Blackmail???

These just in from a friend with a nice camera! Not sure if I should really be documenting this or not but for the sake of everyones entertainment I have decided to share the laughter! Below you will find a number of pictures from MTB nationals...enjoy!

Bring on the mud!!!


Watch out...



Sooo Graceful!

Look at that hot bike!

Messing around on my team mates downhill bike...I gotta go try that sometime!


Ok, that is the gallery of the day!

I'm Alive!

What can I say...it's been a busy month and I haven't had time to even think about this blogging thing. So my apologies to those of you who check this regularly and let me try and catch you up on life.

So sense my last write up I have returned to Banner Elk, NC and started to get settled in! I spend some time off the bike and tried to get caught back up on that wonderful thing we call school.

I spent the first weekend back traveling to a Mountain Bike race with the team and just helping out while taking in a bit of Mt. bike culture! It was a good time and of course made me want to race myself...but don't worry I didn't even bring my bike so it wasn't an option!

Kristi and Ally about to start their race


hanging at the trailer with Ally and Eric


Aaron & Eric being silly before their race


At some point in the mess of my time back home we had a little celebration for Sheedy's birthday and we had some fun seeing how many people we could fit in his kitchen!


Some more time was occupied by random rides, trail work and just trying to get ready for Collegiate Mountain Bike Nationals, which were being held here in BE and hosted by us! I created a few fun costumes to where as entertainment as this is the only nationals I've been to without competing. The weekend went great and all the hard work put in paid off. Mostly hard work by Doug and Brian and a few others pitching in what they could.

No photos of Friday's Cat costume yet so I'll work on that!

How would you like to wake up to this early on a Saturday morning!!!


Mike Anderson...the stud of short track!


that's right bringing in the start and stripes!


Eric Thompson, also killing the short track!


Aaron Bradford, a.k.a. - Kacey's cyclocross coach!


Ben and Aaron just being happy dual slalom boys


Watching the races


The one and only amazing Ally Stacher


Hannah Rocks!


Chris and the coolest helmet out there...


Mountain bike nationals doesn't go down without a bang. A mob gathers at a mountain top to hold up a long held tradition.


Oh and I did do a cross race in there someplace too, which was painful and tons of fun at the same time! Just did another cross race today and I head out early tomorrow morning to do another! Good times, good friends, good races! Couldn't ask for much more. So to sum it up life is good and I'll try to get you an update a bit sooner this time. Headed back to MI this Tuesday to do ICEMAN and catch up with the gang a bit. Even taking a few of the boys from here at school so it should be a fun and entertaining trip!

Hope all is well with everyone and hope to hear from you soon!

Back to Cali...

The trip all began with another drive to the airport. Lucky me I was taking a school trip to Charlotte to see the Body Worlds exhibit (awesome by the way). Not so lucky me it was the day before my flight. Regardless I didn't want to drive back to BE Sunday night and then back to Charlotte Monday morning early. So one of the kids did me a huge favor (Thanks Matt!) and dropped me off at the airport at about 6pm Sunday night. Yep, thats right you can't check in till 4 hours prior to your flight (mine was at 7:35am)...so that meant I wasn't even going to get into the main terminal area...

Here it is folks that glamorous cyclist life you all have in your heads! Don't get me wrong I love it!!! This is where I camped out with my bike box, wheel bag, overweight check in bag and backpack! I tried to make a somewhat padded little bed but the night still amounted to sleeping until my hip went numb from the hard floor, switch sides, repeat...


I did lay down quite early as I was very tired but by 3am my body decided "enough of this" and was awake. So I grabbed a treat from the only thing in the area!


The most excitement of all were the bathroom breaks...sprint down the hall to the bathroom, go as fast as possible and get back to the bags, semi hoping someone would be trying to take something so I could at least have some fun and tackle someone or something!

So eventually I get to CA, lug everything to a bus, which takes me to the car rental and once that is in place life is good!

This is what I find at Dana's awesome home in CA!!! A big thanks goes out to Dana and her boyfriend Chris for providing me with a place to stay and an amazing dinner on more than one occasion!!! Thanks Guys!!!

Dang...I forgot a picture of the outside

Walk into the living room...yeah it's a pretty nice view. I'm pretty sure the TV is longer than I am tall!


kitchen...it has some really cool old style to it


And probably my favorite...the music room!!!


Eventually later in the evening after catching up a bit with Dana, it was so nice to see her again and to meet Chris, she took me over to Chris's place on Venice Beach where I was going to be staying.



Chris's studio. a.k.a.-home for the week



And let the competition begin!

DAY 1

at elite nationals in LA, California! I only did the 500meter time trial and...

I did get a personal best but it still was really rather slow. Not necessarily because I'm slow but more because I need to actually train for the event. In any case it was a good warm up for today and I'm now just a few hours out from the keirin and then the scratch race tonight, so let the real racing begin!

500M = 40.289sec...good news is there is a lot of room for improvement!

Day 2

Keirin started out the day and that went less than stellar. Made a pretty nice mistake in the semi-finals and wound up getting myself a spot in the 7-12 competition rather than the 1-6 final. Anyhow I race the 7-12 a bit better but finished 2nd, which should have gotten me an 8th place...but wait it gets better. I got relegated for a move in the race, I apparently came down into the sprint lane overlapping another riders wheel so...

Finished up with the scratch race. 40laps, one finish, one shot at a good result. I probably worked a bit more than I really should have, ok, no i definitely did. I was over geared and my legs were feeling the burn pretty good from having to try and repeatedly get on top of it. Anyhow when it came down too it I got 7th, which isn't too bad. Would have liked to have at least been top 5 but it is bike racing! Theresa finished up pretty well taking away 3rd and the bronze medal.

I was signed up for the sprints and points tomorrow but I pulled out of the sprints today so I'm just doing the points race in the evening tomorrow! Should be a good time...and I'm gonna gear down...we'll see what happens...

DAY 3

Now I'm sure you can imagine how difficult this was but I got up in the morning and headed out to do a recovery/warm up ride on the pathway along the ocean...I could hardly make myself go out into the beautiful morning sun...just kidding, it was amazing!




Daddy if I could have I would have brought you back the most beautiful sailboat I could find...but until I become rich racing my bike this picture will have to do!

p.s.-i think it might be awhile so keep that in mind!

So as far as the racing...
points race didn't go to well for me. A few people thought I road alright but I was rather dissatisfied with my result overall. I just felt like I wasn't really in the race. My ability to recover from hard effort was probably the biggest problem. In the end I finished up 14th overall. Good news is that I got the National Championship for U23! So thats not too bad...second National Championship with in a month!

It's been a good year and I've learned lots of valuable lessons!

Saturday morning the chilling out began! I went for a walk along the boardwalk and checked out all the little shops and vendors. Even got to watch a street show with these guys break dancing!...I wanna learn!




Then I went back to the track to watch the rest of the races. Visited with some of the riders at a little gathering that night and called it a good week!

Stars and Stripes!

Collegiate Nationals was upon us.
Location: San Diego California!

Here we are taking up a whole section of the sidewalk at the airport on our way out.


1st night in town we head to the beach to catch dinner and also take in this site...



This is how we were transporting bikes...cringe...i'm sure a few of the marks on my bike were courtesy of San Diego Nationals


I can't say that I remember all the events and how everyone placed but I'll give you a bit of a run down.

Day 1
pursuits in morning and 500 in afternoon. I didn't do the pursuit but a few of my team mates did and earned some points for the team. I did the 500 in the afternoon and came out with 5th, just barely getting me on the podium.

Day 2
Started the day with Italian pursuit and team sprint. We came out with a 5th place in the Italian pursuit...would have been great to have made top 4 and gone onto finals in the evening but that wasn't the case. Then the Womens team sprint went great with Chloe leading it out, Kristi taking the 2nd lap and myself finishing it off. Our time was good and strong for a 2nd place!

The evening brought on the Points Race...as I had been looking forward to, as it is really the only mass start at collegiate nationals. And things went well! I want to to an entire race write up but I will have to save that for another time. Lets just say I missed the first few sprints but swept all the rest and dominated the field.



on the rollers


there they are...


the stars and stripes



Day 3
I got to play around and do some sprints!

Chloe and I on the sprint podium


Then we got a day to chill out and hang on the beach!



and it all ended with another beautiful sunset!


and a plane ride back to B.E.