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!