Little City Stage Race

7-8 July-

Not going to Superweek opened up some other opportunities, one of which was this weekends Little City Stage Race.  It was the first year of the race so the turn out was pretty small.  They had put a lot of focus on the Masters and Juniors Categories though with some decent prize money, total through all the Categories was $11,000 and for the CAT3 field it was $1,000.  The race was going to be held in Woodfords, CA and Minden, NV.  Some of the Categories started out with the Time Trial while others started out with the Crit.  For my Category we started out with a 9am TT followed by a 1215 Crit.  I really was hoping the Crit would be first for us and then the TT, as then I wouldn't of been marked in the Crit from having a good TT.  The race was points based (Omnium) instead of time based like a normal Stage Race.

Stage 1- 9.5 mile TT Woodfords, CA

I had one of the last start times of 0937 which was fine with me.  It would put guys in front of me to try and chase down, which I like, gives me something to aim for and try and catch.  The TT course started out on a gradual down hill and then went up a small hill prior to turning around and returning.  The last 2 miles was brutal up a false flat that just seemed to take forever.  I went out and tried to take it a little bit easier on the way out and then hammer back the return trip.  I didn't feel all that great on the second half but still had a decent Time Trial.

Category: Elite 3-
Results: 2nd out of 37 (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1IVAT_YIM_Ram5EZURNb2RTR0U/edit)
Link to ride on Strava:http://app.strava.com/rides/12891659
GC Placing: 2nd out of 37

Stage 2- 60min Criterium Minden, NV

Having a good TT and putting me in 2nd in the GC was going to make for a tough Crit.  I was going to have to be on defense for the whole 60mins and really keep my eye on the Yellow Jersey and the 3rd, 4th, 5th place guys.  To make things even tougher they announced at the start of the race that there would be 3 "hot laps" right off the bat with cash primes the first 3 laps.  Then there would be 2 points primes at random points throughout the race and then there would be 11 other merchandise primes.  This would make for a tough race.  I held back and didn't go after the cash primes and just sat in for the first few laps.  When the first points prime came I went for it and ended up 3rd across the line with the 3rd and 4th place guys in the GC taking 2nd and 1st in the prime respectively.  Half way through the race I started attacking and couldn't manage to get away.  I don't think it helped that the USAC Official let everyone in the field know that I had just come off winning the Davis Crit, not the kind of announcement you want prior to a race.  I couldn't manage to get away but was able to win a few primes, which included a bike pump (that was a good one since I don't have a pump at home while I am on leave) and then a bottle of win etched with the race name and date, which was cool.

Once I couldn't get away I just went back to the top 10 and managed to recover a bit to get ready for the final few laps.  With about 10mins to go the GC Leader started moving up quite fast and went pretty hot into the tightest corner on the course and pedal hoped and slid out taking himself and almost taking out a few other riders.  A few laps later I was sitting 3rd wheel and when we went through the chicane another guy pedal hoped and took the guy out right in front of me and I barely missed the crash.  At that point there was only 3 laps left so I made sure to keep my position up front.  With 1 lap to go I was still up towards the front and picked it up on the back stretch to keep things strung out.  Going into the final 2 corners which happened to be a chicane I was sitting 2nd wheel, just where I wanted to be.  With about 200m to go I started to come around the guy and sprinted for the line.  With about 100m to go another guy came around me who I found out was the 4th place GC guy and we ended up side by side at the line and I managed to get him by less than an inch.  Probably the best sprint of the year that I have been it, it was even closer than the sprint a few weeks back in Korea.

Category: Elite 3-
Results: 1st out of 37 (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1IVAT_YIM_Ram5EZURNb2RTR0U/edit)
Link to ride on Strava:http://app.strava.com/rides/12891662
GC Placing: 1st out of 37

Stage 3- 66 Mile Road Race

With having a solid TT and winning the Crit I went into the road race with a pretty solid lead.  The problem was I had to defend the yellow and do that without a "team".  Fortunately a team from Reno came over after the crit and offered to help me out as much as they could during the race as none of them were in GC contention.  I was relieved to have some help but knew it would still be a hard day.  The race was on a 11 mile loop that was going to be a tough because we had to cover it 6 times and it had 2 small climbs and then a 2 mile false flat back to the start finish line.  The other half of the course was a gradual down hill.

The first lap stayed together and then the start of the 2nd lap is when some guys got away.  None of them were GC contenders so myself and the 2nd place guy just let them go and had each other marked.  I tried attacking a few times over the next 2 laps but couldn't get away.  After that I just sat in the group and then when we would get to the climb I would just make sure I was around the other top GC guys and make sure none of them got away.  On the last lap we saw a few guys up the road and they ended up coming back to the peloton which left 4 guys up the road.  There was no way we were going to catch them so one of the guys from the Reno based team that was going to help me came up to the front and I asked him to just sit up front a keep the pace high for the last 3 miles.  When we got to about 1K out I attacked and got a small gap, but the group pulled me back with about 700m to go.  I sat about 3rd wheel of the main group and just kept my eye on the 2nd place GC guy, he was just sitting back so at 400m I attacked again but couldn't make it stick and got out sprinted by a few guys including the 2nd place GC guy.  Luckily there was only 2 or 3 people between us which wasn't enough for him to take the GC from me.  Overall I was happy with how the road race played out, even though I didn't finish that high, with a 9th place finish.

Category: Elite 3-
Results: 9th out of 37 (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1IVAT_YIM_Ram5EZURNb2RTR0U/edit)
Link to ride on Strava:http://app.strava.com/rides/12891677
Final GC Placing: 1st out of 37


Overall I was really happy with how the race went and I feel that I learned quite a bit over the 2 days and 3 races.  It was a great opportunity to get some upgrade points which was why I stacked the schedule so heavy over the past few weeks and this weekend should give me enough points to upgrade.  I will submit my upgrade after next weekend and hopefully be racing Cascade Cycling Classic as a CAT2!

A big Thanks to my Dad and step mom Brenda for coming all the way out to watch the Crit on Saturday.  We then went out to a nice steak dinner with Brenda's brother and I managed to play a little black jack, which always makes for a fun night.  Also a huge thanks to all of the support that I have been getting over the past few weeks while home.  It is always hard to just show up to the local rides and not know anyone, but over the last 12 months I have been around enough to get to know these guys and gals, and we truly have a great group of local riders here at "home"!

Also for anyone that is interested in doing a great stage race, check out www.littlecitystagerace.com.  For a first year event they did a great job and put up some big money and great primes for the crit.  I am looking forward to hopefully being able to come back and race next year, hopefully they have a CAT2 field, as I am not in the masters category yet and that is all they have for 1/2's this year.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

 

Right before the start of the crit, right after I finished my can of FRS!

 

Coming out of the chicane and onto the front stretch

The sprint for the win in the crit, yeah it was that close

Picking up my primes after the Crit, bottle of wind and the pump!

 

Putting on Yellow after the Crit

 Up the final climb of the road race course, sitting back to the left in yellow

 Talking with Todd after the race, he was one of the guys that helped me out during the road race.

 The top 8 for the overall GC

Top 3 for the Overall GC

Day 0 through Day 2 at US Military Cycling Team Camp

7 Feb 2012-

Some of you have been following me on FB and Twitter so you have a good idea of what is going on, but for those of you that aren't I will catch you up on what is going on.  But first below are some links on how to stay up to date with the latest information on camp:

US Military Cycling Team fueled by FRS Facebook Page
My Twitter
See what kind of rides we are doing via Strava: http://app.strava.com/athletes/199228

Travel Day-
I left Korea at 0730 Saturday morning from my apartment to head to the bus station (2130 Friday night here in FL), and started what was scheduled for a bus ride, 3 flights and a shuttle ride.  Everything went as planned, all flights were on time, no fee for the bike and 31 hours later I arrived in FL at 2330 on Saturday night.  I got the bike put together and got in contact with the camp director and the team manager.  Come to find out there was a local ride Sunday morning, but they were meeting up at 0530 in the hotel lobby.  I figured no better way to kick the jet lag than a solid local group ride, so after about only 1h30m of sleep I was wide awake and slowly got ready for the morning.  My coach said do whatever I needed to do to get the legs opened up, so although a 2 hour group ride might not of been ideal it was awesome, see Day "0" for more on it...........

Day 0-
So I briefly covered the morning of Day 0, but here is the rest of the day.  Once arriving to the group ride we got the bikes out and ready to go.  It was myself, Bill (Our Team Manager), Sean (Our Team Director), and Andy(Long time Team member) and myself.  I had never met any of them, they had never seen me ride and I am just the "new" kid here at camp.  All the knew was what they had seen on my resume which is just mediocre as a cyclist, at best.  So they gave the spill of how the local ride works and how it was going to be pretty fast with some local CAT1/2's and some PANAM National Champs.  Well crap, I guess my legs really are going to get opened up, nothing better after 30 hours of travel.  Well the ride took off and no more than 5 miles in the attacks started.  Pretty quickly we had Andy and Sean off the front and I got tasked with marking people that tried to bridge up to them.  Eventually myself and one guy got out into no mans land in between the peloton and the break.  I was told to do nothing and just ride his wheel, why would I do anything when we had 2 guys up in a break of 3.  Yes it was a training ride, but this was a fierce training ride.  There were a lot of guys mumbling in the peloton and telling myself and Bill to do work, but O well we were just there defending the break.  Sean got lead out by Andy and got the first sprint, pretty cool to see the Stars and Stripes ripping apart a local ride.  There was a second sprint towards the end of the ride and I got into some good position and then got my legs ripped off by some sprinters, great experience but hard to sprint for a line when you have no clue where the line is.

After the ride we headed back to the hotel to get ready for everyone else that was arriving to camp.  I was able to get in a quick nap and work on some homework while watching the SuperBowl and then Day "0" was a wrap.

Day 1-

The morning started off with staff and rider introductions and then we headed out for an 80 mile ride.  It was at a casual pace, double paceline and just getting to know everyone.  The weather was great, got some good tan lines.  Once we came back from the ride there was Subway waiting for us for lunch and then we had some downtime.  With downtime comes nap time, so 1h30m later I was up from my nap and headed to uniform issue.  The new Primal Wear Kits are sweet, and after today (Day 2's ride) I can comment that they are super comfortable.  After uniform issue we had a Team Briefing on "Social Media".  I learned a few things, but really enjoy the social media aspect of things and know how important it is to market products that you like and that you are sponsored by.  I eat this stuff up and try to get as much exposure for the great companies that sponsor our team, so twitter and FB are key to this.  This blog helps out a bit as well, but the amount of people you can reach with 1 single tweet is amazing.  For example we are trying to get our Team Page more "Likes" on FB, so I tweeted it and with the help of some great people that 1 tweet spread to over approximately 24.5K people, all in a matter of 6 hours.  So yes, social media is AMAZING!

Day 2-

Today started out with team pictures and individual pictures and then we headed out for 90 miles.  Today was different than yesterday, we split up into 2 different groups.  The Masters and Developmental guys and then the Elite guys.  By quite surprise I was sent to work with the elite guys, which was amazing.  We worked on a rotating pace line and riding in close proximity.  I don't have the opportunity to ride with this amount of cyclist in a training environment at this high of a level.  It was awesome to get feed back from all the guys on the spot.  They were able to point out the small things that I was doing wrong and then help me with the simple things as peeing on the bike, without peeing on yourself.  As a triathlete, when in race situations you don't stop or slow and you just go (refer to my Kona blog).  I was also able to learn how to properly pick up bottles out of the car and get motorpaced back up to the group at a high speed.  All great things that you typically don't get to work on during an everyday training ride.  This evening Jim gave us a briefing on Nutrition, obviously an important part of training and racing.  He is a nutritionist in the Air Force and gave a great briefing.  He is also the developmental team director and I look forward to bouncing some nutrition questions off of him throughout the week.  I feel extremely grateful to be riding with the elite guys and just soaking it all in.  Like I said in my post on FB at the start of camp:

As day 1 of camp is about to begin, I sit here and realize how blessed I am. I have been very fortunate to come across great opportunities throughout my life and none of this would be possible without great family, friends and peers. I am not where I am because of who I am, I am where I am because of the people I am surrounded by. Thank YOU!

That pretty much is why I am here, not because of what I have done, it is because of the great mentors, family, friends and supporters that have guided me down this path.  That is why I am here and doing what I am doing, because people believe in me, and that fuels me and inspires me to continue to grow not only as an athlete but as a person, so like I said above THANK YOU!

Below is a link to some pictures from Camp:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.338187899555374.84634.101441499896683&type=1

2011 Year End Review

2 Jan 2012-

Well 2011 has come to an end, and fortunately I was able to be home for it this year.  I had been planning for quite some time to come home and surprise the family for the holidays.  I hadn't been home for the holidays in 6 years and I figured I would surprise everyone.  I had to tell a few little lies along the way, but in the end my immediate family had no clue.  A few of my cousins were in on the whole thing so thanks to them I was able to pull it off.  Below is the video of all the surprises:

So to say the least 2011 ended on a high note.  A few weeks back I got some exciting news that I was selected as the Osan Air Base Male Athlete of the Year as well as the Pacific Air Force Male Athlete of the Year.  I have not won an athlete of the year award at a Majcom level, so this was something that I was hoping to achieve this year.  I believe the packages are still up at the Air Force level, but have not heard who was selected as the Air Force Athlete of the Year.  A few days after receiving that news I got an email informing me that I was selected to the US Military Cycling Developmental Team.  The Military Team has been around for a few years and is slowly growing, this year being the biggest expansion of the team.  The team is having a camp in the beginning of February in Florida and I will be headed to that to put in a solid 7 days of training and two races.  I am looking forward to this great opportunity and being able to represent the Military during my future cycling endeavour's.

I am focusing on the Tour de Korea which is in April, and have made some changes to my training and coach for this off season.  I am being coached by AF Capt Zach Garrett, a long time cyclist and also a member of the US Military Cycling Team.  Zach is putting a strong influence on my cycling for the next 4 months with a little bit of focus on my swim and run, just trying to maintain.  I will be back with Scott Defilippis come May and we will be back at it with hopefully a focus on Kona.

Looking back on 2011, to sum it up with one word: UNBELIEVABLE.  I sit here and look back on it and still don't comprehend how everything feel into place.  It wasn't because of what I did, it has more to do with who I was surrounded by.  I couldn't of accomplished everything that I accomplished last year without the great group of people that I am surrounded by and supported by.  I trained more than I have ever trained before.  I achieved all of the goals, plus some that I set out to accomplish last year.  I was lead by a great coach and trained with some amazing people.  I had huge support from my supervision at work, and thankfully for their support I was able to travel and race quite a bit this past year.

Below are some random stats from over the year of 2011:

Swim- 260.6 KM's/86h17m- AVG 1h40m a Week
Bike- 7,692.5 miles/409h56m-AVG 7h45m a Week
Run- 1,247.5 miles/158h53m-AVG 23.5 Miles a Week
Total- 9,102 miles/655h7m- AVG 12h20mins a Week
Raced- 2 Running Races/8 Tri's/12 Bike Races Total 22 Races
5 Overall Wins/5 AG Wins/7 Top 5's 

66 Off Days/3 Countries Visited/Crossed the Pacific 6 times via plane/

 Some random thoughts about the above numbers:

If I hadn't raced the TdK, I would of raced a lot less this year than years past.  I biked 3X's as much as last year, and my total training time is almost double from last year.  I only missed the podium for triathlon in my AG at IM Korea and Kona and I finally made the overall podium in a big race.  I actually trained with a goal in mind this year, and stayed focused to accomplish that goal.  All in all I like the above #'s, except this random #, I took OFF 66 days this year.  I have found consistency is huge, and I was a lot more consistent this year, next year I would like to see that 66 # down in the 20ish range.  Someone asked me the other day if I ever "relax", my response was YES, I went out and rode my bike for an hour today.  That is RELAXING to me ;)

All in all I am extremely happy with how 2011 went and I am looking forward to 2012.  I believe it is going to be a breakthrough year for me and things are already starting off on the right foot.  Once again I can't thank everyone enough for all of their support.  All of my family is behind me in my passion for what I do, and everyone else that continues to support me I thank you.  I have been told that I inspire people, but the funny thing is, those are the people that inspire me to keep going and doing what I do.

Here are some photos from the year: