started and has ended with high hopes and grand plans, just in different ways. It seems like so long ago that I spent so much of my time immersed in the fixed gear, street racing scene. I was traveling across the country to compete in different alleycats and meet and visit people I had met through an online riding community. I was organizing races and events regularly enough that when one was over it was time to start the planning stages of the next. These times were amazing, DC, Boston and San Fransisco have places secured in my heart. I have pictures and stories to tell. I also owned and rode seven different bikes at the start of the year and wanted to compete on each of them. I had an aggressive schedule of track racing, alleycats, cross country mountain bike, teamed endurance and solo endurance mountain bike racing all before the cyclocross season even started. Over the course of the year, my enthusiasm remained high, but the plan changed dramatically as I found what I am really suited for and began shifting my efforts. With a season of cyclocross racing behind me that I feel was very successful there is a new sense of focus on the future and what I can achieve.

 

Honestly, the change started in October of 2006, but I would not really understand the implications of a few actions until much later. So as a frame of reference. In October, during a trip to Columbus, Ohio to visit Julie, I bought the Voodoo Limba I am racing cyclocross today. It was not a decked out and fancy then, as I had not even raced cyclocross yet. The bike was a good deal and I wanted to give it a try. In November I bought the Bianchi off of ebay because I was anticipating selling my car and needed a bike to replace it with fenders and a rack. The event that most obviously effected my cycling lifestyle was winning the Cat4 State Cyclocross title at the end of the year. Being my fifth competitive event since I stopped racing BMX as well as beating some of the guys who I had always considered unbeatable (Adam Clark specifically, who will still hand my ass to me if we raced an alleycat together) this was to be the first time I told myself that I was quick and had potential on my bike. The winter set in, tricks and drinks went downhill fast and I sort of disappeared. I have never been a scenester type person and I like going to bed, along with not waking up (I decided to forego the Tour Da Chicago this year), so I slowly fell out of the street racing scene. Carless and happy, Julie and I were still on our bikes daily making small outings on the mountain bikes from time to time. I also had custom racks built for the Bianchi and started running dual headlights powered by a schmidt dynamo hub. I started become less aggressive while riding on the street.

 

Out of hibernation and across the big river into Iowa. This trip was to be the major turning point in how I thought about riding my bike and what I wanted to do on it. There is a whole post on the event itself, but the most important part is where it left me. I made it ~120 miles completely self supported. When I stopped, I was carrying what I needed. It definitely was not the way to finish, but it was a awesome way to ride. It was the thirty miles or so I rode slowly while my knees hurt that left me with a ton of time to think about anything. It was the 3 and a half miles I rode during the hour and fifteen minutes it took my support crew to get me after I called to get picked up where I really set some priorities. I was determined to not stop riding until they picked me up regardless of how slow I was going. My knees were finished and I was afraid that I wrecked them permanently. In my mind that was the end of riding a fixed gear bike. My knees had been acting up for a while as a result of the brake less insanity I was riding and now I was unsure a road bike was going to be ridable. I had been unsure of a track season for a few weeks and this was the nail in the coffin. There were so many things keeping me away from the track, plus it meant my race schedule would be lightened dramatically. It was also a very clear sign that the solo ultra endurance racing was not my game. I wanted to race the Leadville 100, but now I knew it just was not my game. Too far, too boring. I can do the miles, I just did not have the interest in doing it. With my interest in the track, my interest in the very small amount of road racing I wanted to do fizzled out. I am better in the dirt. What it all came down to is that I realized what I am not good at, what I am okay at and what I had the potential to excel at. I needed to just focus on what I could do really well and that, ultimately, would be racing cyclocross.

 

Since the end of the 2006 cyclocross season, I had been excited for this years racing. This is obvious if you go back and look at old posts. After three months of thinking about cyclocross I decided we all needed a little early practice. With the help of Jen Greenburg, we organized a bandit cross series. Nothing amazing, just three races with a bunch of friends. Un-official, but officially fun. It was not really that pivotal beyond the fact that it showed people were and still are excited for cyclocross. It's accessibility for all skill levels and laid back nature.

 

Home from Iowa and healing knees had me getting ready for the WORS and WEMS series in Wisconsin. I had only raced cross country once before with a pretty good result, so I was going to start the season in comp class instead of sport. And I was going to race the WEMS 12 hour duo series with Cale Wenther. We had high hopes of destroying all in our path. It worked out most of the time. WEMS was fun, but after the second event I came to learn that it was not my style. I love riding single track and I love being on my bike. Riding the same loop over and over again, over the course of 12 hours, was just too much for me. I did not like feeling like I had to go out on another lap just to get it done. The atmosphere was really fun and it made for great days on the bike, simply though I would just get bored over the course of the day. The 12 hour race at Kettle was to be the day I decided 29" mountain bikes were not for me. I returned to the trails a week later on my 26" bike and the difference was incredible. Where the 29er felt slow and clumsy, the 26" bike was nimble and fast. I do not think I am big enough to make the 29er platform work efficiently for me. My legs have enough power and my bike handling skills are good enough to negate the benefits a 29er gives me. I had always planned on racing the WORS series on 26" tires and with gears. I spent most of the winter cobbling together a rocket race machine, pure racing bike. There was carbon everywhere, and I went this direction against Sam's advice. A note. We all know how almost always when we were told something by our mothers, we dismissed it, "She's crazy, she doesn't understand, she is old," but she was pretty much always right. Correct? Well, Sam is the same way. When he tells you not to do something with your bike, you should probably just listen, because the smile he gives you when you come into the shop to fix what you said, "It must be okay, Sam doesn't know," must be priceless for him. More on that later though. The first WORS race of the season went well for me. I took 3rd in my age group and 16th overall. I was pretty happy with the result. My second and last WORS race of the season was a little better taking 2nd in my age group and 5th overall. Both races were wet and made for some good cyclocross handling lessons in the mud. I would have raced more of the WORS series except that so many of the races are really far away from Chicago. It is difficult to motivate myself to spend all the time it takes to get there and then drive home Sunday night after the race and work the next day. I did well enough in the two comp races though that I felt that I was ready to race with the elite riders and even though I was finished with WORS for the season I made the upgrade anyway. The summer held two more mountain bike races for me, both on a level much more low key. Helge and I made the trip down south to do one of the races in the PAMBA series. I did much better than I anticipated taking third overall, taking home my first ever payout. This was to start a trend that lasted into late fall. I really felt like my legs were coming around right in time for when they needed to. the summer racing WEMS ended up being a pretty good training ground. A couple weeks later and we were racing at Palos, where I felt like I had one of my best performances ever. I led a fair portion of the race and came out of it feeling really strong. This was to ultimately be the place where Killjoy was to take notice of me for the first time, as chance would have it. It was only weeks later that the problems I was having with Pegasus would come to a head anyway and I would leave the team. In the meantime, cyclocross was upon us and I was invited to practice with Killjoy on the lake. It was not long before it just made sense that Killjoy was the best team for me to be on and I asked to join the team. I was welcome with many open arms and had kit even before I got on my bike to go home.

 

One week into September and the cyclocross season was finally upon us and I had a full schedule planned, 20 races for 14 weekends. I had been waiting nine months for the season to start, so when the first opportunity to race was 6 hours away, I went anyway. Zach and I went down to Cincinnati for a Ohio Valley Cyclocross Series race. With the opportunity to race the "A" race as a Cat3 racer without the pressure to earn series points I decided to race the "A" race instead of the "B" race. An hour of brutally bumpy and dry ground later I had finished 8th of over 25 and felt great about it. So great in fact that I applied for an upgrade to Cat2 as a cyclocross racer. I was needing to register for nationals soon and was hoping to get a better startline position by registering as early as possible. I was denied because I lacked the necessary points to upgrade. This meant that I had to race at least three more races as a Cat3 racer in order to get enough points. It was frustrating. My request was denied just hours before the start of the first ChiCrossCup race in Jackson Park and when I showed up I had a mission. The official running the race was the same person who denied my upgrade, so I was racing to prove I was worthy of what he was denying me. And prove it I did, with a massive wholeshot and ever growing lead to dominate the race. He still refused to upgrade me, so I had to race the Cat3 race the following weekend in Wisconsin. Mean while, registration opened for nationals and I had to register as a B racer, with a good starting position of 14th. I showed up in Wisconsin focused on earning the 12 points I needed to upgrade. The bad news was that Saturday's format was not officially a cyclocross race so there were not going to be any upgrade points awarded. The good news was that I did not care. Saturday's event was nothing fancy, but Sunday I will remember forever as one of my best race performances. Hungry for the win I went off the line hard. Through a hairpin turn I stood up on the pedals and pulled my rear wheel out of the dropouts. It cost me the lead, put me in 21st place and almost two minutes behind. Over the course of the next forty minutes, I fought hard to climb back up the ladder and in the last lap passed the leaders and took the win. It was awesome and I came from far enough behind, that when I came through the finish line the officials did not think I was the winner. The following Monday I applied for my upgrade and got it. I then promptly registered for five days of Elite racing, including Nationals. We went east for a wedding and stopped at a race on the way home. The course in Virginia was unlike anything I raced all year. Outside of nationals it was the most technical and defiantly had the most climbing. Following Virginia there were three races in Wisconsin and I had decent results there as well, finishing in the top five twice. The whitewater race was no fun at all and I shall never return, but the other two races were great. I knew racing with guys like Jesse, Marko and Brian that I had my work cut out for me. They were finishing pretty well ahead of me, but I was able to keep the pace for a pretty good portion of the race. The first weekend of November marked my first UCI Elite racing experience. It was unlike any racing I had done up to that point and shed light on how it was going to be to ride with the big guns. Instead of Jesse beating me by two minutes, these guys were beating my by almost six. The intensity was so much higher and the racing was so much more aggressive than the local stuff around Chicago. In my defense, I was starting from the back of the lineup and making up ground is difficult. I traveled to New England with two goals, one to not get lapped and to do it having a great time. I accomplished both and went home feeling for the first time like making the quick upgrades to race as an elite rider was the right thing to do. After a weekend off, the Klugs, Mike and I all traveled south into Indiana for a race with an unusually high payout. Unfortunately, my race did not go how I'd hope, I was racing on a front tire that was only at 15 psi and just could not make the bike perform properly. I still did not place badly at fifth, but I was hoping for better. The following day and an awesome sand pit later I was going home with a 3rd place finish in Lansing with feelings of redemption. Headed to Iowa I had a better idea of how I needed to approach the racing at the elite level. Again though, my goals were simple, not get lapped and have fun. I started with a significantly better position in the second row and was able to use that to my advantage both days with top 20 finishes. Back home there were two more races before nationals and the conditions finally really started to be cross like. The snow and rain for the last Wisconsin race made for excellent conditions, and I finished that race on a strong note in forth. Going into the final ChiCrossCup race I had the wrong attitude and it spoiled the entire race for me. I approached the race from a winning standpoint and when that did not seem to be the way things were going I gave up. There was a lot wrong with how I went about that race and I paid for it, but I am also learning from it. Out of that weekend, all that was left was nationals and my performance left me worried, but as we all know now I am happy with how it went. Nationals was exceptionally awesome.

 

It was great to end the season on a high note. I have my work cut out for me in order to get my fitness to the level it needs to be at next year. I am hoping to be working with a coach in the next few months and really focusing on starting the season next year in top form. I grew up playing baseball and always assumed that being 25 was already too old to excel, but I have learned that it is late to start, it isn't late to do well. It was really cool coming into the tail end of the season this year and feeling like there were so many people behind me, supporting and rooting for me. I'd bump into people who I hadn't seen in a long time and one of the first things they'd say was "So you are kicking some cyclocross ass right now!" I stopped racing alleycats last year claiming that it was too big of a risk and that I needed to stay healthy. Having Stan tell me that after being disappointed at first when I stopped street racing and that he understands now, really made me feel like it has been worth it.  Sometimes I get the urge to ride through traffic like an idiot because the thrill is there, it is still fun, but I try to keep everything in perspective.  I started the year with seven bikes and end it with three.  One cross bike, one mountain bike and one commuter.  Next year the number will increase to at least four as I add a second cross bike.  Over the course of the year I rode three different types of materials, aluminium, carbon and steel.  Although two of the three are lighter, I have forever become a steel convert.  After cracking the JBC (Sam was never a big fan of the carbon frame idea) and purchasing the Kelly it was an obvious change and one I would not look back on.  This coming season I will have the legs to power through the flat sections where I would loose time this year and that will be accomplished through a training plan. Next year will also have a focus on keeping my attitude in check and NOT swearing like a sailor when things are not going my way.  The foul language is going to cost me big sooner or later. Keep the emphasis on having a good time and riding as well as I can.  I am going to race locally very little on my cross bike.  I am planning and looking forward to a full national schedule of UCI and USGP events.  The faster pace and higher aggression of these races will only help me improve.  Not to mentions meet more new people and ride in places I have never ridden before.  I want to improve on my results and give the guys who are beating me a run for their money.

 

Jason, Tim, Zach, Helge, Jeff, Booker, Mike, Tristan, Val, Jeremy, Rachael and John, Amy, Andy, Jay, Kevin and Holly, Josh, Naz, Ben and Owen (and those of you I missed) Thank you all so much for your friendship and encouragement over the past year.  I'd like to thank my parents for allowing me to start this whole bike racing thing in the first place years ago and continuing to support me now.  Sam has been behind this whole act from the get go, working out of Rapid Transit.  I do not think there is any way I could have even come close to where I am without his steady hand and sound advice.  Dan's role in this whole deal is hard to describe yet indispensable.  Riding and training partner, trail buddy, driver, support crew, host.  He has opened his home and car for Julie, Molly and I more than anyone can ever be expected to and that allowed for some opportunities I would not have been able to have otherwise.  And Julie I can only thank as best as I can describe and that will never be sufficient.  She believes in me completely, always has and that is the biggest form of encouragement I could have.  She listens to me go on and on, day in and day out about this and that.  You all think this blog is drawn out, day to day is worse.  She is going to Colorado in four weeks to become a licensed mechanic just to help me next year.  She comes to as many of my races as she can.  When she can not make it, Dan is unfortunately getting multiple text messages of reminders to remind me to do things and find out how things are going.  She stands by me on my worst days, she smiles with me on my best.  Travel planning, troubleshooting and driving home after the race so I can sleep.  There is just no way I would have done it all without her.  Thank you.