Tour of Somerville

Last weekend was a bit of a nightmare as the 2nd stop in the US Crit Series was the Tour of Somerville in New Jersey. We were to do a bit of a warm up race on Sunday to open the legs up for Monday's big race but as we arrived we shortly found out we were not registered. To make it worse the race is full. No race for us. Later that day Josh and I went training to get the legs loose and the good luck continued as my rear derailleur decided to wrap itself around my cassette completely bending. GREAT! The big race finally rolls around on Monday and my warm up consisted of trying to convince the Mavic pit guys to change out my derailleur instead of ride a pit bike.. finally they swap one off one of their bikes (thanks Justin!) and I am off to race. Nothing real exciting as after my call up before the race I went straight to the back to chill for a bit. My bike didn't work so hot so my race didn't fair to well.. I tried to help Mark as much as possible at the end but my gears were all over the place and I wasn't much help. He finished 11th holding onto his lead overall and Rich and Gavic both rolled top 25. So not a bad for the team but a terrible day for me as I was 40something... gay. The only good thing is Tara got to travel with me and meet some of my family for the 1st time. So with the bad weekend behind me I was home for a couple days and its on a plane tomorrow to CSC Invitational for the 3rd race in the US Crit Series. Mark is in 1st, I'm in 15th and we are 2nd in the team GC only behind AEG Toshiba. This weekend is pretty cool as they only invited 8 amateurs in the country to participate on an all-star amateur team and me and mark are on it. This is a tough race with tons of hitters but looking forward to throwing down. Hopefully things will roll better this weekend. till then! m@

it's time again....

After a couple nice weeks at home its time to hit the road again. Off to the east coast for the 2nd leg of the US Crit Series and one of the longest running bike races in the country... The Tour of Somerville. Looking forward to catching up with my teammates as well this weekend and getting back to business. Will keep ya posted. m@

Tour of Lancaster

It has been a rough week this past week as I have been waiting for my new saddle (I broke it at Twilight), and it has been getting worse and worse basically screwing my position on my bike. Wednesday I threw in the towel as I felt super different and my knee and hip on my right side were killing me. Yesterday before the race I finally got my new saddle and Jim B hooked a brotha up and my position was back to perfect. Unfortunately my legs still were a wreck and super sore. Felt like I had gone running the day before. Oh well, not much to worry about as A&F rocked up with 12 guys for our nice little local bike race. I felt like I was riding someone else's bike but could still go ok. From the gun we just attacked like crazy, almost attacking each other and finally 6 guys got away.... and 5 of them were A&F guys.. kinda funny... they lapped the field and we all continued to attack.... 4 of my teammates were able to get back up the road without the lone other guy that lapped (poor fella) and with 1 lap to go I lead out Gammer to take the 1st 5 spots.. I also won the field sprint for 9th in doing so. Kinda feel bad having that many guys at a race but it just happened that the boyz were in town.. oh well... Jim B got 1st sporting a pink helmet (stylin...), Tim S. 2nd, Brandon G. 3rd, Josh E. 4th, Ryan G. 5th, M@ 9th, Chadwik "I'm the boss dammit" was 10th. One of our sponsors Mazza Vineyards was there and presented me with 2 custom bottles of wine they printed up for the US SE Crit team... I'm on a bottle of wine!! How pimp is that!! check it out....

Tour de Welsh Hills... chalk it up!

Back into it after a nice easy week... and I found myself racing again. A race close by my house, about 30 minutes away and on Mother's Day. Had a long weekend as Saturday Tara and I drove to Buffalo to surprise her mom for Mother's Day.. hung out with them for a while, threw some money around at the black jack table, then drove home. About 11 hours total in the car and got home around 2:30 in the morning. So needless to say I wasn't on my "A" game today but it worked out well. The course was a 5 mile circuit with rolling hills and 1 little climb up to the finish. I tried to get away a couple times up the biggest hill but no one would let me go anywhere and just chased me all day. I tried probably 10 times with no luck so decided if everyone just wanted to ride around all day I was fine with a sprint. Coming into the last time up the hill I followed a bit of an attack and halfway up threw my own attack in and rode away solo to the finish taking another win. The best part was my mom and Tara came out to watch today so it was a great Mother's Day gift to my mother. Looking forward to getting back to a bit of training and then another road trip in 2 weeks. time to cook out and have a few (just a few:-) beers for mothers day... till next time! m@

Our Lavish Lifestyle...

Just thought I would shoot out some photos of our trip last week. And of course send a thank you to Paceline Cycles for hooking us up with our "team van" for the Crit Series... You saved our asses thats for sure!

Our "Team Van" - stick 7 people in a van for 10 days.. people stop being nice.. and start being real....

Make it Rain!

Its official!!! My teammate Mark has won the overall at the SE Crit Series... We started off with a bang in Athens and carried that momentum all week helping Mark place in the top 10 almost everyday. This is huge for our program and huge for Mark... I was able to scrape some points up after helping Mark and finished 24th overall and we also finished 4th in the team classification which was nice. Cycling news wrote a pretty funny article about Athens.. if you have not read it yet check it out at http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/apr07/apr30news2 (scroll down to "Pigs Fly"). I am sitting in the Charlotte airport right now trying to get home so I will keep this short. Can't wait to get home to my girl.. its seems like I haven' seen her in forever... I have some more cool stuff including a ton of pics to post but after I sleep for a few days I will get them up:-) 8 races in 9 and TONS of driving and I am tired!!! But it was well worth it and after all the prize money we won this week Mark's new nickname is "The Rainmaker" Check out Mark's blog as well for some funny pics and cool write ups. till next time! m@

SE Crit Series Update

Things are still going well for us down south. Mark has been riding his heart out and with a couple more top 10's has gone back and forth from leading the overall and 2nd. Tonight in Greenwood I think he might have taken the lead back. We will find out tomorrow. The team is starting to come around and actually riding better then we were at the beginning of the week. A&F is also currently in 5th in the team classification which is pretty nice since we are ahead of a handful of "Pro" teams. I have been doing what I can and squeaking in there and am sitting 24th overall right now. Feeling a bit tired but I think the entire field is feeling it as well. Looking forward to the next few days and am going to try to keep Mark up there for the overall. Wouldn't mind keeping myself in the top 30 overall as well as there is quit a bit of money up for grabs for overall placings. Either way this series is gonna be great for the fitness as we are getting a nice little ride in in the morning and the races are fast at night. Have some great photos but just had to post this one with Rich and Frankie trying to be "A&F model material".