Racing History and Racing future.

Still no goals for this year yet. I'm hoping to get my mtn. bike out on the trails in the next 2 weeks, have some fun, we'll see.
I haven't been riding much, by the end of the day I think I end up with almost 1 hour of riding, its hard riding, but not nearly enough. It would be nice to get 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour at night with 1/2 hour thrown in during lunch. That would at least sustain some fitness. Right now I feel like I'm just getting slower when I haven't even got fast this year yet.

I remember when I was like this, it was probably 3 years ago. I road my bike probably 18 miles every day, just to work and back when I started teaching high school.

Then I started working at Epic. It was a job I really enjoyed. Over the summer I gained some fitness working there, I would ride 15 miles to work, drink clif recover, work 4 hours or so, then 20 miles home, drink a pitcher of BLVD. pale ale and that was it. Doing that ever day for a few months got me fit. Keep in mind I was always late and pedaling as hard as I could with lots of hills.


Then in the fall I started teaching again and still worked up north on the weekends and 2 nights a week. My mileage went from 200 miles/week to 250 a week. I didn't race much this year, maybe 4 cx races, but I was getting faster.


The fitness I gained from doing this much mileage over 6 months was very good. My body's tolerance for pain was very good and I could ride as hard as I wanted.


Then I started a new bike store, worked alot more, road a lot less, and lost lots of fitness. When cx season came around, I raced every weekend, thanks to my friend Marcus who was driving to all the races and gave me a ride. I got fast again racing cx, it made me love racing again. My mileage was still pretty good, I'd ride 25 miles commuting, and 3 days a week I would spend another 25 riding down to build frames.

I'm not sure if riding an extra 25 miles only to spend all night building frames was good for fitness, but it was fun. Ricky and I built frames for over a year, but once I had a kid, and he got married, it kind of got old. Not sure how, but it is a ton of work. I think we spent over 350 hours between us to build 8 frames. Very good frames, but getting paid $1/hour to work hard all night sucks. We had our heads down working, drinking coffee at 11 at night cutting away on steel and I would get home to my pregnant sleeping wife to pass out only to wake up 3 hours later to get to work. It sucked in a way, but it was probably the most useful I have ever been in my life. I worked/road 20 hours a day it seemed like, it was awesome.

I raced a lot this year, it was 2009, my last year of teaching as well. I figured it was way cheaper to keep a baby at work and not pay an employee than to pay for day care, go to teach high school, and pay for employees, so teaching stopped.

Looking back, teaching was the hardest part of my life, both mental and physical, I can't believe I got paid so little to do so much. It didn't suck, but now that I am not teaching, I think it did.

2010 sucked for racing, I didn't ride much, except to haul my baby around on my touring bike. It was like weight training, but I didn't do enough of it. I didn't race much either, not much at all really, some local stuff, and Tulsa. I got beat alot.

This year for 2011, my goal was to race alot, ride alot, and hopefully get fast so when CX comes around, I will kill people. I am not going very good so far.

Thats the point of this writing. Trying to motivate myself to do this. Do what? I don't know yet. I guess get faster without killing my life. My life is shifting more towards family, which is good. It sucks though because the more I ride, the more I feel I'm pushing family away. I can't wait till it warms up, and I can put Benon on my bike to ride around. This summer the plan is for me to have Benon all day at the 18th st. store, it should be a good time. When the new baby comes in August, I'll keep him(its a boy) down here too.



So here's races that I might do. If I feel good and can travel, I will. Iowa is doubtful, but is fun so I'm not taking it off the list. Joe Martin I physically can't do, plus the wife graduates, which is exciting. I was on a late night ride and was asked if I had any hobbies other than bikes, the answer was no. Then I was asked what my wife did for fun. I didn't have an answer. She really is just a badass, who works super hard at anything she does. Right now it is being a dentist, it has been this way for 11 years. She will finally have her degree May 7th. Its pretty exciting. Spending all this time focusing on one goal, working as hard as you can, getting all A's all the time, exceeding everyones expectations over and over takes more energy than I can ever imagine. I'm sure if I focused this hard on one of the things I am into,racing, wheelbuilding, framebuilding, managing 2 bike shops, being a dad/husband, owning 2 bike stores, I would be very good, eventually. Right now I feel inadequate. The first thing I would have to cut would be racing.





May
1 Joe Sheehan RR
5-8 Joe Martin
14 Tour de grove
15 Alley GP in STLOUIS
21 Lincoln crit
22 Lincoln Crit
27iowa
28iowa
29iowa
30 Iowa
June
3-5 Wichita crits
4-5 O'fallon crits
10-12 Tulsa Tough
18 Rolla Crit
19 Hellbender RR
24kc
25kc
26kc
July
1-3 Tour of Lawrence
17 Shawnee Mission Mtn. bike race
August
13 Landahl 3/6 hour mtn. race
27 Sedalia Crit
28 Warrensburg Crit
September
2-5 Gateway