Finally!

Got to do a mountain bike race yesterday...first race of the season and the first time I raced a mountain bike in like 10 years. It was fuckin amazin!

The last 6 months have been pretty hellish in terms of my priorities versus where I've been spending my time. School and my board exam (which was friday) completely consumed my life leaving little time for family and virtually no time for friends. Even last year during the cross race season, I'd wake up at 5am on sundays, study until right before the race, race then jump in the car and study until home. I never really got to relax and hang out after a race.

I had done a few road races this past fall, which were somewhere areound a 6 or 7 on the fun scale (out of 10). Yesterday, despite the fact that I wrecked, forgot gloves, was out of shape, and would have been happy with only 1 lap was definitely an 8 or 9 out of 10.

Race schedule

I've really missed the racing of last fall's cyclocross season. So, with next season's cyclocross season in mind I put together a tentative race schedule for the spring that includes some crit riding, time trialing, and mountain bike racing. It's all about getting racing experience and not burning myself out...so I'm psyched to try a little bit of everything.

I'll probably end up doing a second base period in late July through mid August, then start building and eventaully trying to peak during cyclocross season.

I'm still not sure about whether I'm doing a fellowship or just being a regular 3rd year medical student next year. I'll be one or the other come June and being a 3rd year will definitely make my goals of cyclocross racing a bit harder...plus if I do the fellowship I'll get to go to Durango, CO for the single speed mountain biking world championships!!!

Unfortunately, the descision is not up to me and I'm still waiting to hear from the pathology department about the fellowship I'm hoping for.

Livestrong

Just read this letter to the editor on velonews:
"First off, the Lance Affect, part, 1 got my son into competitive cycling and has brought home two national medals thus far.

Second off, The Cancer Lance Affect can only do great things to bringing greater awareness. As some one who has lost: mom (colon cancer) grandfather (lung cancer) uncle (throat cancer) cousin (age 11 leucemia): Power on dude.

Third, the Lance Affect, part 2, has inspired me to get back into competitive cycling. ... This 46-year-old, never has been, but who wants to be the best he can be (with a 40-hour job).

If he can come back and even attain some of his former fitness, then I can scratch the surface at what little I had back in the day (for to be a "has been", you had to at least been a once was, with me, that does not apply)"

Right on. Despite all the controversy around Lance I can't tell you how much his story has affected me. Like the writer of this letter, I've lost: Grandfathers x2 (melanoma and hepatic), grandmother (breast), 27 y/o friend (medulloblastoma), and my stepfather (prostate). As for me, although they're suppressed medically, I'll always have cancer cells in my body.

As cliche, annoying, and marketed it may be I still think about the livestrong message and really hope that Lance has a good season of racing. I'm personally really hoping that he makes it to the Tour of Missouri, if he does I'm gonna try and meet him. In the future, I'd love to do something that combines bikes, medicine, and cancer-support.

Med school sometimes sucks

It is a beautiful weekend out there, especially for the first weekend in February. I had marked my calender about a month ago that this weekend was going to be a break from school and that I would take Maggie and Cassidy down to Jasper, Ak for the Big Shark Training Camp.

I was pretty excited to get away for a weekend and not do what I do every other weekend: study lots, all day. I'm over half way through my second year of med school and every year after this promises to be a lot better than what I'm doing right now. Basically the first 2 years are spent in a classroom learning pharmacology, pathology, biochemistry, etc. At the end of this year I take my first national board exam, which promises to be a bitch and determines a great deal about what I can or cannot do in the future. Anyway, my exam is in May and I've been studying for it by doing lots of question bank questions (anywhere from 100-200 per week), reading review books, and trying to truly master the material that is in front of me. This is all to say, that school is a bitch right now and I can't wait to have my weekends back.

The weather in Ak turned out to be bad, so the team ended up moving the camp to Nashville, which would be like an 8 hour drive for me. Even though I was looking forward to riding w/ the team and having some fun, I just couldn't swing 16 hours in the car, trying to study, with a 4 month old in the back (who, btw is just recovering from being sick).

So plan B: ride in Columbia. One of the great things about living here is that there are 2.5 good mountin bike areas within a bike ride from my apartment...so with the weather looking amazing I headed out. Only to realize 30 minutes later that the trails were completely soaked. Now at this point, I always go into a prolonged internal monologue about whether or not I should ride. I don't mind getting muddy. In fact, I love it. But, I hate riding on rutted-out trails. I finally convinced myself to turn around and head home, feeling guily all-the-while that I wasn't studying. When I got home, I decided to just ride the trainer and work on my weakness: steady state work 1-1.5hrs just below my lactic threshold.

I hope I can look back at this time in my life and laugh...but I'm really ridiculous in these pictures. I'm acutally trying to study some pathology on my computer there. While Cassidy is holding my beer. Good girl.

Mtn Bike

Mtn bike for 2009! My old ala carte frame with bent-ass derailleur hanger has been sitting around my house for a year. Slowly I bought various pieces to make it complete again...and now she's done.

The rear wheel is built around a White industries eccentric hub...
Crankset: race face deus
32 x 16
Fork: Reba Race with a nifty little device that lets you lock it out from my handle bars
Front hub: XT
Salsa carbon riser bars left wide for some lever arm action
Salsa stem...

Rested....

So the past month has looked like this:
1. Chill with family
2. Drink good beer virtually daily
3. start school again, get grades (honored!), start studying for the boards
4. Gym 2-5x per week...worked on total body strength, core training, and a little interval training on the erg.

Now, I'm psyched to get back on my bike and do more than just commute to school. In a couple of weeks I'm heading down to a cat 3/4/5 training camp with big shark in northern arkansaw. Maggie and Cassidy are going to come down with me and I'll probably skip school on friday just to get an an extra riding day in. More reports and bicycle adventures to come...

Oh yeah, the picture is from an exhibit in the Portland airport of handmade bikes from Oregon. there was one bamboo bike, some kind of wodden bike, and a sick single speed cross bike from Ahearne cycles. If you haven't heard of Ahearne, check out his website. I emailed him once about maybe builing a special baby carrier for Cassidy and he responded with a really long and cool note all about his roots in the mid-west. I guess he's from KC or at least spent some time there.
There was also some amazing bikes from Vanilla bicycles.

CX Season

There are a lot of really great things about the bike community in and around my home town of St Louis. One of which has been the use of stlbiking and personal blogs to lay down some smack, describe our experiences, and see what others are up to.

It seems that lots of people are re-capping their seasons of racing in 2008, so I thought I'd take a minute and do the same. This past year has truly been incredible, my plans to race mountain bikes last spring and summer was pushed aside on account of having to deal with thyroid cancer stuff again and Maggie getting pregnant!

It was a rough summer, with virtually all of it being spent in Baltimore Maryland as a patient at Johns Hopkins (shit, that place is really amazing!). I think I only rode my bike 3x between May and September, because after a surgery in July my shoulder was all screwed up and I felt awful on a bike. So I decided to do some trail running instead.

School had begun again in August and I ran 3-5 days per week out in Cosmo park (Rhett's Run) and in Rockbridge. Looking back, it was a great way to get the fitness for cyclocross season. CX was something I was always attracted to because of the short and high-intensity efforts, running, and less need for endurance (which I don't have time to maintain or develop, so why bother).

Maggie gave birth to Cassidy at the beginning of October and we talked about how we wanted to spend our weekends for the rest of the fall with me being in school and her staying home. Trips back to St Louis to hang out in a park and be around bicycle racing seemed the perfect choice, as it gave us time to talk in the car and was a welcomed break from the seemingly incessant demands of medical school.

The first race of the year was at Jefferson Barracks. I entered with truly no expectations of myself at all. I hadn't raced a bike in almost 10 years (I was in college and 18 or 19 the last summer I spent racing a mountain bike). It turned out that the fitness I developed while running and the 13 years of commuting and riding for fun + a year of working as a bicycle messanger in Denver all syngergized. I ended up winning my first race! I'd never won anything before so I wasn't really sure what to do.
The rest of the season was just pure, hard, fun. I met a lot of really great people, made some friends and ran into some old friends...my old friend Eddy Klein who've I known since I was 15 was a part of one of the best parts of the cyclocross season...Team Seagal (http://teamseagal.blogspot.com/). Those guys epitomized why I'm psyched about racing my bike and why I now plan on maybe even doing some training for next year. If you've ever been cheered for or riden in a race with anyone from that team then you know that they have their head in the right place as far as compeition on a bike.

The racing season ended up well. The state chamopionships were the weekend of my 29th birthday and the weekend before finals of probably the hardest block of med school.

I showed up and had a great time but that was it as far as the race. The sunday race left me a bit confused as I'm still not sure if I signed up for the right category. I had been competitive in the B races all fall, so figured that the middle category of Cat 3 was the place to be, only to find myself up against guys that often place in the top 10 of the A race. That's one thing about bike racing that I still don't get. Is it our own job to decide when we are in the right or wrong category? What defines the right or wrong category anyway? Oh well, I'm glad I raced Cat 3 because I plan to do the same next year, although I'll probably race in the A race of the bubba series since I actually plan to ride my bike and train for next year.

Until then, I'll be in Columbia finishing off my 2nd year of med school and enjoying being a 1st year daddy! Oh yeah, that reminds me to write about how psyched I've been to join the Big Shark racing team: Ever since I was a kid I always thought that the Mesa and Big Shark shops were the best things ever. I could just tell that Mike and Russ did great things for cycling and really care about the people that work in and ride for their shops. The big shark team was something I knew about because my cousin Rory had worked in the shop and joined their racing team about a year ago and from what I knew about the team, it seemed a good fit for me. I haven't met many people at all on the team, but most of the riders seem to be in a pretty similar situation as me: it seems most have real jobs and families but they still find time to enjoy riding and racing their bike. After school ends in Columbia, we may end up moving back to St Louis so I really look forward to getting to know people not just on the Big Shark team but all over the St Louis cycling community.

For now, my current plan for riding next year includes:
1. a focus on training for cyclocross next year
2. racing in the single speed mountain bike class of the MWFTS (http://www.midwestfattireseries.com/)
3. a trip to durango for the SSWC mountain bike race in september
3. enjoying my new (used) road bike on the sweet country roads around Columbia and maybe a few time trial races, cus I suck at steady state stuff and need to get better!