Another TwoWheelTale

CHECK IT! Also, look for me in any pics with Lance/Levi/Horner through the valley mid-stage . . . I made sure to ride just behind the Mellow Johnny train! Legs are still feeling good, lungs are not finding any more oxygen, and the team has really come together--I'm STOKED for the rest of the Tour of the Gila. Keep reading more at TwoWheelTales and our team's live Twitter Feed, written by our in-house extrovert, Rob Noble, the Ciclismo Racing Director of Communications.

Ciclismo on Twitter!

Rob Noble, our Communications Director, is riding along in the team vehicle handing up food, dishing out encouragement, and updating the Twitter feed live with race goings-on. CHECK IT OUT!

First Gila stage down, four more to go!

An excellent day for Ciclismo Racing!!! We got Ben Kneller and Rolf Eisinger into the top-30, placing 18th and 28th, respectively. Here is a detailed review of the race at TwoWheelTales.

I'm fed, massaged, and putting the legs up . . . tomorrow is going to be a good day. Look for me in the breaks!

Also, look for me along/behind/in front of a certain boy from Texas.

Racing with Lance after all!

Apparently he will be racing with Chris Horner and Levi Leipheimer in the Mellow Johnny's jerseys.

Check out TwoWheelTales for Tour of the Gila and on!

I've just begun writing for TwoWheelTales.com. I'm flying out to Albuquerque at 9AM tomorrow morning for the Tour of the Gila--it should be a blast! After that I'm heading back up to Fort Collins, CO with the Ciclismo boys and will meet up with Nick Bennette and Austin Roach (of Princeton Cycling fame) to bring it to the other collegiate cyclists at Nationals.

Point is this: I'm planning to keep diaries for each big race I do this season, and these diaries will be written on TwoWheelTales.com. It's an excellent site where you can look through and read about the goings-on in other professional cyclists' lives.

Do not fret, I will still be writing for get on your bike and ride! This will be my personal blog, where I talk about anything I want related to what I've been doing in life, what my plans are, etc. My TwoWheelTales blog will be much more race specific. The two will obviously be interconnected!

Time to pack up, tie up some more loose ends with school, and get some sleep before THE BIG SHOW BEGINS!

Keller Center video

http://www-dev-edit.princeton.edu/news/media/keller/

ARMY!

After a ROUGH week at school (Nuclear Physics paper followed by an Automatic Controls 24-hour take-home midterm and a full-day video shoot for the Keller Center opening) I was pretty wrecked going into the Army race weekend at West Point, New York. No worries, the weather turned out to be better than expected on Saturday (no rain, only 30+ mph wind to deal with!) and Sunday (INCREDIBLE sun and 70s!!).

We had MANY Princeton cyclists, with almost the full team racing, so it was a blast--only Austin "The Roach" was missing due to a mandatory plasma physics geek-conference. No TTT for Men's A, but Bennette and I got in plenty of training outside of the races. My legs were FULL of crap in the very tough circuit race on Saturday, but I made it into the break with some serious heavy-hitters: Jamie Driscol and Vinnie Scalia of University of Vermont, Josh Lipka of University of New Hampshire, Chris Ruhl of Penn State, and Derek Merkler of Army.

We worked well together, and it was apparent that we had made the winning move after just the first few tough laps. The gap soon balooned to well over a minute, but I also knew that things were going to explode with the two best UVM guys in the break. With three laps to go of a two-mile circuit, Vinnie launched a HARD attack up the finishing hill and Jamie got a free ride for a lap. Josh, Chris, Derek and I worked well to slowly reel him in, knowing that Jamie would then launch his attack. Sure enough, just one lap after Vinnie made his move, we were about to catch him on the finishing hill and Jamie blasted off with Josh hanging on for dear life.

With just two laps to go, the situation was now 3 vs. 3, and Chris, Derek and I knew we had no chance of both catching Josh/Vinnie/Jamie and beating them up the climb. I especially knew my legs had some governors on them--whenever I went over 90% on the hill, they just locked up and had no fluidity to them. OUCH.

We kept them within spitting distance, but it didn't matter--I ended up going my 90% maximum up the hill the last time and getting last in the break. I was happy to have made the right selection and fought it out, but I also knew my legs were wrecked from a tough week and not being recovered. I knew the next day would be much better and the legs would be opened up . . .

Army Hill Climb Time Trial power file

Sunday started off with an early-morning BANG! in the form of a hill climb time trial on West Point's campus. A nice little 10-minute climb with 650 feet of elevation gained on excellent roads was made much harder by the incredible headwinds and crosswinds. I was very happy with my performance, getting 4th and posting a very good power number: 399 for just over 10 minutes, equating to 5.4 W/kg. I'd say that's not much above my threshold power when I'm completely fresh and ready to race, so that's really encouraging!

The team hung out, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and raced all day long. We had some brilliant performances (Becca and Rocco mixing it up right at the front of the Women's B and Men's C) but also some sad events (Brian running over a guy on the last lap and breaking his bike, the second year in a row at Army!).

Army Criterium: not the hardest race I've ever done ;-)

It was a great vacation from school, and I'm very happy my form came around and the team got to hang out and bond. We're going to finish the collegiate season strongly, and I am on track for the next three weeks of school, my final three weeks of Princeton!!

Check out some sweet picture from the racing this weekend!!

PayPal is now working!

Again, your donations are GREATLY appreciated! If each of you, my wonderful readers, donates just $10, we'll have, uh, lots of money . . . I think!

Just like Obama, we're doing it GRASSROOTS, BABY!

Upen races, DONATE!

I'll keep it short and sweet . . .

First off, I'm BEGGING you all, my wonderful readers and devoted friends/family/fans and the people who keep me motivated and going 110%, to PLEASE DONATE ANY SMALL AMOUNT TO MY TEAM, CICLISMO RACING!! It means a ton to us and we'll get you hooked up with the bi-weekly team newsletter, and with your help we'll even be able to afford chamois cream.

Here is a link to sign up for our NEWSLETTER, and here is the flyer for our soon-to-be-famous launch party:


On Saturday I had planned to ride from Princeton down to the Philly circuit race, do the race, and ride home. Well, I got started a touch late and ended up doing a decently hard TT with a full backpack on for two hours, only to get hopelessly lost in a great part of North Philly (wink wink). I ended up watching the race and heckling some guys, then rode home. But again, the ride home was a bear because I had a headwind the whole way and took an even longer, more circuitous route! ARGH. Got home after 6+ hours of riding and 5000kJ.


Notice the large spike in HR and elevation at around mile 50? That's the Manayunk Wall! Brought back many fond memories . . . it's crazy to just ride it after only racing on it, and it definitely hurts at the top!!


The team got up before dawn on Sunday (I didn't even get off my bike on Saturday until 8PM!) to drive down and race the TTT and criterium. We rode the TTT on our fast bikes, but did about 85% to just get things smooth and figure out our communication and rotation. We pushed it a little near the end, but were really happy with how controlled and smooth the effort was. We won by over 20 seconds!


The criterium was a very fast but easy race on a wide-open flat course with only three huge, smooth turns. A sprint finish if I've ever guessed a race correctly! With 6 laps to go, a break had been off the front with a consistent ~10 second gap for much of the race, and Austin and I finally decided enough is enough so we got to the front and ripped it. We had a lot of help from Chris Ruhl which lead us to bring the break back in just under 3 laps! Argh . . . to early. After some amazing late-race moves by UVM and the ever-powerful Josh Lipka, Austin and I did our best to get Big Bennette a leadout. I was tapped out just about 50 meters too early, and Nick had to do the whole final drag against UVM's endless stream of guys--he got third to a fast Colin J and a coordinated UVM team effort. Kudos.


Now I've been locked in my room for over a day writing my nuclear physics paper--AHHHHHHH!!! Then tonight/tomorrow I have to do my automatic control systems take-home midterm--DOUBLE AHHHHHHHHH!!!

"Just four weeks left, Nick . . . "

My first mobile blog!

I wish I could insert pictures into the iPhone's email . . . Although
I hear they're going to be upgrading to iPhone 3.0 pretty soon!

About to suit up and ride 45 miles to the Philly circuit race, then
ride home! First efforts since training camp, we will see how the
legs are going. I wish the weather was as nice as it was yesterday,
but at least it isn't cold!

Sent from my iPhone