Uwharrie Race
last Saturday it all began. I woke up early went down stairs and to my car and grabbed my wheels that Steve H at Just the Right Gear in Salem VA just prepped. I grabbed my Stan's crow tires and sealent and then ...... about an hour latter....... my Bike was ready to race tubeless and all. Friday night i spent a couple hours cooking all the food for the weekend so I gathered everything, packed up the explorer and headed south to Blacksburg to pick up Arron Hudson.
By 4:30 that afternoon I was ready for a pre ride on the course. I headed towards the trails, and saw Alex Ryan. Alex said "Hey how you doing?" then in that split second you could hear psssstttt.... I looked down at my leaking front tire and pointed at the leak and said "what do you think?"
I threw a tube in the front and went for a fun pre-ride.
Camping that night was a bummer, we had to stay too close to State Route 27 in NC so it was loud all night. But it was still good. Josh Draper, Aaron Hudson, Aaron Snyder, Brandon Draugelis, and some other guy Josh knew all hung out by the fire and we mainly just listened to Josh talk about some of his life expirances. He can tell a funny story...
The morning of the event I got to meet the rest of my team minus Jon Hamblen. I thought it was cool to meet Andy Applegate. He's a pretty well known Coach and cyclocross racer http://www.a2coaching.com/a2coaches.htm
Still he isn't Todd Roberts I can't drop any coaches name without Todds info: http://www.pqasllc.com/
The race was as expected off at a blistering pace. I had two doods between me and Andy at the start. The first guy biffed it in a turn and I had to do little work to catch the next guy. So I get on this guys wheel and I can still see Andy, then on a slow climb I could tell we where lossing ground on him and I knew it was getting more important to make a pass. Finally by time I passed dood I could tell Andy (and the main pack) was already at the fire road. This fire road is like 3/4 mile. In the first lap if your not in the group once you hit this then your off the back. This year was no different.
Good race, Great Course, Team cannondale Landrover took top honors care of Mark Heckman.

One last thing. For any dumbass out there that says "Mountain Biking is easier now, Back in the day it was for real"
This is the fourth year in a row this event has taken place. The winning time was ten Minites faster than any year in the past.
Yo, chew on that.......

Florida...
I had the flu last week. I got over it by Thursday but not soon enough for a good event on Sunday. I raced and quit with a lap to go. My pace was off and I felt bad. I knew if I finished it then I'd have to take additional time to recover so I figured I'd salvage what strength I had and look down the road to the Uwharrie event. Allot of guys have upgraded to semi-pro from my field but the top three experst all posted times that where under the pro's top 5 times. Fast field, rough start. I'm not too dissapointed. It sucks when you go out and have a bad day and you don't understand why but I knew going into the event that there was a 20% chance I'd come out feeling fresh and a 80% chance I'd come out feeling behind the eight. No I never gave up, but after 20 miles I figured I'd call it a day and be thankful. Uwharrie is in two weeks. Looking foward to a race that I'm feeling fit for.
Time is ticking fast now. I have Uwharrie on the 25th, then April 1st mountian lake, April 15th Dragons back and perhaps April 28th in Frederick MD.

Updates coming soon. I Promise!!

FROM GREAT TO GOOD TO SUCKIN'

Lynchburg appeared to be my day, I was in third place for 2/3 of the race and suddenly I bonked bad. I was the last finisher, I got passed by 4 guys on the last lap. I've never cramped like that. It's now two days later and I'm having a tough time putting weight on my right leg. As of now I'm unsure if I'll race at bedford, the Douhaut race is certainly out of the question. So it goes, I'd rather do poorly becuse I failed rather the bike failing.

Back in the saddle again......................

Dude saturday kicked butt. I raced at Danville.
Great Day. Good finish, no mechanicals.
I can't wait for Lynchburg in two weeks.

Pump track?
Oh yeah! started yeasterday. Check out www.leelikesbikes.com for more on what I'm working on.

Thanks to Angelia for spearheading the project, and Skip for the cool design, we now have an awesome tile floor in the kitchen. No grout yet but we can walk on it! The backsplash will be next.