Lawson's Blog

Tryptique Mont et Chateux

2011-04-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

Tryptique went pretty well for the team. We went in with a bunch of options due to the strong team we had with Nathan Brown, Gavin Mannion, Ian Boswell, Ryan Eastman, Rob Squire, Larry Warbasse, and myself. Saying that, we could have had a better first stage. The race was set along the border of Belgium and France which meant strong crosswinds on open roads. Just as they promised, the crosswinds split up the field and about 50 km into the stage a group of about 20 guys slipped off the front. We only had Eastman up there, but the gap opened up so quickly that there was no use in chasing. Eastman ended up finishing safely in that group with everyone else in the pack. I didn't contest the sprint and finished near the back of the group, so this meant I had an early start in the TT the next morning. The TT course was about 9 km of flat roads with a pretty strong cross wind. I put the hammer down from the start and came through the finish with the fastest time by about 20 seconds.

For the next two hours or so I sat in the hot seat and watched rider by rider fail to top my time. Fortunately for me, the wind started to pick up and I ended up taking my first win of the year!

Definitely an exciting moment for me, but the race wasn't over yet. Eastman was sitting in about 15th after the TT, and we knew we could get him higher up on GC. Later that day was stage 2B. It was about 120 km that finished with circuits that involved the Kuisberg (??). This was about an 800 meter climb with probably an average of 10% and pitches up to 15%. Going into the base of the climb the whole race was together. Trying to set something up for the team I hit the front with about 2.5 kms left and Eastman on my wheel. Next thing I knew we had a gap on the field. I just put my head down and went all out until we hit the base of the climb. I pulled off and just screamed 'GOO!!!'. Eastman took off and was able to hold off the majority of the field to finish fourth and move into 9th overall. Definitely a sucessful day for the team! The race ended up a 162 km queen stage that had about 10 KOM climbs. The team was pretty aggressive at the beginning and at about 50 kms in I was able to jump into a two man break. Oh boy, that was a great idea...NOT. The pack stopped chasing behind us and our gap balooned quickly. Before we knew it we had over 3 minutes. We rode tempo until we were caught about 60 kms later. We had been away for five of the KOMs and I had won all of them putting me into the KOM jersey at the moment. Shortly after we were caught we started our two 15 km local laps. Nate jumped into a two man break with the winner of the day before and opened up a decent gap. I was toast and when we hit the climbs on the lap I went backwards. I spent the last 25 km off the back just trying to survive. Nate ended up being caught with a mere 800 meters to go, but Gavin salvaged the day for a 6th place in the sprint finish. Eastman held onto his 9th overall, but I ended up losing the KOM jersey by one point. Ah! All in all, a great weekend of racing for us. Next up is the first nations cup of the year with Tour of Flanders on Saturday. We are getting out tomorrow to pre-ride the course. Hopefully Belgium continues to amaze us with solid weather. It's a weird change getting a glimpse of the Belgian sun...I swear it looks the same as the one back in the US though. Until next time!

Tryptique Mont et Chateux

2011-04-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

It's the morning of our first race in Belgium, Tryptique Mont et Chateux. It's a three day stage race with four stages that is for riders under 25 years old. It starts later today with a 170 km road race. The profile is flat but being a race in Belgium it will probably be harder than any other mountain stage. With cross winds and aggressive riders I'm sure the entire race will be a suffer fest in the gutter. This is a pretty big race in Belgium that a lot of good Development squads send some of their top riders too. I've kicked this bronchitis to the curb, and ready to race. Not really sure where my fitness is though, as I have been taken it pretty easy since Croatia. I guess that just means I'm super rested!

Yay...

2011-03-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

I love being sick...NOT. Ever since the last day of Croatia I've been fighting a head cold. This has basically kept me on the couch here in Lucca while everyone else is out enjoying the amazing weather. I've been hating it. I started feeling better yesterday, so I decided to head out with Ian, Nate, and Gavin for a few hours. I kept it pretty easy the entire day while the other guys did intervals and what not. We got back to the house after about two hours then I took my TT bike back out for another thirty minutes or so. I felt fine for the rest of the day, but this morning I woke up with a sore throat. I've been coughing a fair amount too. This definitely sucks as the plan was to go out for a solid 5 hours today. Something that I really wanted to do in this beautiful Tuscany region. Hopefully this thing will quit bugging me, and I can get on with my life! We head back to Belgium on Monday and then our next race starts on the border of Belgium and France next Friday.

Istrian Spring Trophy

2011-03-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

We're back in Lucca, Italy after finishing the Istrian Spring Trophy in Croatia. The race ended pretty successfuly with Larry Warbasse finishing in 7th. This was just a preparation race, so results weren't a big objective. The main goal was to just get as much out of the race as possible. That being said, we still worked hard to get a result and not look like dumb Americans! The first stage ended with a 500 meter cobbled climb. Turning onto the climb I was sitting about fourth wheel. Perfect position for a decent result. I followed to other guys, but made the mistake of trying to shift down into my small chainring. Due to the amount of power we were cranking out my chain slipped right off. There was nothing I could do, but get off the bike and yank it from in between the crank and frame. By the time I was able to do that the entire pack had passed, so I just rolled in and lost about a minute. Larry was able to slip in at 10th and move up a few spots in GC.
The next day was the longest stage of the race at about 160 kilometers. Ian Boswell and I tried hard to get into the early break but we just could'nt get into it. After three guys got away the entire team just chilled in the pack until about 15 km to go. With about 5 km to go we had a sharp turn onto a steep climb where the finish was at the top. Larry had great positioning starting the climb, and not wanted to leave him to fend for himself, I went all out to make it up to him. Three guys, including the yellow jersey, gapped themselves from everyone else, so I then went to the front and did an all out pull. I lasted about a minute and when I pulled off I looked back to see Larry and only three other guys still with me. I chilled for the rest of the climb and came in about two minutes down. Larry hit the cobbled section with about 400 meters to go in third wheel, but couldn't find a solid rhythm and ended up dropping down to 15th which put him into 7th overall.

The last stage looked like it the flattest on the course profile, but was filled with enourmas winds. The plan for the race was to just get someone in the early move, and then to try and lead Gavin Mannion out for a possible result in the sprint. I ended up being the guy that made it into the breakaway after about 45 all out kilometers. I got off with three other guys including Tadej Valjevec. The four of us worked really well together over the next 20 or so kms and built up a max gap of 3:30. About halfway through the stage there was about a constant 25 kilometers of climbing. It would be up for a few kilometers then barely back down again before we started climbing again. Valjevec basically pulled up every single hill at solid pace saying that he needed us for the last 50 kilometers of gradual downhill/flat with a killer tail wind. When we finally stopped climbing with 50 kms to go we had about a minute and a half gap. We basically went balls to the wall and when we had about 20 km to go the gap had gone down to 45 seconds. We continued to work well with eachother, but got caught with only 8 kms to go. We were all dead and drifted back into the destroyed peleton. The other guys were saying that over the climbs the Swiss National Team blew up the pack and when we were caught there were only about 60 guys left. I just sat at the back of the pack for the rest of the race. Gavin was on his own for the sprint and ended up finishing an impressive 9th place. Larry also held onto his 7th place overall. All in all, a sucessful race for the team. It was great preparation for our next few races.

We are all back in Italy now for about another week before heading back to the team house in Belgium. Our next race is the notorious Tryptique Mont et Chateux. A big race on the border of Belgium and France that usually attracts some of the top U23 riders. I've heard that a big part of the race is decided by the time trial, so hopefully it'll be a solid race for me. The only thing for me to do now is get rid of this cold that I'm fighting. I'm missing out on some great training in beautiful weather here in Lucca because of this thing. Hopefully I'll soon be better. Until next time!

Croatia!

2011-03-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

This is my blog for the past two days. Didn't have internet yesterday to post it up.
For the past few days I’ve been experiencing a part of the world that I’ve never been to, Croatia. So far, it has had its ups and downs. The weather has been horrid, but the food more than makes up for it. It’s hard to swallow that I gave up Austin weather (75 and sunny) for Belgian weather (50 and sunny) for Italian weather (50 and raining) for Croatian weather (50, pouring rain, and windy). We went out to ride the prologue course and within 10 minutes of riding we were absolutely soaked to the bone. The TT course is 5.8 km starting with about a two kilometer descent. After bottoming out in the valley we do a two kilometer ascent, and then it starts to flatten out, but still gaining elevation, to the finish. The major decision to make was whether to use a time trial bike or not. I decided to use the TT bike. We finished out the day back at the hotel before another great dinner. The food here is probably the best I’ve ever had at a race hotel. It’s a massive buffet with an insane variety of foods. This might be one of those stage races that you gain weight throughout the weekend.
Today was the official start of the season for me. My first race in Europe and first pro race. The name is the Istrian Spring Trophy and is a UCI ranked 2.2, not the highest ranked race but there are a few big names here. For the prologue I was stuck in between Tadej Valjavec (top 10 in the Giro last year, but later was suspended due to blood levels) and Michael Rasmussen. Kind of intimidating… I started the TT pretty tough on the downhill, but didn’t take too many risks. By the time I hit the climb I was ready to hammer. I put in a decent effort on the early parts of the climb, and progressively went harder and harder. I was hurting pretty bad by the top, but I slipped it back into the big ring and hammered the rest of the way to the finish. I crossed the finish line with the new best time of 8:53. I was extremely happy with that time, and stayed at the finish to watch rider after rider fall short of my time. Finally, last year’s winner crossed the line with a stunning 8:27. A blazing fast time for that short of a course. I was still ecstatic with second place in my first pro race. I stepped up on to the podium and received a blue jersey for God knows what. The rest of the team did awesome. We don’t have any results yet, but off of Marcello’s times I feel like no one was below the top 30. Tomorrow is our first road race with about a 150 km stage. The profile looks pretty hilly, but we have a strong team here and a lot of options. I’ll check back in later!

Yes....5 Minutes....BMW...Vanilla Mostly

2011-03-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

Titles are probably the hardest thing about writing a blog. I've spent the majority of the past 10 minutes staring at the blank field at the top of the page. Nothing seems to be popping out at me, so for at least now I'm going to just title my blog the first PG-Rated thing that comes to my mind. Bare with me on this whole blogging thing. Although I've had this site for about four years I feel like it's a whole new world for me.

Todays day in Belgium wasn't too special. After everyone clambered out of bed we had breakfast and set out on a ride. We split into two different groups just because a few of us had seperate workouts. I ventured off with Nate, Nate, Nate (yes, there are three guys on this trip with the name Nate), Eamon, and Marshell. After a solid 3 hours of wandering around Belgium's country roads and canal we made it back home. Suprisingly, it was a decent day of weather here. Maybe a little chilly but at least the sun was out. Everyone pretty must just chilled for the rest of the day in front of the TV watching the crash-fest of what today's Paris-Nice was while our team director and mechanics set out for a long drive to Italy with all of our bikes and clothes. Tomorrow we will fly out of Eindhoven to Pisa before ending up in Lucca. We are all really looking foward to getting out to the Tuscany region where the training is absolutely amazing.

Season Starting

2011-03-11T12:14:00.000-08:00

Hmm, it's been an incredibly long time since I've updated my blog. For this, if any one still reads this thing, I apologize. I just started to get farther and farther behind, and next thing I knew there was just too much too write about. I'll do my best to sum it up though. Over the off season I signed for the Trek-Livestrong U23 Development Team and also moved up to Austin for school. The past few months have been amazing. I've had an incredible time with the team over our two team camps. It's going to be an awesome year, and I can't wait to get it started.

I'm actually in Belgium at the U23 house in Izegem with the National Team. It's the end of an extremely long day for us. Flying over from the US, you basically go two days with about two hours of sleep due to the difference of time zones. For the past three hours I've found myself nodding off to sleep at almost every moment. It's been awesome...NOT. Finally, it's about time for bed so I'll actually be able to stay asleep now. It's been a fun first day of the trip with hanging out with my teammates for the next few weeks. We also met our team director for the next year, Marcello Albasini. We had a quick meeting after dinner which really got us all excited for the up and coming year. On Sunday we head over to Italy for a quick training camp before our first race in Croatia the next weekend. I'll keep y'all updated!

Worlds

2010-08-20T01:31:00.001-07:00

Whew, it's been a long time since I've updated my blog! A lot has happened since then! After Nationals, I stayed home for a few weeks before heading over to Europe for the Worlds trip. The team for this trip was Ryan Eastman, Paul Lynch, Nate Geoffrion, Eamon Lucas, Anders Newbury, and myself. We competed in a stage race in Belgium, Liege-La Gleize, the week before worlds to help bring back our racing form. The race didn't go exactly as planned as far as results go, but we all came out of it feeling good and ready for the World Championships in Offida, Italy. We got to Offida the Monday before the racing started with the Time Trial on Friday. I spent the next four days studying the 28 kilometer TT course with Jr National Team Director Ben Sharp along with my coach, David Wenger, and parents who had come to Italy to watch me race in my final Junior World Championships. The course was not a typical TT course and one that I felt didn't really suit me. It started out on a 1.5 kilometer climb before a technical descent. The next 8 km were basically flat with a false descent. At 12 km you started a monster 4 km climb and then at the top it flattens out for a little bit and then you get on rolling hills for the next 10 kilometers. With 4 km left you had a fast descent before turning onto the 1.5 km finishing climb. I started the TT as hard as I could on the uphill, and when I got to the flat part I just got as aero as I possibly could. I ended up going through the first time check at 12 km in the lead with about 12 seconds over second place. I then lost a little time on the climb and came over the top 19 seconds back on the leader. I just put the hammer down for the next 12 kilometers and ended up losing a little more time by the finish. Luxembourg's Bob Jungels ended up winning the event with 27 seconds over Germany's Jasha Sutterlin and I completed the podium with less than a second behind Sutterlin. At first I was slightly dissapointed in third place as I have had my eyes set on the Rainbow Jersey of World Champion ever since I finished second place in the same event last year, but it's the World Championships! It's pretty hard not to be happy with a podium place!

Sunday was the 122 kilometer road race. We did 8 laps of a 16 kilometer course. The course started out same as the time trial but turned earlier and went up an extremely hard 3 kilometer climb before turning back onto the TT course with 4 km to go. The weather the day of the race was extremely sunny and nice and toasty. This meant a lot of hydrating and ice-filled socks stuck down our jerseys. USA got a call up to the front before the race due to our 4th place in the UCI Nations Cup the previous year. The race started off pretty chill, but the heat was definitely taking its toll on riders, including me, right from the start. For the first five laps I was basically just floating the back thinking that this was not my day. I felt weak and was hurting at points where I should have been excelling. With three laps to go when the real race for the rainbow jersey was starting up, either the adrenaline was starting to kick in or I just started feeling better. By now the pack had gone from about 160 riders to only about 50, and by the time we hit the top of the climb it was down to about 30. The next lap I went to the front about half way up the climb and drilled it. At the top I looked back and saw that only about six guys were able to follow me. This had all the major countries represented, and I thought for sure that this was the move. Unfortunately, we were brought back by the TT winner, Jungels, a few kilometers later. Going into the climb on the last lap I was definitely feeling the fatigue from the last laps effort. A small group of about four had gotten off the front, and had about a minute going into the climb. The Russians killed it up the climb, and the entire time up it I was cramping. I fought through the pain and was able to come over the top in the lead group that was now about 20 guys. We caught all but one of the guys in the break and hit the base of the finishing climb about 15 seconds back. I rode up the climb in about 4th wheel, but right when the sprint started I was super-chopped and had to stop sprinting. My legs over-loaded when I started sprinting again, and started going backwards. I ended up finishing the day in 14th. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the race turned out. Of course, I was hoping for a better result, but I rode my own race and there were definitely people that were stronger than me in the race!

Nationals

2010-07-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Bolton, Massachusetts at my team directors house for the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic starting on Friday. I came here after an extremely successful trip to Bend, Oregon for the Junior National Championships. I won the 24 kilometer time trial by 2 minutes over Eamon Lucas of Specialized. I then went on to win the crit after multiple attacks and then spending the last 7 laps solo. For the road race a break of 7 got up the road early in the race. They got about 2 and a half minutes up the road and with about 20 miles to go I got off the front with Tanner Putt. We caught the break with about 5 miles left and on the next climb Tanner attacked. I then marked him and then countered it. I held about a 200 meter gap all the way to the finish and completed the trifecta.

Karlsberg and Next Few Weeks

2010-06-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've already posted some pictures from the Junior Nations Cup Trofeo Karlsberg stage race in Germany, but I haven't written up an actual report from the race yet. Overall, I don't think that the race could have gone any better. The team (Ryan Eastman, Nate Geoffrion, Kristo Jorgenson, Benny Swedberg, and Anders Newbury) went in with good morale after we finished third place in the prestigious Pays de Vaud in Switzerland the weekend before. The team rode perfectly all weekend long and with their support and dedicated team work I was able to finish in the lead group of 20 on the first day, and then went on to win stage two after bridging up to a breakaway that already had Ryan and Anders in it late in the race. I then defended my lead in the time trial the next morning and increased my lead to 11 seconds over Bob Jungels of Luxembourg. The stage that followed that afternoon was pretty relaxed for me. The team just rode on the front all day long and kept me out of the wind. That stage ended up ending up in a field sprint with a Slovenian winning. The next day was the last stage. I still had an 11 second lead over Jungels, so our plan for the race was to have the team to stay low for the first half of the race and then after that to get on the front and bring back the break. After that I would take over and do my best to defend the yellow jersey and win the overall. The guys did a perfect job and dropped me off with about 10 km to go with the race all together. I then marked the other overall contenders and went into the last kilometer with one rider up the road by about 10 seconds. As he wasn't that far down on GC I went to the front and did my best to bring him back. He ended up staying away and won the stage by about 2 seconds over the pack that I was in which allowed me to take my first stage race victory in Europe. On Sunday, I'm leaving for Bend, Oregon for the Junior National Championships. I'll be doing the road race, time trial, and crit. After that I'll be heading over to stay at my team directors house for the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic Stage Race. When that is done I'll drive up to Pennsylvania for the Junior Track National Championships. It's gonna be a fun next few weeks!

More Trofeo

2010-06-08T16:12:00.001-07:00

Trofeo Girls

2010-06-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Trofeo Karlsberg Stage 2

2010-06-05T07:33:00.001-07:00

Trofeo Karlsberg Stage 1

2010-06-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Pays de Vaud

2010-06-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm over in Germany after spending the last week in Switzerland. From last Thursday through Sunday the Junior National Team competed in the UCI 2.1 Pays de Vaud. This is one of the most challenging junior races on the calendar with the tough competition and the extremely challenging profiles up in the Swiss mountains. The race kicked off with a 2.5 kilometer prologue. I ended up taking the win over a Swiss rider and then Lasse Hansen of Denmark (bronze medalist at the world time trial championships last year). Stage one was 98 kilometers and wet and rainy throughout the stage. The team rode great together and we were able to bring back a two and a half minute gap to the break. Going into the sprint I was in great positioning, but my front wheel was taken out by the eventual winner. I nearly went down but somehow kept it up although I completely ruined my front wheel. Stage 2a was a tough stage with two extremely hard climbs in it. The plan for the team was have the break within a minute at the base of the climb with about 25 kilometers to go. We executed the plan to near perfection with Kristo Jorgenson, Ryan Eastman, Anders Newbury, Benny Swedberg, and Nate Geoffrion, pulling the break from a minute and a half to 50 seconds by the base of the climb. After the climb started only Anders and Ryan were left. They pulled hard for as long as they could and when they pulled off the break still had a minute on the pack. I then got to the front and started pulling. When I looked back a few minutes later I saw that only one rider was able to stay with me. I kept the tempo up and barely bridged to the break at the top of the climb. After a long descent and another 500 meter climb to the finish I ended up sprinting to third place and extended my lead in the GC. That afternoon was a 12 kilometer out and back time trial. I won the TT by 10 seconds over Hansen and grew my lead to 16 seconds over Hansen and 52 seconds to third. The third and final stage was definitely the hardest of them all. Including the dismal weather, cold and raining, it was set for an epic day. After an extremely hard climb about 40 kilometers into the 120 kilometers I was isolated from my teammates and was bridging up to the lead group of 10 that including second place on GC. Over the next 70 kilometers I made sure that none of the riders got a gap off the front of the group and kept an eye on all the riders that were still up there on GC. With about 15 km to go Hansen attacked. I quickly covered him along with the rider that was 3rd on GC and a few others. I was subjected to many more attacks over the next few kilometers and it wasn’t until about 5 km to go that I finally cracked. I ended up losing almost a minute on the stage and dropped down to third overall.

Overall, this race was a great success. The team proved that they were one of the strongest in the world and earned a great deal of respect from countries all over. We also ended up with two stage wins and a third place overall. This definitely boosts our confidence going into the UCI Nations Cup Trofeo Karlsberg here in Germany starting tomorrow and ending on Sunday.

Houston Grand Crit

2010-05-17T18:20:00.001-07:00

Photos courtesy of Peggy Keedy

Once again Bike Barn put on another Houston Grand Crit. Located in Downtown Houston, this race always offers a great atmosphere for riders and spectators along with some tough racing in the good ol' Houston heat. After spending the majority of the past month in Europe I was in no way ready to be out racing in 90+ degree weather, but as these conditions will be similar to those in Italy during the World Championships in August I sucked it up and sweated it right back out. The course is basically a huge drag race with about a half mile out on Allen Parkway before turning around and heading right back. This made for an extremely fast race with the pace going over 30 mph frequently. I mainly just sat in for the first 40 minutes or so, and only went with a few attacks. When Mark Purnell gave the pack six back-to-back primes the racing really started to heat up. With about three laps to go and after prime number five I got to the front and drilled it. When I looked back I was in a selective group of about eight including a past winner of the Houston Grand Crit, Kevin Kremke (Bike Barn), along with about all of the major teams in the race. Over the next lap Kremke and I were the main contributors to the pace and were able to create a decent gap over the field. With a few more people helping with the work load over the next lap and a half I was sure that the break would stick and started to position myself for the sprint. Knowing that Kremke would be the man to beat I fought my way onto his wheel and sat there as many last minute attempts to break away were foiled. With about 200 meters to go Kremke jumped and started the sprint. I attached myself to his wheel and with about 150 meters to go I started my own sprint. I was able to come around him and hold off a charging Brian Fawley (Parks Place Dealership) for the win!

Europe...again!

2010-05-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Europe, but this time with my team out of Massachuttes, Hot Tubes. We got to Belgium last wednesday, and left the next day for a 3 stage Friday-Saturday Stage Race in Holland. Friday included a 5.6 km time trial early aftrnoon and then a 60 km crit (yea...a crit in Europe. Crazy, right?) later in the night. I ended up winning the TT by about a second and a half and another 7 seconds ahead of 3rd. Despite some great team work in the crit I lost the yellow jersey due to some time bonuses offered in the intermediate sprints. The next day was a little under a 100 km circuit race. I was in second overall and four seconds down. I was feeling good during the beginning of the rainy race, but crashed only 5 km in. By the time I had gotten back up and worked out the kinks in my sore body and bike (my handlebars were crooked and the shifter lever was turned all the way in) the pack was long gone, and without a caravan to help me get my way back up to the pack it would be near to impossible to catch back up. I ended up finishing the race early and watched the remainder from the sidelines. What sucks the most though is that my ENTIRE team dropped back once they saw that I went down, including Yannick Eckmann who was in 6th overall and in the white young riders jersey and Stuart Wight who was in 10th overall. When I got back up and realized that my bike was too messed up to ride on, and told them to go on without me it was too late for them to get back up to the lead group due to the fact the peleton had split in the strong crosswinds. They ended up chasing for the rest of the race, but never made it up. Yesterday we had sweet revenge on the European peleton in a kermesse in Vinkt. I ended up taking the win with Stuart getting 5th and Anders taking 11th. The team rode great the entire time and at one time had four guys in the eight man winning break. From that break I attacked with about 60 km to go and went solo for the next 45 km. I was caught by two others with about 15 km to go but one of them got dropped right away. The last 5 km was a game of cat and mouse, and I ended up leading the sprint out from about 200-250 meters to go and was able to hold on for my second win of the trip to put up a victory salute and an amazing victory cry! We go to France on Thursday for our last race in Europe, Morbihan. It's on Saturday and Sunday with a road race on Saturday and a TT and another road race on Sunday.

Paris-Roubaix Juniors

2010-04-15T12:18:00.001-07:00

What an experience! Just to be competing in Paris-Roubaix is a dream to most people and until last Sunday it had always been one for me. Now it's a reality. I was able to not only race in Paris-Roubaix, but I was also one of the front runners. After about 90 kilometers out of the 125 I was one of the only ones that was able to stay with the World Champion, Jasper Stuyven, of Belgium along with Daniel Mclay of Great Britain. We were later joined by a Russian rider. We stayed away until the end of the race and fought it out for the win on the famous Roubaix velodrome. I was able to take third place in the sprint with Stuyven winning by about half a bike. It was incredibly close between me and Mclay, but he nipped me with a bike throw. For the podium we stood on the same podium that the pros stand on, and with the pro race being the same day there were tons of fans all around the stadium. It was definitely a moment I'll never ever ever forget! The team did an absolutely amazing job, and I honestly would not have been able to do what I did without them. About one kilometer from the first section of cobbles (one of the most crucial points in the race) I flatted, but one of my selfless teammates, David Kessler, stopped and gave me his wheel. I was then able to make it back up to the peleton with the help of Peter Taylor and Matt Libscomb who basically motorpaced me up to the pack. For the rest of the race Juan Carmona was an excellent teammate by helping me move throughout the pack and giving up his water for me and my other teammate, Ryan Eastman. It really was a team effort and a team podium place. Also, without the encouragement and advice from our team director, Ben Sharp, we couldn't have done it.

Photos of the race:
http://www.velofotopro.com/coureur;6873;1;CRADDOCK-Lawson.html#

Video of the finish on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/video/video.php?v=412383343178&ref=mf

Video of the finish and podium on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZW9T7KMdr0

Limburg and Roubaix

2010-04-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

The last two stages in Limburg went pretty well, or a lot better than the second stage at least! Stage three was definitely a race I would call epic with hail starting to come down from the skys about 40 km into the race. Being a true blood Texan and everything my first instinct was to attack. I rocketed off the front of the pack on the next KOM and brought 6 others with me including my teammate, Ryan Eastman. We worked well together and quickly built up a lead of about a minute. On the finishing circuits with about 12 km to go I blew HARD on the long, steep climb and ended up getting caught by the pack and then spit off the back of that. I ended up finished 8 minutes back...haha. The final stage was probably one of the best. I got into a 10 man break about 10 km into the 125 stage. A group of about 5 that had Eastman in it bridged up to us about 15-20 km later and we had about a minute. We all worked somewhat well together and stayed away until about 20 km to go. I looked back and saw the pack about 5 seconds back on the climb. I then attacked off the front of the break and three others came with me. Next thing we knew it was about 8 km left in the race and we had 45 seconds. Two others bridged up to us which made it 6 of us. We ended up staying away until the finish. I tried to suprise the break going around a turn with 250 meters to go and got a small gap, but I blew up with 50 meters to go and ended up finishing 5th on the stage. Still not bad at all. Tomorrow is the junior Paris-Roubaix and the for the first time in three years the Junior National Team will be lining up on the start line.

Belgium!

2010-04-04T01:01:00.000-07:00

So, I definitely should have updated my blog a looong time ago, but I kept putting it off. I'm currently in the Limburg region of Belgium for the Ster van Zuid Limburg Stage Race. We have a few hours before we depart for the next stage, so I thought what better time than now to update my blog. The race started off pretty well when I won the 5 km prologue by 6 seconds over Danny van Poppel and 8 seconds over Mike de Bie (both riders have amazing racing blood). The team (Ryan Eastman from Cali, Juan Carmona from Conneticut, Peter Taylor from Cali, David Kessler from Colorado, Matt Libscomb from Georgia, and me) did really well with Eastman placing 7th and Kessler getting a solid 11th place. Stage 2 didnt really go too well and we ended up losing the yellow jersey due to a break going away on the finishing circuits, and we didn't have the horsepower to bring them back. Stage 3 starts in a couple hours and it looks like its gonna be another epic day. It's about 9 degrees celcius and raining, woohoo!! I'll keep ya'll updated on how it goes.

Belterra, Driveway, Walburg, and Pace Bend

2010-02-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Belterra

Belterra was a fun race outside of Austin, and was another great event put on by Holland Racing and Andrew Willis. The course was about 3 km long with two small kickers that had U-turns at the top, one about halfway through the course and the other at the finish. I stayed calm for the first half of the race, but when there was a strong move with all the major teams represented I knew I had to be there. I made a solo bridge with about 40 minutes left in the race up to the now 6 man break. The 6 of us worked hard and held off the Team Hotel San Jose driven peleton to contest the win. I tried a late move with about a kilometer and a half and got a small gap but nothing more. I was caught a little after the turn with about 300 meters to go, and sat up to watch David Wenger of Super Squadra take the win over Andrew Dalheim of Metro Volkswagon.

Driveway

This was my first race out at the Driveway course, and I have to admit it was a great expreience! Once again I chilled for the first 45 minutes of the race. Right at the halfway mark I put in a hard attack and got a decent sized gap solo. I held onto this lead for about half a lap until the extremely fast backside of the course where junior gears could only help so much. Once I was caught I just went back to sitting in the pack and waited for the finish. Going into the last lap everyone was fighting for a spot at the front. Fortunately, P. J. Rabice helped bring me up to the front to a great position onto Squadra's Alan Ting. After an extremely hectic finale I ended up taking 5th on the day with THSJ's Josh Carter taking the win over Alan, with THSJ's Will Ross taking third.

Walburg

What a great way to spend the first half of my birthday! Walburg has been known for as one of the worst weather a race could possibly have, but this year it didn't really hold up to its expectations. It was pissing rain the entire race, but the freezing temperatures weren't there along with the huge winds. The winds are usually what shatters the race into little pieces, but at this year's edition the racing didn't really happen until halfway through the last lap. An early move went off, but was brought back and after the racing was nice and steady. With about half a lap to go a flurry of attacks went off. I tried getting away a few times, but nothing would stick. Finally with about 10 miles to go I settled in in the pack, and THSJ sent their entire team up to the front and started driving the pace. This was during the cross wind section and after a few miles the pack had blown up. There were only about 15-20 of us left in the front group with about 10 of those guys being a member of THSJ. I just sat at the back of the group waiting for the sprint. San Jose once again led out their super sprinter, Josh Carter, and he rocketed away from everyone with about 200 meters to go to take the win with a huge margin. I started the sprint pretty far back, but was able to come around everyone else to take 2nd place over Russ Walker.

Pace Bend

Pace Bend has always been an extremely hard race in the past and this year definitely did not disappoint. I started the race pretty aggressively and after about three of the 13 six mile laps I found myself in a strong break of about 15 people. All of the teams were in the move with a good majority of the strongest riders in Texas. We quickly got a big gap on the field, but the break wasn't working very well together and we were caught about half a lap later. I then just sat in at the back of the group until about 2 and a half laps to go. I got into another break with a bunch of other strong riders. After some confusion I found myself off the front with Matrix/RBM's Pat McCarty and THSJ's Stefan Rothe. The three of us stayed off for about half a lap until a few other riders bridged up to us. Going into one lap to go there was a group of about 10 off the front with THSJ well represented with four of them including Carter. They kept the pace up in the break, but we were caught about a half a lap later. I then put in another attack with McCarty which formed another break with a few of the same people. That group ended up holding off the field and contested for the win. Carter once again sprinted away from everyone to take his second win of the weekend over Matrix/RBM's and current P12 State Champion JT Cody. I once again started the sprint a little too far back, but wasn't able to make up as many places and ended the day in 7th.

These are two of my really good friends, Tracy on the left and Courtney on the right. They woke up early Sunday morning and drove over three hours to come watch my race after being at a dance competition all the day on Saturday which they won! Thanks a lot for coming!

Tour of New Braunfels Road Race

2010-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Adrian Vlok

This past weekend was the first weekend of racing on the Texas racing scene. Saturday was a 64 mile road race in New Braunfels with Sunday holding a crit/circuit race. I opted out of Sunday's race just to be on the safe side as I don't want to put my season in jeopardy by joined 70+ testosterone filled men in an early season crit. The road race played out better than I could have hoped and I was able to take my first (but let's not hope last!) win of the year and my first mass start win in the P 1/2 category!! The course was about 16 miles, and fairly flat for most of the course. The winds definitely played a factor in the outcome of the race especially on the small country roads with cross winds. The race started out aggressive just as I expected in an early season race. I knew that the pace would be fast and hard for the first half lap or so before a small move would get off and the peleton would calm down. This is exactly what happened and 8 miles into the race Matrix/RBM's, Pat McCarty, got off the front with Robert Biard of Team Hotel San Jose. The pair gained about 20 seconds before Ian Dille of Super Squadra bridged up to the break. The gap swelled to about 45 seconds by the time the pack reached the end of the first lap. Unfortunately the race was stopped due to people making bad decisions and crossing over the yellow line, so that the officials could give us our second warning of the day. Going a little off topic here but seriously...is it going to take a car taking out half of Texas' top racers to learn that the yellow line rule is placed into effect for our safety? The rule isn't there to punish riders it's to help try and prevent accidents that could easily be avoided. I honestly believe 100% that the officials made the right call in stopping the race, and nothing disappoints me more or makes me madder than riders that are blatantly disregarding the rules and then getting mad at the officials when the fault is really there's. I have to admit that a few times I'll accidentaly drift across the yellow line, but I make a conscious effort to abide by the rules and stay on the right side of the road. As a junior racer I have many role models that I race with and against and if something were to happend to any of them I'm not sure what I would do. Maybe it's just me, but I would gladly be spit off the back than have a head on collision with a truck...Ok back to the race. The officials let us get back to racing, and by then the gap had gone up to about two and a half minutes. I honestly the break would stick so I basically threw all racing tactics to the wind and went on an all out attack. The next thing I knew I was dangling about 15 seconds off the front with Garmin Development rider, Thacker Reeves. The two of us worked hard for about five kilometers before being caught. For the next lap and a half I just sat in the pack to recover and save energy. Over that time frame Dille had dropped out of the break and Biard had flatted leaving McCarty off the front solo. About a quarter way into the lap McCarty was finally brought back. There were many counter attacks, but the only one that stuck was made by Lady Haga aka Chad Haga of Super Squadra. McCarty had jumped with him and the two started to slowly pull away from the field. Seeing this as a great move to be in I put in a hard attack and found myself chasing solo. I caught the pair about a mile and a half later and the three of us worked perfectly together. The next thing we knew we had about 30 seconds on the field going into the right hand turn about 6-700 meters before the finished. Haga was in the lead with me on his wheel and McCarty on mine. We had a head wind for the finish, so I knew that it would be tough to lead the sprint out and hold on for the win. With those thoughts running through my mind I don't really think any of them actually registered. I started my spring with about 2-300 meters out and was able to hold on for the win over a tired McCarty, who had been off the front for probably 55 of the 64 miles, with Haga rolling in right behind us. This was yet another excellent event put on my Rob Kane. The course was a great course and while the problems that the staff faced would have scared others away, the staff did an amazing job dealing with them. Props!

Next on the menu is the Belterra Circuit Race next Saturday and the Driveway Crit on Sunday.

Getting Started

2010-01-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

It's 2010 and I'm ready for a new start. 2009 was the best year of my life without a doubt and I can only thank all of those who have made it possible. I've felt like I've been living a dream with the great times that I've had, the great success that I've had, and the great friends that I've made along the way (especially Courtney Kendall Loth and Tracy Chapell!). I can't wait to see what 2010 has in store for me, but from the way it has started I have a feeling that it will do the impossible and top 2009. I know that I'll enjoy every step of the way, and I hope that you will enjoy it with me!

Gbunblee vs Craddock

2009-11-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Recently at school I was challenged by one of the nation's top high school runners, Tim Gbunblee, for a race. I'm on a bike and he's on spikes (running). The race is 200 meters and I'm not sure of the specific date yet. It might be a while as I am waiting for my back to completely heal and I will need some fitness going into this. There is a facebook page made for this special occasion so head on over there and become a fan to voice your opinions. I think we are also gonna take some donations for breast cancer (just like a dollar). Thanks to everyone advance and stay posted for the date when this event is goin' down!!

2009

2009-11-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

As I’m sitting back at home after finishing the 2009 Pro 1/2 State Championships, I can’t help but reflect on the amazing season that I’ve had this year. It all started out with going out on Saturday mornings on the adventurous Kirkwood group rides, and from there I could only imagine the amazing journey this year has become.
After spending the winter season doing a few local cyclocross races on my new team, Hot Tubes, and getting some long base miles assigned to me by my new coach, David Wenger, I kicked off the ’09 season with the Alsation Country Omnium. This was my first real test in the P 1/2 circuit and I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but I feel that was due to the fact that I had a bad case of food poisoning the weekend before. For about the next month I continued to race all across Texas and I was able to take my first win of the year, the Fayetteville Stage Race Time Trial.
During the first two weeks of April, I started my European campaign with the Junior National Team. Those two weeks were a huge learning experience for me where I competed in two local kermesses (each races had over 150 riders) and a UCI 2.14 stage race, Ster van Zuid Limberg. We won the opening prologue with current Time Trial National Champion, Adam Leibovitz. The rest of the team spent the next three road stages on the front and we able to keep the yellow jersey until the last day.
Upon returning home for a couple of days, I left for Georgia for the first trip of the year with Hot Tubes. We spent the next week getting to know each other in many ways such as epic four hour rides, bowling, late night poker games, movies, and white water rafting. I’m sure I speak for the rest of my teammates when I say that by the end of the week we were all extremely excited about spending the majority of the year together traveling and racing all around the year. When the training camp ended, the entire team besides went back to Toby’s house in Massachusetts where they would leave for Europe the following week. I had to go back home to take some Texas wide tests that I couldn’t miss. After taking my tests, I flew over to Europe alone to meet up the rest of the team. The day after I arrived in Belgium we competed in a Kermesse where we were able to dominate the race by sweeping the podium. This gave the team some added confidence going into the UCI 2.1 Trophee Centre Morbihan in France the following week. We went into the race as defending champions and everyone’s eyes watching us. I was able to make it into the winning break on the first stage, but flatted out with about 20 kilometers to go and wasn’t able to make it back into the group. We spent the next two stages trying to catch back up, but weren’t able to make up any ground with our top finisher in 14th.
After flying back to the US and spending a few weeks in school I found out that I had been selected for the June trip with the Junior National Team to compete in the UCI 2.1 Pays de Vaud stage race in Switzerland and the Nations Cup Trofeo Karlsberg in Germany the following week. This gave extra motivation and I spent the next couple of weeks training my butt off. The weekend before the trip was the Junior World Championships Qualifier in Tennessee. With the winner having an automatic spot to go to the Junior World Championships in Moscow, Russia we went into the race to win. We didn’t disappoint with me taking the Time Trial and Nate winning the Road Race. The next day, Nate, Gavin, and I packed up our bikes and jumped on a plane to Switzerland with the National Team. We had an amazing race at Pays de Vaud where we swept the podium, Nate over Adam and then me. I then won the stage three time trial before the team defended the yellow on the last stage to get Nate the overall win. The team had another amazing race at Trofeo Karlsberg where I was able to take fourth overall and Nate was able to grab fifth.
I spent the next couple of weeks chilling back home in Houston before flying out to Massachusetts to stay at Toby’s house for the next couple of weeks with the team. For the next couple of weeks we continued our domination on the US Junior Circuit by winning the overall, points jersey, and every single stage of the Longsjo Fitchburg Classic. After dominating at Fitchburg, we decided to do a weekend crit in Attleboro, Massachusetts. After spending the majority of the year together we had become extremely in tune with each other and were able to get four of us off by ourselves to lap the field. We then set tempo the race to help keep the race together and were able to deliver Nate over the line first for a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place finish.
The team then piled into the Hot Tubes van and drove about 12 hours down to Kentucky for the 1st edition of the UCI 2.1 Tour of the Red River Gorge. We immediately left our stamp of authority on the race by placing everyone in the top 20 for the one mile prologue before dominating the first road stage later that day by going 1, 2, 3 and taking over every jersey except for the KOM. The next day is when I realized that I was going to the World Championships to win the time trial by winning the 24 kilometer time trial by over 30 seconds. On stage four, the team was able to get into a position of three of us in a four man break, but somehow botched up the sprint and had to settle for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the day. Our crit king, Gavin Mannion, kept up his domination on the crit series by winning the final stage, a twilight crit in downtown Franklin, KY. For the overall, we once again swept top four places along with the points jersey and the young riders jersey.
I then returned home to finish up my year long preparation for the World Championships. Due to our complete dominance in almost every single race we had competed in during the year, five out of the six Hot Tubes members were selected to be on the World Championships team. In the last week of July I left for Belgium where I would be staying for the next two weeks before flying over to Moscow. During our stay in Belgium, we competed in another UCI 2.1 stage race, Liege-La Gleize, where Boz was able to grab second overall, Nate won the KOM jersey, and I won the young rider jersey. The next week we set out for everyone’s biggest race of the season, the World Championships. With all the support of my family, friends, and fans I was able to win the silver medal in the time trial, and was only 2.2 seconds off the winners time over the 26 kilometer course. The road race didn’t go as planned and our top finisher was only in 17th.
After finishing the World Championships, we set back to Belgium for another two weeks to compete in a one day race and then another UCI 2.1 stage race in Germany before heading home. Nate was able to grab a podium place in the one day race in 3rd and we were also able to stack the majority of the top ten with riders. The stage race in Germany kicked off with Rathe winning the first stage out of a four man break to grab the first yellow jersey. We spent the next two days defending the jersey but lost it going into the last stage. We did our best to try and take it back, but everyone was extremely tired after a long successful season and weren’t able to do it.
Everyone then returned back to the homes to get ready to start thinking about the off season. This was put on hold when Toby had the whole team fly up to Vermont for the Green Mountain Stage Race. The race started with a 10 kilometer time trial that was won by Gavin before a 40 mile circuit race the next day. Nate and I were able to get clear of the field on the last lap and went 1-2 with about 40 seconds on the next group of four which put me into the yellow jersey for the first time in my career. The next stage was an epic 72 mile road race ending on App Gap, a four kilometer mountain with incredibly steep pitches all the way up. The team worked great together to bring back a 12 minute gap on a solo rider before the climb, but I just didn’t have the legs to seal the deal and cramped up extremely bad on App Gap and lost serious amounts of time. Nate was able to climb with the leaders to take the yellow jersey for the second year in a row. I won the crit the next day to take the points jersey home.
As somewhat as a gift to the team for an amazing year, Toby decided to take the team to beautiful Bermuda for the Bermuda Gran Prix. The results weren’t the greatest that we had had over the year with Gavin taking a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place to get 3rd overall, but the trip was one of the best that I’ve been on. We had an amazing time spending what would be our last journey together as members of the 2009 Hot Tubes.
When the rest of the team went back home and decided to call it quits for the season, I decided to keep on going and race the 84 mile Chappel Hill Road Race. I ended up taking my best P 1/2 road race finish of the year in 4th place. I spent the next two weeks taking it easy and four days before the State Championships road race I called up my coach, David Wenger, and asked to do the race. After some quick modifying of my training schedule I was set to give the 99 mile race a try. The race didn’t go nearly as well as I hoped when I cramped up really bad with about five kilometers to go and rolled in off the back of the pack.
Despite not doing as well as I had hoped in the State Championships I have still had an unforgettable year. I have made some lifelong friends and was able to open up doors that I thought were locked forever. I have been given amazing opportunities that I only dreamed of, and learned not only about cycling but about myself. I cannot wait until the start of the next season, so that I can start it all over again. I can’t thank everyone enough for supporting me over the past seven years ever since I was a miniature junior who didn’t know the difference between a track bike and a road bike. Most importantly, I have got to thank God for this incredible gift that he has given me and the opportunities that he has made possible.

Compression Fracture

2009-10-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard I recently had a jet skiing accident that resulted in me getting a compression fracture in my L2 and L3 vertebra. I'm not too sure about how it happened because it all happened so quickly. All I remember was a huge wave crashing into me which threw me off of the jet ski. I either hit the jet ski going into the water, or the wave carried it into me. As a result from all of this I am completely resting in my a back brace for the next 6 weeks. I've been to multiple doctors and they all say that I can ride on the trainer inside only if I am completely vertical the entire time and have my back brace on. My coach, David Wenger of Durata Training, suggested flipping my handlebars upside down so I wouldn't be bending over as far. After six weeks I'm planning on going back into the doctor's office for some more x-rays and CT scans to see if it is completely healed. Hopefully it will be and it shouldn't affect my performance next year.

Come Sail Away by Brett Davis and yours truly

2009-10-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

State Championships RR

2009-10-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the P 1/2 State Championship Road Race. The race was three laps of 33 miles each to equal out at 99 miles. I only decided to do this race about four days before, and went into it with very little training. My advice from my coach, Dave Wenger at Durata Training was to sit in for the first three hours of the race, and then give it my best shot. An early break of about six got away right from the gun, and that was pretty much the last we saw of them. They got a maximum of about 5 and a half minutes before teams went to the front to try and bring it back. I was content to watch everyone else use their energy to try and pull back the break. Going into the last lap I talked to Dave to see what I should do, and he told me to take it easy for about another 8 miles before we hit the second and hardest climb of the race. Right at the base of the 750 climb, I jumped out of the pack and immediatly opened up a big gap. By the top, Pat McCarty (OUCH!-Maxxis) was the only one who bridged up to me. Unfortunately over the next two kilometers of downhill we were swallowed up by the pack. That was pretty much the only match I had left and I spent the rest of the race trying to keep up with the pack. It was up until about 5 kilometers to go when my legs cramped too much and I got shelled off of the back. JT Cody (Solar Eclipse) won the race out of the break over Christian Helmig (Metro VW) and Collin Davis (Matrix). Although I didn't do as well as I hoped, I have still had an incredible season and wouldn't change it for a single thing!!

David Wenger for USCF Athlete Trustee

2009-10-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, just wanted to ask you all to vote for David Wenger in the USCF Athlete Trustee. The Athlete Trustee position works in a wide range of developing code; clarifying existing rules, adapting UCI rules for USCF competition, and arbitrating disciplinary actions. Knowing Dave as a coach, friend, and fellow cyclist I really think that he would be great at this position. To vote, you must be a USA Cycling license holder. Go to www.usacycling.org and go to your "My USA Cycling" page and vote from there. Thanks!

Bermuda Grand Prix

2009-09-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

After an extremely successful year for the 2009 Hot Tubes Junior Development team Toby decided to fly Gavin, Boz, Nate, Stuee, and I over to Bermuda for the Bermuda Grand Prix as a last hurrah. The race started with a 50 km circuit race/crit on a 2km course in the middle of a forest. The race started off with a flurry of attacks by numerous riders. It wasn't until about five laps in until a group of about five got up the road including Gavin. Nate bridged up about a lap later and I soon followed him. Gavin then got away with four other riders right before Boz bridged up to us. The three of us just chilled in the group until Nate dropped out of the race due to a stomach bug. With about three laps to go I put in an attack and was caught with about one lap to go. I then sat in the group and was able to get 2nd in the sprint for 6th overall. Gavin was able to take 2nd and Boz grabbed 8th. The time trial the next morning was 7 miles out and back. It was absolutely pouring down rain and the course was extremely confusing. I ended up turning around too early and my time didn't count towards the results. Gavin was able to take 4th, Nate in 6th, Stueee in 11th, and Boz in 12th. That afternoon was an hour long crit on a 750 meter course with a steep 200 meter hill about half way through the lap. I was aggressive for the first half of the race and brought the race down to about seven of us. With one to go the group was still the same and I put in a hard attack up the climb to try and set up Gavin for the sprint and he was able to grab 3rd place while I came in in 4th, and Stueee in 5th and Gavin ended up 3rd overall.

Chappell Hill

2009-09-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Chappell Hill road race, an 86 mile race that has rolling hills almost the entire time. In the past, this has always been one of the hardest races of the year, but I've always had a good time at this amazing race put on by Northwest Cycling Club, one of the nation's top cycling clubs. Due to an early start at 7:30 and my parents volunteering at registration, I was unwillingly forced to wake up at 4:30 in the morning so that we could get there by 6:30. I then proceeded to fall asleep in the car, and when we got there my parents decided that they would let me rest for a couple more minutes while they were working. It wasn't until my dad yanked open the door at 7:13 and yelling at me to wake up or I would just go ahead and sleep through the race. Nonetheless, I was able to suit up, pin on my numbers, and get my bike ready in record time to get down to the start line with about five minutes to spare. The course goes out about 15 miles before we started on five 12 mile loops before heading back to town.All up until the start of the race it had been raining, so when we got out on the course the pavement was pretty slick. The race was pretty calm for about the first 30 miles, with Alan Ting and I shooting each other the "What Up?!" sign, until a group of five got up the road and quickly built up a lead of about two and a half minutes. For the next 20 miles or so there were a few attacks from the pack, but none were given any lee-way. With about a lap and a half to go a group of three got up the road and quickly got about 45 seconds. With one and a quarter lap to go, I put in an attack and brought Cody Foster with me. The both of us got a decent gap and we worked really well together until we caught the group of three ahead of us. We all then worked together and were able to bridge the rest of the gap to the five leaders with about half a lap to go. Once we caught the leaders the break became extremely disorganized with only about four of us actually working. When we got off of the laps there was an attack by one of the Mexicans that had come up to race. No one really wanted to chase him down, but with the many attacks from the group we caught him with about six miles to go. Immediately, his teammate countered that move and got a pretty big gap. He was dangling right off the front of the group and it wasn't until I put in an attack with about one kilometer to go that he was caught. I stayed away until about 500 meters to go, but I knew that I was going to die on the 150 meter wall with about 300 meters to go so I kept on the front. About half way up the hill the sprint started with one of the Mexicans taking the "win" with Steven "Underpants" Wheeler (Super Squadra) taking second place over Scott Henry (AT&T) and I was able to hold onto fifth place. After the race, both of the Mexicans were disqualified due to illegal feeding and littering, so this moved everyone up a place which put me in 4th. Next on the schedule is the Bermuda Gran Prix. I leave for Bermuda Thursday morning for racing on Saturday and Sunday. The races include a crit, a time trial, and a 75 mile road race on 2.5 mile circuits.

GMSR Stage 3&4

2009-09-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Vermont after an extremely successful race with the team. We came away from the Green Mountain Stage Race with three stage wins, the overall win, along with the points jersey. The road race didn't go as well as I hoped. After Stuee and Gavin rode their hearts out on the front for about 40 miles to bring back 4th place, Matteo Dal-Cin, who got a maximum gap of 6 minutes on the field. When it came to App Gap, I just didn't have the legs and cramped up with one and a half. I then preceded to nose-dive into the ditch and then lay there for about 10 minutes trying to work the cramps out. I ended up losing 8 minutes on the climb along with the yellow jersey. Nate put in a good ride up App Gap and took it over from me. For the 15 mile crit the next day, our plan was to keep the 20 second lead over second place, and also try and win the points jersey with either Nate or me. Right from the gun I was extremely active and attacked multiple times before the first prime with 15 of the 25 laps to go. I attacked right after the prime and immediately got about a 20 second gap with another rider. The two of us worked well together and I took the next two primes and hot spot sprints. Going into the sprint I was on the front, so I just decided to lead it out. I did just that and held him off for my first crit win this year. Next on the schedule for me is the Chappell Hill Road Race on Sunday put on by the team that I grew up with, NWCC.

GMSR Stage 1 and 2

2009-09-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

I ended up 4th yesterday in the TT, but Gavin won so it was all good. Stuee was 6th and Nate was 7th. It was pretty much 2 miles straight up at the beginning and I just wasn't feeling it. Today went a lot better for me. It was a 34 mile circuit race with 1 3/4 lap. After the first lap, Nate went on a solo attack and got about 30 seconds. On the KOM about half way through the lap I attacked and bridged up to him. We then put the hammer down and were able to open up a gap of 36 seconds by the end over a group of four including 2nd and 3rd place on GC and about another minute and a half on the pack. Nate took the win which put him into the points jersey and I was able to grab the yellow jersey. Unfortunately, Gavin went down in a 30 man pile-up and wasn't able to reconnect with the pack. Stueee was able to win the field sprint for 7th. Tomorrow is a 74 mile road race that finishes up App Gap, a 7 km climb which I've heard some pretty bad stuff about how hard it is.

Green Mountain Stage

2009-09-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I made it safely up to Vermont for the Green Mountain Stage Race (my first time traveling this year without any problems!). The race kicks off tomorrow with a six mile time trial. No one is allowed to use any equipment that wouldn't be allowed in a mass start event, so I'll just be using my straight up road bike. Stage two is a 34 mile circuit followed by a 74 road race that ends up the dreaded App Gap, a 6 mile wall from what I've heard. The race concludes with a 40 minute crit on Labor Day. I'll keep you posted on what goes on.

Worlds

2009-09-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry it took so long to get this up!
This year has been an incredible journey and I really couldn’t ask for more. I guess I can’t really say that winning the Silver Medal at the Junior World Time Trial Championships came as a surprise to me because going into the TT I knew I could pull out an excellent ride. The course suited me perfectly; it was on wide open highways that were some of the smoothest roads I’ve ever ridden on. I was on amazing form, due to my amazing coach, David Wenger, and persistent co-coach/my dad. I wasn’t wasting any energy at all due to our perfect soigneur, Simone Trafelet. My confidence was high was from winning the Pays de Vaud and the Tour of the Red River Gorge Time Trials, as well as the White Jersey at the stage race Liege-La Gleize the previous week. It also doesn’t hurt when you so many amazing followers back home and knowing that they will be proud of you no matter what happens!
The time trial was 26 kilometers (two laps of 13 km each) on wide open and smooth roads. It starts out on a gradual descent for about two kilometers before turning around and going back up the hill. When you crest the top of the hill it goes back down for about another two kilometers for turning back around. About half way up the hill you take a right turn and head down a straight road for about two kilometers before turning back around. You then take another right turn before you get to the main road and complete a small loop. You then come turn back onto the main road and have about 500 meters until the finish.
The plan for the time trial was not to go all out on the first lap because the gradual hills were extremely deceiving and if you went all out up them you could easily blow and lose huge chunks of time. For the first lap I went about 95% and came through the finish line the first time in second place, 12 seconds back on Australian’s Luke Durbridge. I then started to go harder and harder and by the time I had about five kilometers to go I was told I was about six seconds down. I put my head down and hammered all the way to the line (puking twice on the way) and came into the finish for the last time in second place, 2.22 seconds back on Durbridge. I nearly collapsed onto the ground after turning off the course and when my teammates came up to me saying that I was in second, I dropped my head feeling dejected. I didn’t think that I was going to stay up on the podium with about 20 of the big hitters left to finish. I then made my way over to the Hot Seats for the top three times. Simone met me over there with fresh and warm clothes along with recovery shakes and other drinks. I then watched in disbelief as one by one all of the rest of the riders came through and none of them were able to jump ahead of me in the standings. When the last rider had come through, all I could do was stand and stare at the scoreboard to see my name listed in second. It took me a while to believe that I had just gotten second place at the World Championships. My body was acting automatically as I was giving all my teammates and friends hugs while my mind was whirling at about a thousand miles an hour. This has got to be a dream! Ever since I was 11 years old and seeing my best friend, Alan Ting, wearing a mock rainbow jersey out at the track, I’ve been fantasizing about someday winning one, and it was hard to believe that I was only two seconds out of wearing one!
The podium is one experience I will never forget. I was called up onto the podium along with Denmark’s Lasse Hansen and Durbridge and awarded the silver medal by a high official of the UCI along from the strangely dressed podium girls. The three of us then gathered onto the top step for pictures before the playing of the Australian National Anthem. After the podium I reported to doping control and then headed back to the hotel.
Once again, there is no way I could have gotten through this year without the support from my amazing parents. I’ve also got to thank Dave Wenger of Durata Training for all of those hours spent fixing up my workouts for the week; Ben Sharp along with the USA Cycling Development Foundation for helping make this journey possible for not only me, but all of the other riders as well; my teachers at school for helping me get through the school year last year; Dave “Flash” Brown for making the run to McDonalds the day before the TT just so that I could get a break from the horrible Russian food at the hotel; and last but not least all of my wonderful friends and supporters back at home!

The next thing on my schedule is the Green Mountain Stage Race up in Vermont with Hot Tubes. It'll be the first time I'm doing this race, so I'm not really sure what to expect! I'll make sure I update my blog more than once a month next time!

Worlds

2009-08-18T12:38:00.001-07:00

Worlds

2009-08-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

Moscow and Liege-La Gleize

2009-08-04T23:01:00.000-07:00

The US Worlds Team, consisting of Gavin Mannion, Ian Boswell, Nathan Brown, Ryan Eastman, Jacob Rathe, Kendall Ryan, Coryn Rivera, Jessica Prinner, and myself, have all made it to Moscow, Russia with no problems. We arrived in Moscow on Monday after a successful race in Belgium. The race was a UCI 2.1 called Liege-La Gleize and was located in the hilly part of Belgium and tackles some of the same climbs that are used in the pro race Liege-Bastogne-Liege. It was a three day four stage race with the first day a 95 km road race, stage 2A was a 14 km TTT, stage 2B was a 90 km road race, and the last stage was the queen stage with 115 km road with seven KOM's in it. Stage one ended in a field sprint with our top finisher being Gavin in 11th. Nate got into the early move on the stage and won one of the KOM which made him tied for the lead. The team time trial the next day was one of our biggest goals of the race. He didn't really spend that much time practicing for it, but we had some of the strongest time trialists in the world and were confident going into the stage. Disaster hit about 5 km into the race when Nate was popped off the back. The remaining four of us became pretty disorganized for a little bit, but quickly found our rhythm to come into the first time check in first place. About 5 km later, Rathe blew leaving us with three riders, Boz, Gavin, and me. The three of us worked really hard for the last 4 km and lost enough time to put us into second place at the finish behind the French National Team by about 24 seconds. This put us into 6th, 7th, and 8th on GC, second in the team classification and me into the young riders jersey. Our goal for stage three was for Nate to grow his lead in the KOM classification and move up in front of some of the French in the Overall. Nate once again got into the early break and won all three KOM's which gave him a huge lead going into the last stage. With about 30 km to go Boz got into a group of about 15 that was quickly out of sight of the pack and later bridged up to the lead group. Gavin and I stayed in the pack until about 10 km to go when we jumped across a gap to a group of about 10 that was dangling off the front. I was hurting really bad at this point and it was all I could do to hold on. The stage ended with five guys getting off the front of the lead group and fighting it out for the win. Boz finished in the next group of about 20 which ended up around 1:20 down, which put him into 4th overall. I was dropped from the group that Gavin and I were in on a steep kicker about 400 meters to go and finished about 10 seconds off the back of that group meanwhile losing the white jersey to a Swiss guy. Stage four was definitely the hardest with seven categorized climbs. Our goal for the stage was for Nate to keep the KOM jersey and try and move Boz into a podium spot. We started the stage bundled up in layers of vests and jerseys to protect ourselves from the rain that was coming down in buckets. For the first portion of the race we just tried to keep safe and out of trouble on the treacherous descents. Nate got enough points in the first three KOMs to keep his jersey. With about two-thirds of the race down we started to get to the front and do some work. The yellow jersey was having a bad day and had abandoned along with the third place guy. This put Boz into 2nd place overall, so we just made sure no one got too far up the road. Despite our efforts, about 4-5 guys got off the front to never see the pack again. With about 12 km to go, I had a rear flat and thought that my day was done. When I jumped back on the bike I saw that Nate had dropped off the back to help me back up to the pack. I was having some trouble staying with him, but fought through the pain to stay on his wheel. He bridged about a minute gap to the pack to bring me back up and we finally caught back on with about a kilometer and a half to go. I was pretty much toast at this point, but barely managed to stay with the group up the final finish line hill. Boz ended up 2nd overall, Nate won the KOM, and somehow I managed to take back the white jersey. This race has given us a lot of confidence going into the World Championships later this week. The 28 km time trial is on Friday and the Road Race is on Sunday. Ben (our team director) has a twitter that he updates during our races to keep family and friends updated on how everything goes. His twitter is www.twitter.com/bensharp13

Europe

2009-07-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

I'm back here at the U23 National Team House for the next week or so until we leave for the Junior Road World Championships in Moscow, Russia. I finally had an uneventful trip on the way over here and after spinning the legs out today, I feel like I'm ready to compete with the best on August 7th (TT) and 9th (RR). The road race team consists of Jacob Rathe, Ryan Eastman, Gavin Mannion, Nathan Brown, Ian Boswell, and myself with Nathan and I doing the time trial. After doing a stage race in here in Belgium this weekend we will fly out to Moscow, and meet up with the women's team. I'll keep you updated on how everything turns out. Thanks for reading!

Red River Gorge and Worlds by Ian Boswell

2009-07-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

This past weekend team Hot Tubes and I traveled to western Kentucky for the UCI 2.1 stage race, The Tour of the Red River George. This year was the inaugural event; however there was a road race which took place there last year as the junior worlds qualifiers. After along but enjoyable car drive from Mass to Lexington, KY we were ready to race. The opening stage was a 1 mile prologue on an out and back course in downtown Irvine, KY. Such a short event is not my forte, I finished 21st six seconds behind the stage winner Charlie Avis. Our however did good, putting three riders in the top ten. The afternoon of the prologue was the first true test with a 100km road race. The heat and humidity only added to the hard and hilly stage. After 30km had elapsed the racing started to pick up. I soon found myself off the front with a few other riders, and it wasn’t long before both Nathan and Anders were by my side. With three Hot Tubes riders out of the ten or so in the group we began to drive hard towards the finish. We worked hard and opened the gap to 1minute and 30 seconds before I almost lost it all. On a fast down hill road I miss lead the group off course. The riders at the back were able to turn around quickly and keep it; however some riders kept on riding in the wrong direction. I then made the turnaround and began to chase the group I was just leading. Thankfully I had two honorable teammates up front who waited for my return. Some riders never returned, thus our group was down to six, and going over the final KOM (king of the mountains) the group was minimized yet again. After the final climb with only 5km remaining Anders made a very tactically smart attack and quickly opened a big gap on our lead group. Soon after Nathan jumped and rode up to Anders, so I was the lone hot tubes rider with two of my teammates off the front. With 1.5km till the finish I knew that Anders and Nathan would stay away, so I then tried an attack of my own. I finally got a gap in the final 800 meters of the race and hot tubes went 1, 2, 3 on the stage and took 1, 2, 3 on overall classification.The following day was the individual time trial, it went pretty straight forward. My teammate Lawson won, Nathan second, Gavin fourth, myself eighth, Anders ninth, and our Canadian teammate Stuee sixteenth. This moved our team into 1,2,3,4 on overall classification going into the queen stage.Stage 4 was a long 120km road race with over 8,000 ft of climbing, a hard race that would separate the players from the pretenders. The first few climb were uneventful other than Lawson getting a flat, then Nathan having to stop and dislodge his jammed chain, but both Stuee and Gavin where there to help them back to the pack. Once the rejoined Gavin ran into a front flat so dropped back to get it fixed, but just as Gavin reintegrated into the pack a crash took him and a good percentage of other riders off the road. He just cruised in after that. Each time the road when up, riders went back, and going into the final 30km of the race the lead pack including four of us hot tubes riders was under twenty riders in total. The final two climbs where were the players came to play, Nathan in his yellow jersey went to the front of the pack and turned the screws. Riders quickly fell of his pace and by the time we summated the final climb the group was down to seven riders, but four of those hot tubes. Once on top the hill the course consisted of short but steep rollers. We weren’t on top for long before the attacks started. Most of them came from our team and after some hard efforts; Lawson and Jacob Rathe from Portland Oregon were off the front and free to fly. After some cat and mouse play, I jumped the group in pursuit of the leaders. When I was ¾ the way across and starting to fade, Nathan came up to me to give me some help. Together we caught the leaders and had 3 out of the 4 riders in the lead group. With 10km remaining we began to drive towards the finish. Theoretically we should have had an easy stage win, but Jacob is a very smart and very strong. I jumped the group with 500 meters to go but Jacob caught up with Nathan on his wheel. Nathan has a great sprint but the downhill sprint was too fast for Nathan to overcome on junior gears. Jacob took a very big stage win and moved into 5th overall. Nathan finished 2nd me 3rd and Lawson 4th.The final stage of the Tour of the Red River George was a twilight crit in downtown Lexington. The goal was to stay safe and hold our GC placing. Both were accomplish and then added on by Gavin’s stage win. It was a great race for us as a team we won the overall plus 2-4, and the best young riders and the sprint jersey, but to show how well we rode as a team we won the team classification by over 16 minutes.Because of how well we and I rode, I earned a spot on the world championship team. So next week I will fly back over to Belgium and then on to Moscow for the Junior world championships, which was my year long goal.Thanks for reading and more posts soon.

Ian

Tour of the Red River Gorge Stages 1 & 2

2009-07-15T05:33:00.001-07:00

Stage one and two are done with here at the Tour of the Red River Gorge and so far Hot Tubes has been extremely successful. Stage one was a 1 mile out and back time trial. Charlie Avis took the victory over Adam Leibovitz and Jacob Rathe. Nate was our top finisher in 4th with Gavin right behind him in 5th. I was able to take 7th on the stage and jump into the white young rider's jersey. Stueee took 11th, Boz was 21st, and Anders was just a few places behind him. We were way more dominant in the 99 km road race that afternoon to take 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. About thirty kilometers into the race Boz, Nate, and Anders got into a 12 man break that got about 30 seconds up the road. Jacob Rathe put in attack to try and bridge and brought along the yellow jersey, Charlie Avis. I jumped onto that group and we got about 10 seconds on the field. Because I had three teammates up the road I just pulled through that group to make sure that they wouldn't try and attack me. Although I wasn't putting big efforts pulling it was still one of the hardest breaks I had ever been in. Rathe was an absolute animal and was doing the majority of the work. The pack was completely strung out behind us and even though we were going all out we only had a maximum of about 10 seconds and were caught about 10 kilometers later. I was pretty tired after that and spent the rest of the race just sitting in the pack on covering attacks. Up in the break, Anders attacked without 5 km to go and got a small gap. Nate then bridged up to him and the both of them crossed the line to take 1-2 (Anders over Nate) about 15 seconds ahead of Boz who lead the rest of the group across the line. I finished with the pack about 1:45 behind along with Gavin and Stueee. Later today we have a 24 km TT. My start time is at 12:24

Attleborro Crit by Gavin Mannion

2009-07-14T17:47:00.001-07:00

Today was the Attleboro Crit. Hot Tubes sent a full 7 man squad for this local Pro 1-2-3 Crit. The team used this race as a warm up for Red River Gorge UCI 2.1 Stage Race in KY next week. After about 10 laps into the 60 lap race Ian, Lawson, Stueee the Canadian, and myself found ourselves off the front alone. After settling into a team time trial for 15 or 20 laps we lapped the field. The rest of the team set tempo at the front of the pack keeping the race in control for the remaining laps, until we lead out Downtown who took the field sprint making it 1,2,3,4,5 for Hot Tubes. He claims he's the next Cav. Since I was the last leadout man I ended up taking the victory. My fourth crit win of the year, one of these days I'm gonna win a road race...By far the best part of the day was capitalizing on the excess food after the race. We left the race with 2 large pizzas, 2 footlong subs, and close to 100 bagels. Hopefully that will be enough to fuel our team on our long drive to Lexington, KY tomorrow.

Teammate's Blog

2009-07-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! If you want to keep up with one of my teammates, Gavin Mannion, he just joined the blogging family. His URL is www.gavin-mannion.blogspot.com Tomorrow we leave for Kentucky for the UCI 2.1 Tour of the Red River Gorge. The winner of the overall gets an automatic spot for the Junior World Road Race Championships and the winner of the TT earns a spot on the TT team. I'll keep you updated.

Fitchburg Longsjo Classic

2009-07-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'm here up in Massachusetts after completing the 50th edition of the Fitchburg Longsjo Classic with the Hot Tubes Junior Development Team. The race is a four day four stage race which starts off with a 9 mile time trial. Stage two was 21 mile circuit race before the penultimate 44 mile road race the next day. The race ended with a 20 kilometer crit on Sunday. We dominated the entire race by winning every stage with a different rider and winning all of the jerseys, the overall and the points jersey. Nathan Brown took the time trial by 20 seconds over Charlie Avis and our own Gavin Mannion. Anders took 4th, Boz took 9th, Ben took 12th, and I got 36th. With all of my traveling delays (I ended up getting delayed a total of 26 hours and got to Boston about 10 hours before the race start) none of my baggage showed up including both of my bikes and my clothes. I ended up just riding one of the Sram neutral bikes that I got about 30 minutes before my start. Boz took the win on the stage two circuit race out of a four man break and took the green jersey for the day. Anders was also in the break and was able to take fourth on the day. I went on a last lap attack with Nate and worked really hard to get Nate a big gap. Going up the 500 meter finish line wall I blew up and was caught only by Gavin who won the field sprint. Nate took 5th on the day, Gavin got 6th, and I took home 7th. I won the road race out of an early breakaway with Nate and another rider, Nathan Wilson. Nate got to the front on the hardest climb on the first lap and hammered up it and only Wilson and I were able to stay with him. Gavin bridged up later that lap but had a mechanical and dropped out of the break. Nate and I attacked Wilson with about 3 km to go and were able to put in 40 seconds into him by the end. Boz was able to take 4th on the stage over Gavin and then Anders. This moved me up from 26th overall to 3rd. Right from the start of the crit I put in an all out attack and got a decent sized gap. I was caught the next lap right before a sprint. Right after the sprint I put in another attack and brought Charlie Avis with me. Anders bridged up about a lap later and the three of us got about a 15 second gap. I took all of the sprint out of the break and got enough points to take over the green jersey. With about four laps to go I saw Gavin trying to bridge up to us. I then dropped back to help Gavin bridge all the way up. We caught back up with about three laps remaining. Starting with one lap to go, Anders and I took turns attacking Charlie, but neither of us could get a gap. Gavin was able to take the sprint for our fourth victory of the weekend and I was able to 3rd on the day. Nate took the final overall and I was able to maintain my 3rd place and win the points jersey. Gavin took 4th overall, Anders got 6th, and Boz got 7th. Next Sunday we plan on driving down to Kentucky for the UCI 2.2 Tour of the Red River Gorge. The winner of that will automatically earn a spot on the World Championships team.

Pays de Vaud (The Racing Post)

2009-07-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

For The Racing Post this month I decided to right about my racing experience at the Tour du Pays de Vaud in Switzerland. I am currently in Massachusettes for the Fitchburg Longsjo Cycling Classic. I arrived here 20 hours after I was originally scheduled to due to delayed and missed flights. The racing kicks off tomorrow (July 2nd) with a 14 km time trial. Hopefully I'll be recovered from all of my traveling to put in a good time.

Pays du Vaud is a UCI Junior Class 2.1 four day race with five stages in Switzerland. It began with a three kilometer prologue starting pretty late at night by our Texas standards. USA completely dominated the stage by sweeping the podium with Nathan Brown taking the win over Adam Leibovitz and myself. We took every single jersey except one, Nathan in yellow (leader), Adam in green (points), and myself in the white (young rider).

Stage 2 the next day was the first mass start stage and was about 100 kilometers of rolling hills. The stage finished at the top of a four kilometer climb that was sure to split the pack by the top. The goal for the stage was to keep the yellow jersey in the team. Our job: make sure no break got too far up the road. By the time we reached the base of the climb, the peloton was together. Right at the bottom of the climb a Danish rider attacked and immediately opened up a 10 second gap. Nathan then put in an attack and brought with him along another Danish rider and a Dutch. The initial attack ended up staying away by about 15 seconds and Nathan was able to get fourth on the stage and USA kept the yellow by one second. The rest of the team rolled in and managed to remain within a minute of our leader.

Day three started with an 80 kilometer road race that was pancake flat for the first 75 kms and then climbed 600 meters in the last six kms. Our plan was to control the front with Adam, Jacob, Gavin, and me so that the race would be together at the base of the climb. Connor would then help Nathan as much as he could on the climb before pulling off and letting Nathan take over. Our plan worked flawlessly and Nathan grabbed third on the stage, but ended up losing the yellow by four seconds. The rest of the team took it easy up the mountain pass to save some energy for the time trial later that day.

After resting and refueling, USA challenged the eleven kilometer time trial that was completely flat for the first ten kilometers with a steep climb for the last km. I was able to take the win on the stage by four seconds over the Dutch National TT Champion and another 17 seconds to one of the Danish riders. Nathan put an extremely strong time trial to grab 5th on the stage and regain the yellow jersey by about 45 seconds. Once again, we were in the lead.

The next day was the last road race and final stage at 110 kilometers and climbing for a total of 1000 meters. It was by far the hardest stage of the race and by the time we reached the finish, the peleton was completely shattered. Early on in the race a break of about ten was attacked and got off the front. By about 30 kilometers into the stage the gap was almost three minutes with a rider in the break down in the GC by only 2:30. It was time to start chasing. I got to the front and over the next 25 kilometers and brought the gap down to 2:30. With about 50 kilometers to go, the rest of the team went up to the front and we brought the gap down to about a minute with 20 kilometers left in the race. Since the break was no longer a threat to take over the yellow, we let the Danish and the Dutch teams to get to the front to keep the break in check so that they wouldn't lose their podium spots. The break ended up staying away by about a minute with Christopher Jennings of South Africa taking the stage win. USA kept the yellow jersey and we took home the individual overall with Nathan and second place on Team Classification.

This win at Pays de Vaud gave USA Cycling Junior Developmental program extremely good hope for the rest of the season and junior cycling’s future. It has showed that USA is becoming extremely more competitive in not only time trials, but also road races and stage races abroad. Pays De Vaud, as a top ranking UCI Race was definitely a test of strength, endurance and teamwork. Racing in Europe with USA Cycling and my team Hot Tubes has taught me that when we race, we put our individual goals aside and ride our best for the team (something I’m still working on!).

Karlsberg Stage 3-5

2009-06-19T08:22:00.001-07:00

For the first time in a few weeks this is actual myself blogging instead of my dad. I arrived back into Houston on Monday and have been extremely busy with finishing my school. Here is an update on how Trofeo Karlsberg finished:

Stage 3A

Stage 3a was an 11 km tt. The course was somewhat rolling for about 6 km before a 500 meter monster cobbled climb. The course then descended for about 1 kilometer before a long 4 km haul all the way to the finish line. Nathan did an amazing time trial to take 2nd on the day while I grabbed 9th and Adam finished out the top 10. This moved me into 3rd overall and Nathan into 5th. I was also 2nd place in the young rider competition, but because the leader in that competition was also the GC leader I wore the young rider jersey.

Stage 3b

Stage 3b was probably the easiest stage. We rode about 50 km out to a circuit and did 5 laps of about 6 km each. I just chilled in the peleton the entire day to conserve energy for the queen stage the next day. With about 500 meters to go I was taken out by a Slovenian, but thankfully the UCI 3 km rule saved me and gave me the same time as the peleton. Gavin was able to take 6th place in the field sprint.

Stage 4

Stage 4 was definitely the hardest of them all. It was a whopping 140 km over 5 laps, and each lap had 2 monster climbs. I stayed in the pack for the majority of the race up until the last lap and a half. A group of about 10 had gotten away in the early part of the stage and got about 2 minutes on the field, and the Dutch weren't chasing (they had the leaders jersey). Starting with about one to go, Team USA got to the front and brought the gap down to about a minute with 15 km to go. The yellow jersey then put in an attack, and I immediately jumped onto his wheel. The two of us worked pretty hard and eventually bridged up to an Italian that had been dropped out of the lead group. Nathan then bridged up to us and was later followed by a Danish rider. This made five of us and I thought for sure that we were going to stay away, but the German that was in second place sent his team to the front and eventually brought us back. By the time we got to the base of the last climb the gap was hovering around 45 seconds. Nathan then went to the front and hammered up the climb and single-handely brought the gap down to about 20 seconds by the top. With about 5 km to go the gap had only gone down to about 15 seconds. The entire USA team along with the Germans led a frantic chase and we caught the break with about 500 meters to go. Unfortunately, a Danish rider had gotten away and took the win by about 15 seconds. He also took home the overall which bumped me off of the podium into 4th place.

I'd really like to thank my parents along with Source Endurance, USA Cycling, and everyone else that has supported me this year along with the rest of my cycling career. There is no way possible that I could be out there doing what I love with out the support that I am given. Thanks!!

Trofeo Karlsberg Stage 2

2009-06-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a translated summary of yesterdays stage -

Mark Barry is the first winner in the 22nd Trofeo Karlsberg. The price of the waterworks Bliestal he sprinted after 2:26,06 hours the finish line in Wittersheim the yellow jersey of the Karlsberg brewery. Five kilometers before the end had a group of five top 15 seconds ahead out there. The complete field of 21 teams from 20 nations chased the runaway, she is just 500 meters from the finish. In the mass sprint, the Portuguese had Daniel on Friday and the Russian Matvey Zubov beaten type. Best German was Niklas Arndt (Germany I) as a fifth. The 108 kilometer stage was started in Blieskastel been partially suffered torrential rains and strong gusts of wind. The 126 were mostly drivers together, Außreißversuche have already been nipped in the bud. The mountain jersey of Kunststoffwerke Marquardt secured the Americans Lawson Craddock, while Marco Haller from Austria, the green sprint jersey from the travel service Feibel & Tuillier and Luxairtours streak was over. First winner of the blue team jersey of Stadtwerke Bliestal and Enovos was currently in the rankings Gesamtnationencup leading Russians. The red jersey Rilchinger the mineral source of the best in the more recent vintage bears on the second stage, the price of saarVV, which concluded on Friday, 18.30 clock in Völklingen gestartetet is, the Italians Luca Wackermann. (Wolfgang Degott)

Stage 2 is 78km from Volklingen to Grosrosseln. With 3 kom and 3 sprints

Trofeo Karlsberg

2009-06-11T08:18:00.001-07:00

Trofeo Karlsberg starts today with a 105k stage. There's 5 stages to the Nations Cup race.

Tour du Pays de Vaud Photos

2009-06-08T09:24:00.000-07:00

Tour du Pays de Vaud Stage 2, 3, 4 and 5

2009-06-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

Lawson has limited Internet so I'll try and fill in the blanks ~ Tom

Stage 2 was 103k from Faoug to Blonay. The group stayed together until the tough 3k climb to the finish. The goal today was to protect Nate's yellow jersey. Jensen from Denmark attacked on the climb and finished 14 sec ahead of 4 man chase which included Nate. Lawson finished 15th 34 secs down. Nate held onto the jersey and Lawson is in 15th overall. Third in the Young Riders category.

Stage 3 - 84k Penthalaz - Corbeyrier. This was a flat stage for 78k and the last 6k was about 1400 feet of steep climbing. The plan was for Lawson, Gavin, Jacob and Adam to set tempo in the flats and for Connor and Nate to be ready for all comers once they hit the finish climb. Nate was able to go with the breaks and finished 3rd but lost the yellow jersey to Jenson by 5 seconds. Lawson had laid in on the line in the flats and gave up over 4 min by the finish. Lawson is 38th overall.

Stage 4 - 12k Individual Time Trial -Aigle - Yvorne. This stage started at the headquarters of the UCI and was pancake flat for 11k with a nasty 1k climb to the finish. For team strategy most of the riders were instructed to take it easy for the TT so save their legs for Sundays last stage. Nate and Lawson were given the nod to ride the stage all out. Nate plan was to take back the yellow and Lawson's plan was for a top finish. It was raining on and off throughout the stage and a few riders took some spills. Lawson continued exactly where he left off in Franklin TN and won the stage by 4 secs. This makes it two years in a row that an American has won the ITT at the Pays de Vaud, Taylor Phinney won it last year! Nate finished 5th 23sec off Lawson's pace and take back the yellow jersey with a 40 sec cushion over second place. Lawson moved up to 28th in the GC.

Stage 5 - 112k Villars-Sainte-Croix - Chavornay. The final stage was the the toughest of all the stages and everything was on the line to take home the yellow. The stage had three climbs totally 2900 of climbing. 13k's into the race a group of 7 got away and opened up a gap of 2 1/2 minutes. Team USA got to the front and drilled it taking the field down to about 60 riders. By the end of the stage the break away gap was less than 45 seconds and the yellow jersey was Nate's for good. Gavin and Jacob finished in the top ten for the stage

Tour du Pays de Vaud Prologue

2009-06-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

Tour du Pays de Vaud Prologue
by Tom Craddock
Due to lack of internet in I'm going to post for Lawson

The first stage of the Tour du Pays de Vaud was a 3k prologue and as Ben Sharp described it on his twitter, was 1k up 1k down and 1k flat
The race was held in Lausanne, along the north shore of Lac Geneva Switzerland, no doubt amongst architecture of medieval times and gothic cathedrals (too bad I don't have photos) There's 19 teams entered and 112 completed the first stage.
Team USA took the top three spotswith Nate Brown in 1st, Adam Leibovitz took 2nd (2 seconds down) and Lawson rounded out the podium in 3rd (4 seconds down).
Team USA has will be sporting the Leader Jersey (Brown), Points Jersey (Leibovitz) and the Polka Dot Jersey (Craddock) in tomorrow's 103k stage with 810 meters of climbing! Brown actually won the three jerseys but could only wear one so his teammates are helping him out. Lawson also won the Young Riders Jersey.

World Qualifiers and Airports

2009-06-03T05:42:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to cut this post short due to the fact that I'm about to lose internet and my computer is about to die. Just to recap the World Qualifiers; I won the 18 km TT over Charlie Avis and Adam Leibovitz, and qualified for the Junior World Time Trial Championships in Moscow, Russia this August. For the road race I just committed myself to the team to try and get another teammate to qualify. For the first lap and a half I sat on the front monitoring the breaks and making sure they didn't get too far up the road. During that time I dropped my chain twice on two different hills and was forced to chase hard for a couple of minutes to get back on. About halfway through the second lap, coming up the feed zone hill I got a front flat and by the time I had gotten it changed I was too far back to chase back on. I tried extremely hard for about 10 miles, but could never close the gap. Teammate, Nathan Brown, ended up taking the win to also qualify for the World Championships in Moscow.

I am currently sitting in the London airport after a trip full of problems. The US National Team (Nathan Brown, Gavin Mannion, Connor O'Leary, Adam Leibovitz, and myself) where scheduled to fly out of Nashville, TN on Monday for Chicago, but that flight was cancelled due to weather and we were rescheduled for a flight to Miami the next morning at 6:30. We stayed in Miami for about seven hours before flying out here to London. Unfortunately, that flight was delayed and we missed our final flight to Basel, Switzerland. This forced us to wait at the airport for the next flight out which was in about six hours.

Dallas Crits

2009-05-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Gary Glickman Memorial Crit and the GS Tenzing Crit up in Dallas, TX. They were both excellent races which provided a great warm-up for the State Championships on Monday. Because I am racing up in Tennessee next weekend for the Junior World Championship Qualifiers I decided to skip the State Championships so that I could rest up to be on peak form. The races went pretty good and I ended up with an 8th place finish at Glickman and a 6th place finish at the GS Tenzing crit.

Glickman

The course was about a mile long with 5 or 6 corners. With about 500-750 meters to go we did a sharp U-Turn and started a steady climb towards the finish. I wasn't too active in the early parts of the race because I was saving my energy for the last thirty minutes of so. I followed a few attacks but never put too much effort into any of them. With about 25 minutes or so to go I started to be way more aggressive. With about five laps to go there was a group of about 8 up the road with a lot of the strong men in the race in it. That group had probably about 10-12 seconds. I put in a hard attack and bridged up to it later that lap. The group became extremely disorganized and we were soon caught. I then attacked and went with attacks constantly for the next three laps and with a little over a lap to go I found myself in a five or so man break. We were caught right at one to go, and the pack sat back up. I then put in an attack and got a gap that hovered around about 7 seconds for half a lap. David Wenger (Super Squadra) then attacked out of the pack. Dave quickly caught me and flew right by me to take the win. I was then caught by the pack and was able to jump in at the front for a good position for the field sprint. I ended up taking 7th in the sprint for 8th on the day.

GS Tenzing Crit

Sunday was the excellent crit put on by GS Tenzing. The course was about a mile long with the back part pretty much a straight line with a long sweeping turn the rest of the race. This race was also 90 minutes and it was sure to be extremely tough. I was planning on being way more aggressive as I wasn't racing the State Championships the next day like most people and didn't have to save any energy. About two or three laps in I put in an attack and got about a maximum gap of about 15 seconds but was shut down about a lap later by Texas Tough. I was pretty aggressive for the rest of the race, but I had missed a strong group that rolled off the front with about 30 minutes to go that had about 10-15 seconds on the pack. I then put in a hard attack to bridge up to them and caught the break about a half a lap later. Right when I bridged up, the break sat up which allowed us to get caught by the peleton. Mitch Comrado (Bike Barn) then put in an attack and brought Ian "Un-Dillestructable" Dille (Super Squadra) and Heath Blackgrove (Team Hotel San Jose) with him. Because I had just used a lot of energy to bridge up to the break I didn't have the energy to go with them. No one else reacted from the pack and the gap quickly swelled up to about 20 seconds. The rest of the race I tried extremely hard to try and bridge up to them, but every time I attacked the pack would chase me down and then sit up when I was caught. When the lap cards came out with 5 laps to go I realized I was fighting a losing battle and decided just to sit in and save it for the field sprint. I positioned myself in the top five for the last lap and was able to get 3rd in the field sprint for 6th on the day. The last twenty seconds of the race were spent at 39.3 mph with the last ten over 40 mph. My heart rate was racing at 205 bpm and my avg cadence for the last 20 seconds was 136 rpms. Easily the fastest sprint I've ever been in.

I am currently in Franklin, Tennessee for the Edgar Soto Memorial Classic which is serving as the Jr. World Championship Qualifiers. Their is an 18 km TT tomorrow, Saturday, and about a 75 mile road race on Sunday. I then go to Switzerland with the Junior National Team for the Tour de Pays du Vaud on June 6th to June 8th, and Trofeo Karlsberg on June 11th through June 14th.

Morbihan Wrap Up and the Houston Crits

2009-05-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been pretty busy with school and haven't had that much free time. I'll start where I left off with the last two stages of Morbihan. The second stage was a TT where I ended up 21st out of the 150+ man field. I ended up being the second highest place 17 year old with the highest place 17 year old one place and one second ahead of me. The third stage didn't go so well for me. I was pretty active in the early parts of the race and paid the price for it going into the final circuits. On the first lap my legs gave away and I ended up pulling out early to help Gabriella feed the rest of the team. Gavin was our top finisher that day in 12th after fruitless attempts by the rest of the team to try and get away.

Crits in Houston
This past weekend marked the first time that I had raced in the US in about a month. The races planned for the weekend were the Houston Metro Crit put on by SWCC and the Houston Grand Crit in Downtown Houston put on by Bike Barn. Both races were awesome events that were held very professionaly. The Metro Crit was in a parking lot meaning that it would be extremely technical. At the very beginning of the race, one of Texas' top crit racers, Kevin Kremke (Bike Barn), took off. I immediately jumped on his wheel and the two of us got about a 15 second gap pretty quickly. Later on, Sol Frost (Austin Bikes) bridged up to us, but later that lap Kremke slid out on a turn with me on his wheel. I slammed on the breaks and T-boned right into him sending me flying over my handlebars and landed right on my knees and chest. It took a little while to shake it off, but I decided to get back into the race. The officials put me back into the group that Kremke was in which happened to be the lead group. It was an eight man group consisting of Kremke and Mitch Comrado (both Bike Barn) , Carlos Vargas (Team Hotel San Jose), Josh Carter (ABD Cycle Club), Tyler Stanfield, Hector Rangel, and Ricardo Tapear. Mitch rode away from everyone with about 30 minutes to go to take an easy win. Later on, Kremke, Rangel, and Stanfield broke away from the rest of us to finish in that order. With my "mad" sprinting skills I finished last out of my group to take 8th on the day. Sunday was the Houston Grand Crit. Being a much older race, a lot more people showed up to race. The course was fairly simple with only three turns in it. Early on in the race a break including recent winner of the Athens Twilight Criterium, Heath Blackgrove (Team Hotel San Jose), Kremke, Rangel, Frost, Thacker Reeves (Matrix RBM), Carter, Steven Wheeler, and Phil Wikoff (Super Squadra). Because of the extreme horsepower in the break and I think everyone was working pretty evenly the group got about a 15 second gap that would never be closed. Both Wikoff and Wheeler dropped out of the break and Travis Burandt (Team Hotel San Jose) bridged up to it. I tried a lot in the early parts of the race to try and bridge, but I couldn't make it all the way up. About 30-40 minutes in, I decided to go ahead and conserve my energy for the field sprint or maybe even a flyer on the last lap. With a little less then two laps to go there was a massive crash taking out about 3/4's of the field. Fortunately, I was pretty far up at the front and missed the crash by about 5 meters. This left about 20 or so riders left in the main field. A few more had bridged up by the finish to make the size of the field at about 30. Going into the last lap I found myself in good position on Texas Premier Cup Leader, Phil Wikoff. Knowing that he was an extremely successfully and powerful sprinter I decided to try and keep his wheel. With about 500 meters to go I was bumped off of his wheel and found myself on the outskirts of the pack. I found myself being sucked along the outside of the pack and with 200 meters to go the sprint started. I just put my head down and spun as fast as I could and miraculously took second in the field sprint for my second 8th finish of the weekend. This up and coming weekend I am planning on driving up to Dallas for the Gary Glickman Memorial Crit and the GS Tenzing Crit. Because I have the world championship qualifiers the next weekend in Tennessee I have decided to skip the Category Based State Championship Crit, so that I can rest up to be on peak form.

Trophee Centre-Morbihan Stage One

2009-05-09T13:13:00.001-07:00

The stage definitely did go as well as I hoped. I started the race just covering a few moves, but mainly just tried to sit near the front as much as I could to conserve energy for the final 7 km circuits. An early brek went about 20 km into the 110 km race. About 50 km into the race I put in a hard attack to bridge up to a few guys off the front. I caught them pretty quickly, but the pack reeled us in shortly after. I continued to put in a hard pull and found myself with a gap on the pack. Quickly after, a Dutch and a French guy bridged up to me. The three of us worked well together and as we were entering the final circuits 35 km to go we finally made contact with the leaders with about a minute on the field. I stayed with the group until about 4 laps to go when I got a front flat. I quickly got another wheel, but by the time I had gotten back on the break was out of sight and there was no way for me to get back on. I chased for about another half a lap until I figured I was fighting an uphill battle and eased up to wait for the pack. The pack caught me about a little while later and I jumped into the top 20 or so. Since I had been chasing pretty hard for the last couple of kilometers I wasn't able to respond when the pack split with about 20 or so went up the road. A little while later I tried to bridge up to them, but I wasn't able to close the gap. I ended up placing around 60th at like 1:33 back. The group that I was with before I flatted ended up staying away at 36 seconds ahead of the second group that had Nate and Stuee in it. If I had stayed in that group I would of ended up in the top six and in the young riders jersey, which I'm pretty sure I could of as I was feeling incredibly strong at the moment. I was pretty mad about flatting, but hey, that's bike racing and I figured I might as well put in a good TT tomorrow then dwell on the past. The course tomrrow is 7 km and mostly flat execpt one semi-hard hill about half way in and the last 750 meters is a pretty big kicker. Hopefully I'll be able to recover well enough to put in a good time.

France

2009-05-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

I’m currently sitting on the corner of some random road in Locmine, France trying to steal some internet due to the fact that there isn’t any at the hotel we are staying at. We arrived here a day later than planned because our van broke down about halfway here causing us to sit on the side of the road for about four hours until a tow truck came and rescued us. We were then brought to the closest town to find out that the van wouldn’t be able to be fixed until the day after. Due to Stuee’s ability to speak French we were able to rent a car for the remaining four hours. Toby decided to stop in Roen for the night because it took so long to get back on the road. We stayed the night at a pretty nice hotel where I slept on the rock hard floor due to the lack of beds to fit three people. We woke up pretty early the next morning to drive the remainder of the trip and we got here at around 1:30. After moving into our rooms we put on our clip-on time trial bars for an hour and a half ride. We ate dinner at around 7:30 where we met the race director. This morning we ate breakfast at around 9:00 and set out on our ride at around noon where we rode the 7 kilometer time trial course for Sunday morning. The course seems pretty challenging with two pretty big hills in it. We finished the ride at about an hour and a half and showered up for lunch at 1:30. Tonight we have the team presentation at around 8:00 which should be fun as we are coming back as the defending champions. Tomorrow is stage one at about 110 kilometers. I’m really feeling strong, so we’ll see how everything turns out.

Traveling

2009-05-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

After a few days staying here at the Hof ter Komman in Oudenaarde, we are planning to depart tomorrow for Brittany, France for the Trophee Centre-Morbihan. It's a UCI 2.1 stage race that brings in strong teams from all over the world. Nate Brown took home the win last year, so we are going into the race with targets over our backs. After our successful race on Sunday we took it somewhat easy on Monday for about an hour and a half semi-recovery ride before lounging around the hotel playing some basketball and occasionally some badminton. Today we woke up at the usual time of around 9 to eat a breakfast of champions of vanilla yogurt and corn flakes (yumm) before going on our different ways to ride. Stuart, Anders, and Gavin set out on a four hour ride with last year’s team member, Simon Lambert-Lemay. Nate and I chose to go our own way for a 2 and a half hour ride. We set out for the canal and traveled to what we thought was the end before turning off and somehow finding ourselves in Gent. When we found the town center we started to hunt for the closest frites place and upon arrival we left as soon as we stepped inside because Nate got the "eebie jeebies". After looking at a map, we decided to head over to Brakel, a town about ten kilometers outside of the town where the hotel is. We somehow got off course and found ourselves en route to Oudenaarde (our home town). We ended the ride at about 2:15 and waited around the house for the rest of the team to come home. When everyone had showered up we left the hotel to meet up with Cyclocross Pro, Jonathan Page, silver medalist at the 2007 Cyclocross World Championships, at an Italian restaurant in town. After dinner we got some Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream, which Anders was extremely excited about as Ben & Jerrys is made in his home town, before heading back home. Well, that’s it for now as I'm about to head off to bed. I'm not sure if I'll have internet at the hotel in France, but hopefully I do. If not I'll try and figure something out to keep everyone posted on how I do. Thanks for reading!!

Back in Belgium

2009-05-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

I'm here back in Belgium, this time with the Hot Tubes Development Cycling Team. I arrived here yesterday after a 12 hour flight where I could only sleep about three hours. Despite lack of sleep, we woke up today ready for a kermesse in Vinkt. We completely dominated and took home first (Anders), second (Me), third (Nate), and sixth (Gavin). The course was about 8 kilometers long with completely flat on skinny roads in the middle of wide open farm fields. The race itself was 98 kilometers (13 laps) and had about 90 starters in it. About one kilometer into the race I put in an attack and stayed away for about a kilometer before a Belgian bridged up to me. We worked evenly until Nate bridged up to us going into the start/finish line that lap. The three of us worked steadily until Gavin and another Belgian bridged up to us about half way through that lap. This made it three Hot Tubers in a break of five with about a minute on an eight man group including Anders, and the pack over five minutes back with Stuee in it. Some would say that this was a near perfect situation. With about eight laps to go, the Anders group caught us and Anders went flying by us. I jumped on his wheel and we opened up about a 30 second lead. Nate bridged up to us about three laps later. We then proceeded to put in almost three minutes on the group of six behind us. We decided to let Anders take the win with myself over Nate. In the sprint behind us, Gavin took third in that group to take home sixth. By the end of the race I was pretty much cramping the entire time, but I wasn't really surprised as I had been in the lead group for all of the 100 kilometers of the race.

Teamwork

2009-05-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here was my article for this month's article of The Racing Post:

One of the most important lesson’s that I learned while over in Europe was teamwork. At the U23 National Team house World Pursuit Chapion, Taylor Phinney, told me that “you may not notice it now, but when you get older the racing gets harder and longer.” It is extremely tough to perform well in races without having teammates. At the Ster van Zuid-Limburg, Adam (winner of the 5 kilometer prologue) would have lost the yellow jersey on stage one if Team USA hadn’t gone up to the front on the closing laps of the race to reel in the breakaways. Again on stage two. A group of two got away with two of the five 10 kilometer local laps left in the race. Team USA got to the front and brought the gap from about 45-60 seconds to eight seconds by the end, which allowed Adam to stay in the yellow jersey by a slender second. Unfortunately, the team was hurting too bad on the final stage and an early break, which got up to a two minute lead with about 40 kilometers to go, stayed away and finished 23 seconds up on the peleton. Without Team USA on the front during the three stages, Adam would have lost the yellow jersey long before he really did.
Before this year, I had raced for the Northwest Cycling Club for around six years. Northwest was an excellent team to grow up and mature in. The only thing was that we (the juniors) never really raced as a team. We would always just go out to these races and act like we knew what we were doing while having an awesome time. By the time I had moved up through the ranks and into the P-1/2’s I was at a huge disadvantage. I was a lone ranger in the middle of the 75+ person fields with multiple teams dominating the day with carefully thought out strategies and tactics. I was stuck in the middle of a war with only one pair of legs and a teenager’s brain to help me.
When I arrived in Belgium I was expecting to learn a lot, but I can’t describe the amount knowledge that I learned about teamwork. Phinney is not only an extremely strong cyclist, but an incredibly smart man. Loyal teammates are a necessity for a cyclist, and it’s next to impossible to be able to turn pro without them.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my view on teamwork. Later today, I am getting on a plane for Belgium where I will compete in a kermesse in Belgium and a stage race in France with my team, Hot Tubes.

Georgia Training Camp Wrap-Up

2009-04-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm here back at home after a legendary time in Tiger, Georgia with the rest of the Hot Tubes team. When I last updated my blog we were planning on climbing Brasstown Bald the next day. The Brasstown Bald is the same decisive climb that was used in the Tour of Georgia. We did about a twenty mile ride to the base of the climb. One of the hardest things about Brasstown is the lead-in for the climb. For about 7 miles before the climb actually starts, there are a bunch of rolling hills that take a lot out of the legs. When we got to the base of the 2.5 mile climb with parts over a 20% grade, Stuart got to the front and set a steady tempo. The group stayed together until about one of the steepest section on the climb. Stuart rode ahead of everyone with Gavin behind him, and Anders and I behind Gavin. This part of the climb was so steep that if you only did about 10 seconds of really hard pedal strokes you could easily make up a ton of time. This is what I did and I found myself riding alongside Gavin. I did the same thing and was able to pull ahead of Gavin and got about 5-10 seconds behind Stuee. I then tried to ride at a steady pace and finished the climb in second place with a time of 17:17. We weren't able to climb to the very top of the mountain because the next mile was a walkway and is only accessible on foot. We then finished out the day with for about four hours at around 65-70 miles. The rest of the days were along the same pattern. On Wednesday, we went out on a 75 mile ride to figure out how to use the iBikes that we are going to be using this season. For the final miles of the ride, we did a mock race where some cheating was involved such as Stuee and Downtown Nate Brown drafting behind the team van and blowing by everyone else at 45+ mph. Later that night we went to the movie theater to see State of Play. The next day, Thursday, we were planning on riding three mountain passes, Hog Pen (the climb we did the first day), Brasstown, and Wolf Pen. Toby then decided to bag Brasstown thinking it would be too much. We all rode somewhat easy up Hog Pen where Ben took the sprint finish. The plan was to ride another 20ish miles to the base of Wolf Pen, but when we got to where we thought the base of the climb was we couldn't find it and decided to end the day at about 70 miles. That night we decided to go bowling where we saw Toby take the overall win over Downtown. I bowled the fastest ball at 23.6 mph and got a prize of a treat at Dairy Queen. On Friday, we rode about 20 miles to a white water rafting place where we spent about 5 hours on a raft flying down the Chatahoochee River. That night we all packed up all of our stuff for the departure Saturday morning. We left the house at around 8:15 the next morning so that Ben and I could be dropped off at the Charlotte airport. The rest of the team drove back to Toby's house in Mass. where they are staying until Tuesday when they leave for Europe. I needed to come back to Houston so that I could take the mandatory TAKS tests. After I finish my last test on Friday, I plan on traveling over to Belgium to meet up with the rest of the team where we will compete in a stage race in France. Special thanks to my school, Cypress Springs High School, and all of my awesome teachers for their cooperation. There would be no way for me to go on all of these trips if it weren't for my teachers working hard to prepare all of my lessons before I leave and working with my due dates while I'm gone. Thanks!!!

Georgia

2009-04-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

I'm here in Georgia with the Hot Tubes Development Cycling Team for our very first training camp. The riders that I am here with are Gavin Mannion from Massachutes, Nathan Brown from Tennessee, Ian Boswell from Oregon, Stuart Wight from Canada, Anders Newbury from Vermont, and Ben Gabardi from Mississippi. Yesterday, I flew into Charlotte, North Carolina to meet up with Toby for the three hour drive down to Tiger, Georgia. That night we received all of our new equipment including all of our clothing and our brand new Cervelo R3 SL's with Sram Red and Mavic Carbone SL's. We then proceeded to eat dinner before assembling our bikes. After everyone was finished putting the finishing touches on their bikes we played our luck in a game of Texas Hold 'Em. I ended up taking third and left the game without any money. Ian and Gavin went one, two respectively and split up the pot. Today, we woke up at around 9:00 for breakfast and a ride at 11:00. For the ride we did a 20 mile loop before riding about 40 miles out to a town called Helen for some sandwiches. We then rode about another five miles to a huge 10 mile mountain. The group whittled down to Anders, Nate, and I until about three miles into the climb. My legs then exploded and I was then passed by Stuart and Gavin. I then just tried to ride at a pace higher than four mph (seriously!). With about 3/4's mile of a straight wall Ian and I decided to call it quits and jump into the van. We then proceeded to turn around and drive until we found Ben to pick him up as well. After picking up Ben, we drove to the top of the mountain to find the rest of the team waiting up there. They then got into the van and we drove back to the house that we are staying at. We ended the day with around 75 miles and a little less than 4 hours. Tomorrow we plan on riding up the Brasstown Bald which should be oh so much fun! I'll keep y'all posted on how it goes.

A few more photos

2009-04-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

These photos came from an amatuer photographer in Belgium by the name of Jos Aerden. His website is http://aejosport.fotopic.net/

Cheers!

Some more pictures

2009-04-18T15:33:00.001-07:00

Off to Georgia, near the Brasstown Bald area, with Hot Tubes for our very first training camp tomorrow. The camp is a week long and should be an awesome trip! Here are pictures of me racing from Belgium. Enjoy! Finish Stage 1

Stage 1

On the front-Stage 1

Stage 1

Lesson Learned

2009-04-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

After one extremely stressful drive home from the airport I learned an extremely important lesson: never leave your bag on top of your bike box in an airport. As I was walking out of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport to meet my parents, my gear bag was snatched off the top of my bike box. In that bag was my passport, all of my Euros, helmet, pedals, and three pairs of glasses. We then filed a police report for the stolen bag and let the "po-po" handle the situation. Upon returning home and eating dinner, we received a call saying that the bag had been found in the restroom. My mom then proceeded to pick the bag up to find that all the money and the sunglasses had been stolen out of the bag. Fortunately, the most important thing in the bag was still there, my passport. If that had been stolen as well, it would of caused mass chaos as I am traveling back over to Europe with Hot Tubes in about two weeks. I learned a huge lesson to always keep an eye on my luggage and to always carry my passport with me, like in a pouch around your neck.

Everyone at the house
Photo Shoot

Roeselare

Home

2009-04-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since I last updated. I've been constantly traveling, and haven't had the time to sit down and blog it up. Just to recap the stage on Easter Sunday; after a long and stressful day working for Adam, we somehow managed to keep the yellow jersey by one second over one of the Belgium National Track team guys. He and another Belgian escaped with three laps to go (about 30 km) and finished eight seconds up on the pack. The fourth and final stage on Monday was easily the hardest with five King of the Mountain sprints, four of them happening within 20 kilometers of each other. The stage itself was about 120 km (80 miles). The team's main goal was to hold onto the yellow jersey and maintain our lead in the Team Classification. In the beginning kilometers of the stage, a group of five got up the road and built of a lead of about a minute by the time we hit the base of the first KOM. This climb was a little over a kilometer with pitches as steep as 15-20%. One of the Belgians attacked at the base of the climb, and I jumped onto his wheel. About 100 meters later, another 2-3 guys bridged up to us with the gap at around 5-10 seconds. I then proceeded to get dropped like a hot potato and rode at my own pace until the peloton swallowed me up. I then tried to stay near the front until the top of the climb. At the top, the white jersey rider and one other jumped across the gap to the group that I was in. That group then bridged up to the leading group to make it about 10 riders. The following three KOM's where all about the same as the one we just climbed, and by the end of them all, the lead group had a gap of about 1:15 seconds. The peleton then just rode at a steady pace until we hit the 10 kilometer finishing circuits and the gap had gone up to about two minutes. With about 40 kilometers left, Team USA got to the front to try and reel in the break. The whole team was working extremely hard with some help from one or two other Belgian teams. With one lap to go the gap was still around a minute, but everyone was still working as hard as they could. Unfortunately, we weren't able to pull the break back and they ended up finishing 23 seconds up on us. This moved one of the riders in the break into the lead to take the overall win. Adam ended up finishing third overall with myself in 14th. Team USA lost the lead in the Team Classification to a team from the Netherlands, but we managed to hold onto second. We all drove back to Izegem to pack up for the trip home the next day. After going to bed late and waking up early for the trip to the airport we all said our goodbye's, and headed off to our flight gates. Here are some photos from the trip... Prologue Shot
Pro Team Bus
FRITS!

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Future Quick Step Pros

I'll post more photos soon!

Ster van Zuid-Limburg

2009-04-12T02:46:00.001-07:00

I'm going to try and keep this post short as I'm getting ready to pack up for the race. The team worked REALLY hard to keep the yellow jersey, which we were able to do. I crashed on the day and hit my knee pretty hard. I'm currently icing it up, and it is starting to feel a little better. I'm planning on starting today and hopefully I'll be able to fight through the pain. The stage was 112 kilometers. The course went out 84 kilometers before we started five laps around some town. When we got onto the local laps, Jacob and Nate got into a group of about ten that opened up a gap of 30-40 seconds. I was sure the break was going to stick, but it was reeled in with about two to go. With about four kilometers to go, the guy in second place on GC put in an attack. Jacob, Nate, and I worked extremely hard to pull him in, and after about a kilometer and a half we finally succeded. I then drifted back into the pack and finished there in the sprint finish. Some French guy won the stage, and we kept the yellow jersey. I moved up into 10th overall, and 4th in the young rider classifacation.

Ben Swift

2009-04-11T00:41:00.001-07:00

Before I head out on my morning ride, just thought I let everyone know who the next big person in cycling is going to be: Ben Swift. When I traveled to Europe when I was 13 for a track competition with the Northwest Cycling Club, Swift completely dominated the entire race single-handely. Both Alan and I we left with only a memory of him when we came back to the states, but when he emerged as a staigare for Barloworld two years ago, he immediatly became our favorite pro. He is currently on Team Katusha and is doing amazing in his first year as a pro. He has many top five placings in some big races such as the Criterium International. He is currently in the points jersey in the Vuelta Pais Vasco with three top five placings (where he won the field sprint in those three stages). Just remember, you heard it from me first.

Ster van Zuid-Limburg Prologue

2009-04-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

As I'm not sure about all the final results after today's 5.3 kilometer time trial, I am sure that fellow teammate, Adam Leibovitz, dominated the day and took the win with a time of 6:21. Despite being such a short time trial, the course was extremely tough and demanding. It started out with about a 400 meter climb out of town before leveling out in the middle of these wide open fields. The course traveled on that road for about another kilometer until you take a left hand turn. After the turn there is a small hill that you climb before it levels back out. After riding on this part for about a kilometer and a half we took a steep and turny downhill back into town. At the base of that hill we took a sharp left with about a kilometer and a half to go. After that we had a pretty big head-wind all the home. The first US rider off was Jacob at around 5:00 PM. Jacob put in a fast time of 6:28 that most likely put him in the top 10. Next off was Connor at around 5:30 with another fast time of 6:48. Leibo then set off to put in the fastest time of the day with myself starting about thirty minutes after him at around 6:30. I made sure not to kill myself on the very first climb so that I would still be able to push the pace for the next 4.5 kilometers. I was feeling pretty good, but could never really find my rhythm and ended up with a time of 6:34 which I'm hoping is good enough for a top 15 finish. Nate set out after me and put in time similar to mine (not sure of the exact time). Alex went off last at around 7:30 and put in a time around 6:40-6:45. As I just finished this I found a website with the results up: its http://www.wielerbondvlaanderen.be/. Go to Uitslagen on the side and when that pops out click on Weg - Piste - Velde. Tomorrow is around a 120 km road race where most of the team will be up at the front slaving away for Adam so that he can maintain his lead. I'll update more on that tomorrow.

Do smell that up dog?

2009-04-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Nothing much. Besides having some sort of a photo shoot with VeloNews and USA Cycling on yesterday, and having my very first massage today, not much has been going around in Izegem. Yesterday, a couple of guys from VeloNews and USA Cycling stopped by the house to take headshots of all the American U23, Junior, and Women cyclists staying here in Izegem. After all the pictures had been taken. Everyone set out on a ride so that the same people could video tape us. This took a little over an hour until Ben sent the Juniors back to the house while everyone else stayed to finish up the video. When we got back we all pretty much chilled until it was about time for some lunch. Today, we decided to eat downtown at this small sandwhich shop on Izegem's main street. I had a classic Chicken Barbaque that was suprisingly delicious. Not much happened after we finished eating lunch and made our way back to the house. We just hung around the house watching music videos on the TV, played some poker, and I kept eating away at the huge stack of homework that needs to be completed upon arrival.

Belgian Racing

2009-04-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

With the first races of many races this weekend, I began my first Junior racing on European soil (last year I was considered a Newiulgen ??). The US Junior National Team raced in two kermesses (circuit races) in Waarschoot and Beernem. As expected, the racing was both fast and hard with only two of the five Americans finishing in Waarschoot, and only four of the six Americans finished in Beernem (Adam was still getting over his bronchitis and decided to skip racing on Saturday).

Kermesse Waarschoot

With no wind and hills, the difficulty of the course was deceiving. The kermesse was 90km long (about 54 miles) with about 9 or 10 laps. The race started on a wide open road before turning onto a 200 meter cobbled section that transformed into what helps make Belgium famous, skinny roads. The race then stayed on the 7 feet wide roads before turning back onto the finish line straight. Unfortunately, Nate and I had a absolutely horrible starting position in almost last place behind almost all 210 other starters (that's right, 212 starters). The race started extremely fast and it took me a total of 30 km to just get up to the front. Right when I got to the front I went on an attack and quickly opened up about a 10-15 seconds gap before being brought back about a half a lap later. Nate then went on the counter-attack to quickly open up a 20+ second gap. I tried to stay close to the front to try and act like a teammate, and that is pretty much where I stayed for the next 45 km. I pretty much just followed wheels and tried to disrupt any pace making by the others. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that Nate had crashed the same lap he went off the front and dropped out of the race, so I pretty much did all that work for nothing. I then started to drift towards the back of the shrunken field until there was a crash in front of me that completely did me in. I then dropped off the back and finished the rest of the lap before I was pulled by the follow car. All in all, it was an extremely tough race with my 60 minute average power at 300 watts. Jacob was our top finisher in 18th with Alex finishing in the main group.

Kermesse Beernem

This course was definitely not deceiving; it looked fast and hard, and it was fast and hard. This kermesse was 78 km with about 7 or 8 km laps. The course was full of road furniture on the sides of the road. Like the other kermesse, the race started on a wide open road with an overpass before taking a sharp right hand turn onto an extremely skinny road with trees on both sides. After traveling down this road you turned back onto the road the race finishes on, but it is still like 3 km away. During that 3 km you travel over another overpass that helped decide the outcome of the race. After yesterday's race, I didn't want to waste so much energy up at the front, so I tried do a lot more sitting in. Once again, Nate and I found ourselves on the very back row. Fortunately, there wasn't as much people as yesterday ("only" about 140-150 today) and we were able to move up WAY quicker. I just kind of chilled near the front and put in a few attacks. With about two laps to go Jacob and Nate both got off the front with a Belgian kid and opened a pretty big gap. Thinking that was going to stick, I was planning on just chilling in the pack, so that I could have something for the finish. I was then surprised to see the break being caught right at one to go. A group of three then countered the move and opened up a huge gap of about 10-15 seconds really quickly. We then turned onto the skinny farm road at a leisurely pace. I then put in an attack to try and lift the pace up and was surprised to see that only one other guy had reacted with the pack about 7 or so seconds back. The two of us were working hard and were soon caught by about three or four more. With the break so big, many of the riders were content to just sitting on the back to let the others do the work. This caused some panic which brought the pace down which allowed two or three more to bridge back up. This brought the group up to 10 with the three barely hanging off the front. Going over the overpass a few gaps opened up and I was stupid enough to be the one to try and close them. This pretty much blew my legs, and I ended up fighting as hard as I could to just hang on to the back of the break. By the time the sprint opened up I was completely toast and finished about 15 meters behind the group to finish in 13th. Jacob and Connor both finished in the pack with Nate a little bit behind the pack. Adam's was having some trouble breathing during the race and decided to pull out about 45 minutes into it. Unfortunately, Alex laid his bike down in the early stages of the race (he's fine) and pulled out as well.

That's pretty much it for now, and it's getting kind of late so I’m about to go ahead and hit the hay. Good night (for me)!

Just Chilling

2009-04-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I'm just chilling here at the house after an extremely intense game of poker won by none other than Downtown Nate Brown. Not really much happened today. We woke up at the usual time of about 8:00 for some breakfast. We all decided that we should depart ride at around 11:00. After meeting outside with Ben Sharp, our team director, we all had to go back in for our money and food if we forgot them. The ride wasn't all that hard. Most of us were still getting used to the huge time zone jump so we decided not to go out and ride 3 hours all out. During the ride we just rode two abreast and traded 2-5 minutes until we arrived in Roselare, about 17 kilometers (around 10 miles for you americans) out of Izegem. We then stopped at a local cafe to get some coffee or hot chocolate. After burning some time out there we made the trek back to the U23 house. The rest of the day we rode to downtown on the beater bikes before heading back to the house to hang out and do some homework (blah!). At the usual six 0'clock, we ate an incredible dinner made by Els that consisted of pasta, chicken, and salad. After dinner we sat around for the U23 team meeting for their stage race that was happening the following day. When that concluded Ben, Alex, Nate, and I started an intense game of Texas Hold 'Em that saw Alex go down in the early hands. Ben, Nate, and I kept up in intense game until I finally took out Ben with a legendary full house. With only Nate and I still in it was a game full of ridiculing and taunting eachother. The game ended when Nate took me out with a full house over my straight, and took the pot of six euros with two going to me. That puts it to now, and I'm fixing on going to bed for my first race 17-18 European race tomorrow. Good night!

Europe!!!

2009-04-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

After a day full of traveling, I finally have the chance to sit down and relax. I am currently at the USA National Team House in Izegem, Belgium with the Junior National Team, consisting of Nathan Brown, Jacob Rathe, Adam Leibovitz, Conor O'Leary, Alex Battles-Wood, and myself. With such a huge time difference from Houston to Belgium, I started waking up and going to bed 30 minutes earlier each day for the week before the trip. This/yesterday morning I woke up at 4:00 Houston time and just chilled around the house before heading off to the airport at 7:30 for my flight to Newark at 10:30. My parents and I arrived at the airport on time and they were both able to follow me to my gate to see me off before the two week adventure across the "pond." When the time had gone I said my goodbyes and made my way onto the plane. Thankfully, the plane was full of entertainment with TVs on the back of every seat where you could choose between music, movies, or even games. I spent the three hour flight messing around with the system, and before I knew the plane was touching down on the ground in Newark, New York. I then made my way over to my next gate to meet with Nate Brown to get some food before we seperated for different flights out of there. We found a Chinese place and got some good ol' American Chinese food to chow down on. With my flight leaving a couple of minutes before his, we said our goodbyes for now until we would meet back up at the house. The plane was the same model as the previous one, but I wasn't able to enjoy most of the luxeries because I was in dire need of some sleep. I slept most of the journey to Brussels and was able to get through customs without any problems. My directions for when I got out of Customs was to wait for the remainder of the team excluding Nate, and team director, Benjamin Sharp. Alex found me soon after I sat down and we were later joined by the Jacob, Adam, and Conor. We were then escorted to the house in one of the huge USA Cycling vans where we saw a few pro team vehicles, like Rabobank, Lampre, and Liquigas. One thing that we saw made up for the entire day of traveling was a small kid, around the age of four or five shooting us the middle finger in the back of a car. Of course, we all got a good kick out of this becuase it was one of those things that you would see on the internet. By the time everyone had calmed down, we had made it to the house, and it was time to settle in and unpack. After moving into our rooms we decided it was time to set up our bikes so that we could get out and spin the legs. Their was a slight problem when Adam snapped his unique rear derailleur, and had to wait until one of the mechanics came in to find a new one and fix it. After everyone had finished setting up their bikes, except Adam, we set out on a one hour ride where we ran into two miniture Tom Boonens, Quick-Step kits and all, at about 10 years old, and rode with them for a little bit. Upon finishing an hour, we arrived back at the house to shower up and then eat a wonderful dinner cooked by Els, one of the directors at the house. This pretty much leaves me at now where I am about to hit the hay. One last thing though, with one of the biggest U23 road races of the year, the U23 Tour of Flanders, coming up some of the nations top U23 cyclists here as well, including recently crowned World Pursuit Champion, Taylor Phinney. Anyways, thanks for reading, and I'll try to keep everyone posted as often as possible!

Fayettville Stage Race

2009-03-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was a tough way to end a nice and relaxing spring break. This was partly because of the always hard Fayettville Stage Race which consisted of a four lap 65 miles road race on Saturday followed by a 6.6 mile time trial, and a 6 lap 95 mile road race early on Sunday. With teams coming from many different states the racing was sure to be extremely tough, but I was nothing short of ecstatic when I took my first P12 victory in the time trial.

Saturday Road Race
My main goal for this stage was to conserve energy, so that I would still have some gas left in the tank for the later races. I moved up to the front early on in the race and just tried to stay there for the majority of the race. I was never really put into difficulty and was able to stay up there. I saw a few friends that I haven't seen lately, such as next month's Jr. National Team Member, Alex Battles-Wood, and "gossiped" a little. With about one to go a group of five including, Steven Wheeler (Super Squadra), Carlos Vargas and Robbie Robinette (both Team Hotel San Jose), Chad Haga (A&M), and John Korioth (Team Six). I didn't see them roll of the front until it was too late. With Texas Tough not represented in the break, Stefan Rothe got to the front and set a steady tempo to try and limit the losses to the break, while I sat towards the front to keep safe. With about one kilometer to go the break had gotten about 40 seconds up the road and there was no hope of catching them. I tried hard to position myself towards the front for the sprint and with about 500 meters to go I found myself pretty far back in about the top 20. When the sprint opened up with about 200 meters to go I found myself being able to pass many riders on the left hand side and finished sixth in the field sprint (later moved to 5th) for 11th on the stage (later moved to 10th). During the sprint, about halfway through the pack a gap had opened up which left everyone in the group seven seconds behind. Steven "18-Wheeler" Wheeler ended up winning the stage ahead of Carlos Vargas and John Korioth.

Saturday TT
The course was a fairly challenging course with rolling hills for the first half with a headwind and then a crosswind before you turn right on a flat road with a tailwind with about four or so kilometers to go. I definitely excited for the TT mostly because it would be my first TT on my one week old Cervelo P3C (thanks again mom and dad!!). With a headwind on the way out and a tailwind on the way back I knew that I could start hard and still be able to finish fast. This is exactly what I did and I came through the finish with a time of 14:08, two seconds shy of the course record set by two years ago Tejay Van Garderen, at an average speed of 28.6 mph (unfortunately my SRM wasn't calibrated properly and my power was incorrect). With still a lot more strong riders still coming in I was hoping it would be good enough for a top three finish. It was. I ended up taking the win which catapulted me into fourth place in the GC.

Sunday RR
All I can say is "Ouch!" With my longest race I had ever done I was expecting it to hurt like no other, but still...It's a day after and I was having trouble walking all day during school. The race didn't start out to hard, which I was thankful of, and I just sat towards the front trying to conserve energy. With about 40 miles left in the race a group of eight containing David Wenger and Ian Dille (both Super Squadra), Stefan Rothe (Texas Tough), Heath Blackgrove (Team Hotel San Jose), Joshua Carter (ABD Cycle Club), Micthell Comardo (Bike Barn), and Kolt Bates and Joseph Schmalz (both Mercy Cycling Team). With most of the major teams (major teams!!! Only Alan will get this...) represented in the break the pack was happy to let them go and they quickly opened up a four minute gap. About 60 miles into the race I was really hurting. I found myself in the very back almost crying in pain with fellow juniors, Alan Ting and Alex Battles-Wood. I then just tried to recover and hang on so that I could finish in the pack. With one lap to go, about 17 or so miles, I got a second wind and was able to move back to the front. I covered a few moves to try and salvage a top 20 placing, but was unable to go with the move that stuck which involved John Korioth, 18-Wheeler, and Pat McCarty (Ouch-Maxxis), and three others. With about 10 miles to go, another group of about six rolled off the front. I missed this move and was force to chase by myself. With about five or so miles the group had gotten about 20 seconds when I decided to put in a solo attack. I quickly opened up a pretty big gap on the field and started to close the gap on the group in front of me. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully close the gap down by the finish, and was finished about 10 seconds behind that group, but I was able to hold the pack off by another 10 seconds. I ended up 22nd on the stage which dropped me down to 16th overall. I was definitely happy with my performances this weekend, especially since it shows I have good fitness for my first European trip coming up on March 31st to April 14th. Well, until next time!

Lago Vista Day 1

2009-03-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

La Primavera at Lago Vista is probably Texas' top race. This year's edition attracted the Kelly Benefits professional cycling team. This year was my first time racing Lago with the P12's for 80 miles (both days) and my only goal was to finish both days. The course at Lago is pretty much all climbing on the way out on stair-stepping climbs, then it's straight down with a downhill capable of hitting 60 mph. The race on Saturday was extremely tough with only 37 finishers out of 110-120 starters, and I was one of them. For the race on Saturday, I unfortunately got a terrible starting position way in the back. This meant that the first few miles of the race would be focused on moving up. Fortunately, I was able to find a lot of holes in the pack and found myself up at the front in no time. I tried my hardest to stay up there as much as I could and even felt strong enough to put in an attack at one time. With about five laps to go the pack had really shrunken. I started to become a little more aggressive and attacked a few more times. When I realized that there was no way for me to get off and stay off I just sat in towards the front of the pack trying to conserve energy. By the time we had one lap to go (about 5.5 miles) a few people had slipped off the front including Heath Blackgrove (Team Hotel San Jose) and Stefan Rothe (Texas Tough). On the first half of that lap with all the climbing I probably had the best wheel. I was sitting in second behind a Texas Tough guy that was setting a tempo for the up-hill, crosswind section. But, when we did the U-turn to start the extremely fast downhill section of the course I lost a lot of places due to my junior gears. I made a few of them back up on the next small hill, but lost them all again on the downhill right before the finish line hill. I ended up 32nd out of the 37 finishers, but I was definitely happy with my performance especially since the average speed for the last minute of the race was over 40 mph. I'll try and have day 2 up soon.

Rules, Rules, Rules

2009-03-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

I've recently been submitting monthly articles for Texas' top cylcing magazine, The Racing Post. Here is the article for this months issue. I am currently working on the Lago Vista race report where I succesfully finished both days...

Rules, Rules, Rules

A couple of weekends ago, at the Alsation Country Omnium, there was a fair amount of frustration and disillusionment when the results came out showing that a number of riders had been relegated in the P1/2 Road Race. I fully agree with the decisions that the officials made and also think all the racers that crossed the yellow line, myself included, during the race should have been relegated as well.
Before the start of the race when the officials were calling out the rules, they stated more than once that if anyone crossed over the yellow line and advanced positions that their day was over. They also forewarned of the heavy cross winds and if you were already in an echelon and straddling the yellow line then to start a second or a third echelon.
For the first two laps of the race everyone was doing a good job on staying on the right hand side of the road, but at the beginning of the third lap a few of the strong riders got to the front during the cross wind section and really ramped up the pace. This move shattered the field into numerous groups leaving the lead group with about 20 or so racers in it. Before long, a few guys started to venture on to the left hand side of the road, and the next thing you know about 95% of the field was on the wrong side of the road. In fear of being shelled off the back I too made the wrong decision to take shelter from the wind on the wrong side of the road. The blatant abuse of the yellow line rule caused the follow vehicle to stop the group, allowing all the dropped racers to catch back on. I’m not saying I was ecstatic when the officials stopped us, but looking back I agree 100% with what the officials did.
These kinds of rules are made for the safety of the racers. We are not Pros, at least most of us aren’t, and don’t have the privilege of having the entire highway shut down for us to race on. The officials should have relegated everyone that crossed the yellow line during the race, no matter who they are or what place they got.
As a junior racer in the P1/2’s there are a lot of people that I look up to as role models and guides, and when I see some of them crossing over to the “dark side” I automatically think that it’s OK to follow suit. After the race finished and I had talked to my dad about what happened, I realized how dangerous our actions were. What if as we were cresting the top of a hill a car was driving on the correct side of the road? Most of Texas’ top racers would have been immediately hospitalized or worse and then where would all the role models for the junior racers be? The officials had every right to disqualify us and send us home, but were very generous with only relegations. This was an excellent lesson for an early season race to remind us of what is at stake out there, why there are rules, and what we need to do in the future.

Pace Bend

2009-02-26T13:09:00.000-08:00

Where to start? Should it be the pain constantly shooting through my legs even before the race has even started, the extremely fast 5 mile rolling course, or the 140 man field that started the race? We'll start with the legs. Even after trying to spend most of the previous day off my legs and massaging the cramps out of them from the death defying effort that I put in the day before, I was still hurting like a dog. The few hours before the race was spent waddling around the camp ground frantically getting ready for the race. The course was an extremely fast 5 mile course filled with rolling hills. The average for the race ended up being 25.7 mph, the fastest road race average I've ever had. Due to the fact that we were staying at the park where the race was and it started at 12:30, I was given a chance to get some well-wanted hours of extra sleep. I woke up around 10:00 for some breakfast. At around 11:00 I made the two mile trek to the start line to pick up my number and meet with some friends before the race of pain. I then rolled back to our camper to get ready for the race. After rolling back up to the start line, almost eating the pavement a few times because I was carrying my spare wheels with me, I settled down near the front of the 140 man field for the start with Alan. With another 20 or so minutes to spare before the start, Alan and I started our pre-race rituals including kicking each others wheels, slapping the seats, slamming our fist down on each others helmets, injecting our imaginary "EPO" from a syringe that goes all the way around the world, and who knows what else we do (don't even try to understand the complexity of our friendship). By the end of all that the race was only a few minutes away from starting. The officials called out the rules and off we went. I only had two goals for this race: finish and try and stay as close to the front as possible. Surprisingly, I felt pretty strong today despite the previous day's efforts. I was able to stay up in the top 15-20 riders for most of the race, felt strong enough to attack once or twice, and was still able to see shoot Alan the "What Up?" sign whenever our paths crossed (again, don't try to understand...). An early break got away and stayed off the front for about 8 of the 14 laps we were doing. When the break was caught there were immediately some counter-attacks, but due to the extreme size of the field none stayed away. The last three laps where perhaps some of the fastest laps I've ever done. Everyone was fighting to stay up at the front and attacks were going like free candy. I resigned to try and stay up in the front as much as I could and try to conserve as much energy as I could. Unfortunately, a group of about 20 had broken away from the rest of the field with a little over one lap to go. I then went on an attack with three others to try and bridge up to the lead group. The three of us were pulling all out until we finally caught the group. I then looked around hoping to see a gap to the rest of the pack, but found them just catching up to us. Hanging my head in despair, I fell back to about the middle of the pack thinking my day was done. With about a half a lap to go I got a second wind and was able to move pretty far up in the pack. Going into the final sharp turn before the 250 meter finish line climb, I was sitting in the top 15. Unfortunately, I was cut-off going around the turn and lost a ton of places. After that I just sat up and rolled up the climb to finish a dismal 60th out of probably more than 100 finishers. Phil Wikoff won the race ahead of Josh Carter and Steve Tilford. I was definitely excited about the weekend's performances and am looking forward to Texas' biggest race of the season next weekend, La Primavera at Lago Vista.

EPIC

2009-02-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

As some of the hardest races of the year have come and gone, I still find myself screaming out loud and reaching down to my legs to try and soothe out the cramps that are forced onto my aching legs even a day later. With the EPIC Walburg/Pace Bend weekend of racing behind you, it's known to be expected.

Once again, the Walburg Classic blessed us with unpredictable weather and some real tough racing. For the first time in years it looked as though the weather at Walburg would be perfect for a long day in the saddle. I rolled out of the parking lot with the rest of the Cat 2's (the Pro 1's were racing by themselves today) at around 8:00 AM with the temperature at around 60-65, the sun peeking through the clouds, and no wind at all. It was going to be a good day. By the time we had rolled ten minutes out of town it was raining steadily and the winds had picked up to about 20+ mph with gusts over 25. It was not going to be a good day. For the first lap I just sat in the pack to try and conserve as much energy as possible, and watched as small groups of about 2-3 riders roll up the road to create a dangerous move of about 10-15 riders off the front. With a little less than two laps to go, of the 24 mile course, I saw an attack go with some of the strongest Cat 2's in it. I quickly jumped on to the back of the train and found myself in a group of about 10 with a large gap back to the field. The ten of us worked well together and coming up the 800 meter finish line hill with one to go we had a minute and a half deficit on the leaders. Near the same spot that I had gone on the attack the previous lap I attacked again. No one from the break reacted and I found myself riding by myself for the next mile or so until Erick Benz, Dan Opdyke, and John David Coppin bridged up to me. Over the next seven or so miles, the four of us worked evenly until Coppin suddenly cramped up. This was a huge setback to us, seeing that he was an extremely strong rider and the chance of catching up to the lead group without him was very slim. After another mile or so Brian Jones bridged up to us as we got onto the 20 mph tailwind section. With my junior gears I just tried to stay on and keep the same pace when I pulled through at over 30 mph and 110 rpms. By the time we had pulled onto the smooth highway with a pretty strong tail/cross wind the gap had gone down to around a minute. The four of us worked extremely hard until we caught a group of four about 2 miles before the finish. With huge cross winds by this point, Benz got to the front an really drove the pace, putting me deep in the pain cave. By the bottom of the hill, I was really hurting, and by the time the sprint opened up I cramped really badly. The gap between the group and me widened very quickly, and I just started focusing on getting up the finish hill still conscious. I completed my goal, and came across the finish line 12th while puking no less than six times (including one spew that narrowly missed P1 4th place finisher, Travis Burandt). I then collapsed on the ground for about 10 more minutes before heading to the car for my chocolate milk. Mitch Comrado ended up winning the race from a two man break ahead of Chad Haga with Joseph Schmalz taking third. Heath Blackgrove ended up taking the win in the P1's ahead of Bill Stolte and Dave Wenger

I'm working on the Pace Bend race report and should have it up in a few hours.

Alsation Country Omnium

2009-02-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

This past weekend marked the second edition of the Alsation Country Omnium in Castroville, TX, but more importantly the start of my jam packed road season. The race opened with a flattish ten mile time trial in the morning on Saturday, a 60 minute crit later on that day, and ended with a demanding 75 mile road race. After arriving late on Friday, we set up our pop-up camper and went to bed at around 11:00, so that I could get a good enough sleep to wake up for my TT start at 11:08 the next day. I woke up at around 8 to drink a banana smoothie and eat a bagel. After just chilling in the pop-up for a while reading the latest ProCycling magazine we drove over to the TT course so that I could get a warm-up in. The course was an out-and-back course with HUGE winds. On the way out I averaged about 33 mph spinning in my junior gears for an average of 114 rpm's, while on the way back I averaged only 23 mph. I ended up with a time of 21:19 which was good enough for ninth in the P12's, a whole minute behind the winner, Dave Wenger. This gave me four points for overall omnium. I then went back to the pop-up, and killed the next couple of hours watching the crits with Alan Ting (the RV camp that we were staying at was were the crit was). With the race at 4:30, I went back to the pop-up at around 3:30 to get all my gear together. When the Cat 3's finished racing, I rolled onto the course to get a few laps in before the start of my race. After rolling out, I found myself at the very back of the pack knowing full well that I would spend the better part of the race moving up to a good position. The pace was extremely high the whole time with recent addition to pro team OUCH-Maxxis, Pat McCarty, on the front driving the pace. I finally made it to the front and tried to maintain that position as long as possible. With about four laps to go, I tried an attack. No one from the pack reacted for a while and I was able to get about a 5-7 second gap. Unfortunately, I was quickly brought back in by a monster pull on the front of the pack, and the next thing I knew I was being passed by the majority of the pack and found myself back at the back, and that is where I finished behind winner, Ronnie Strange. The road race was one of the hardest races of my life, won by Kevin Kremke. The race started out with a 7.5 mile roll-out of town with a monster tail wind (we almost hit 40 mph on the way out), followed by four 15 mile loops, with a 7.5 mile leg back into town. For the first half of the race I tried to conserve as much energy as possible. With two laps to go, a few got to the front on the yellow line and really upped the pace on one of the cross wind sections. This caused many people to be dropped while the remaining 20 or so of us were hanging on for dear life. After a few miles of this, a few guys broke the rules and crossed over the line to get a better draft. This encouraged others to do the same thing, and next thing you know the entire group except a few where over the yellow line and cars were passing us on the right hand side of the road. Before we turned to get off of the road, the follow vehicle pulled up next to us and stopped the race to talk to us about crossing the yellow line. This allowed all of those who had been dropped to catch back up. For the next lap the pace never really escalated all that much. With one lap to go the same group of guys got back up to front on the same cross wind section, and successfully dropped almost half the pack. Unfortunately, I was one of them. I found myself in the second group on the road with about 10 others. We all took hard pulls on the front before we finally caught back on. I spent the next 10 or so miles trying to recover, so that I could hang on for the cross wind section back into town. When we got onto the route back in town, I found myself in the back trying to pass people getting dropped. After a while my legs just gave up and the pack just rode away from me. I jumped into the next group when they passed me to try and bridge back up to the leaders. By the time I had gotten to the front the gap had been closed down a lot. I took an all out pull, but when I pulled off I couldn't find it in me to jump back in line and found myself riding alone. To say the least, I rode the last five miles by myself to the finish. Although my placings weren't all that high in the crit and road race I still had a great time. It was a great event put on by Andrew Willis, and I can't wait for next year. Special thanks to my parents for supporting me and driving me there and back, and Daniel Walker for letting me use his skinsuit.

NHS

2009-01-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd announce it to the world that I was recently inducted into the Cypress Springs National Honor Society. I'll try and have a report on the Super Squadra Scouting Camp up in a bit.

Cyclocross State Championships

2009-01-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was full of the Cyclocross State Championships in San Antonio. I came into the weekend with a cold, but I tried to ignore it and race...bad idea. Saturday was the age-based State Championships and I raced my first race in my new age category, Junior Men 17-18. Sunday was the category-based State Championships where I raced in the 3/4's. On Saturday, I ended up taking the win by about 30 seconds over Danny Parks and Conner Steward. The course was a fairly long course with two sand pits, one that you HAD to run across, and a few technical sections. I started hard and was able to get a big gap that no one was able to close. The race today didn't go so good. I was able to get a good start and entered the course in second wheel. I then went to the front and got a small gap, but it was brought down by a Chad Christian on Joe's Pros Bikes. I stayed with him for about a half a lap until my throat seized up due to my cold. I then started to fade away and was passed by about 20 riders until I could barely take a small breath in. After signaling this to my dad I pulled out of the race and headed home. I usually hate to quit races, but today I really had no other choice but to pull out. Special thanks to Richmond Fraiser and Rob Kane for putting on two stellar events this weekend, and congratulations to all the new state champions!

Christmas in Mexico

2008-12-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!!

For this past Christmas my whole family decided to travel down to Playa del Carmin, Mexico with the rest of my extended family. With school being let out on Friday the 19th we decided to leave the next day, Saturday. Our flight left at around noon, so we decided to leave the house around 9 to get there a good two hours ahead of time. When we checked the computers had kinda screwed up which put us in first class (for no extra charge). Of course, we weren't going to complain. After going through all the security and making a restroom stop we made our way over to the gate where we would meet up with the rest of the family which included: our Granparents-Greg and Joan Kuhns; the Kuhns family-Aunt Nancy, Uncle Jim, and cousins James, and Lindsey; The other Kuhns family-Uncle Hampden (who is an excellent ping-pong player), Aunt Sara, and their adopted kids, Kit and Niya; and the McCarthy family-Aunt Anne, Uncle Shawn, and cousins Will, Sam, and Alex. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the gate we found out that the flight was delayed a good hour. Fortunately for the Craddock family, we were able to get into the President's Club because of our first class tickets. After "chilling" in there for a while with my dad and brother we made our way back to the gate before the flight left. We then got on the flight and took off for our stay at the Petite Lafite. When we got Mexico everyone was able to get all of their luggage, so we then went outside to get in the taxi vans. On our way to the resort we ended up getting lost, but thankfully made it there in time for dinner. After getting everyone sorted out into their "cabanas" we found ourselves at the buffet picking up some delicious authentic Mexican food. In fear of writing the length of a novel I won't go into that much detail on the adventures that we went on. We did a bunch of things while we were their including: snorkeling on the coast of Cozumel, jumping off 50 foot dives into underground cenotes, snorkeling down an extremely long river, racing my brother down the same river, visiting ancient Mayan ruins, climbing up huge, 192 step Mayan Pyramids, jumping up the same pyramid to get in my "strength training" for the day, and just relaxing on the beach. To say the least, it was definitely one of the best family vacations I've had, and special thanks to G-Mom and G-Dad for helping put it all together and making it happen.

As for the cycling part of my blog....
The Sunday before the trip was another cyclocross race in the Woodlands. The course was fun and demanding. It started out in parking out lot where you would do a big U-turn. You would then take a sharp turn onto a sidewalk which would lead to the first off-road section. You would then have to jump over a set of barriers before you dive into the forest. This part was extremely technical before you come back out of the forest into a muddy straightaway. You would then go onto a technical grassy area before you climbed a short hill where you would ride along some soccer fields. The next major obstacle was a steep downhill with an extremely tight U-turn at the bottom. The rest of the course was pretty tough and technical before you made another U-turn with about 200 meters until the finish line. I decided to give another shot a the Men Open despite my disastrous attempt the previous week. I had a pretty bad start and entered the forest in 4th place. With the first two guys on Bike-Lane, they started some teamwork to let the first place guy, Kevin Koen, get a good gap. I then attacked when we got out of the woods to try and catch back up to Kevin. The other Bike-Lane guy, Nathan Winklemann, sat on my wheel while I tried my hardest to catch back up. I almost made it up to Kevin before we made it to the grassy section, but he opened up a big gap during the technical section. I then tried to recover as Nathan repeatedly attacked me. After about halfway through the race my legs gave up as I watched Nathan open up a huge gap. As I was trying to recover the GCCA guy who was in fourth passed me. I then rode at my own pace just trying to stay in fourth. As I started to recover I was able to up the pace, and had a reasonable gap on the fifth place rider. On the last lap the gap between the GCCA rider and me from around 15 seconds to 7 seconds. Thinking I could possibly catch him, I went to fast around the U-turn at the bottom of the steep hill and cashed. I quickly picked up my bike, and jumped back onto the crooked saddle. As I continued to ride as hard as I could I noticed that my brake levers were crooked as well. Nevertheless, I ended up finishing in fourth. After the race I met up with best friend, Alan Ting, so we could wander hopelessly around the Woodlands and eat Coldstone on the side of the road (inside joke....). This next weekend I have the State Championships CX race up in San Antonio where I plan on racing the Juniors on Saturday and the 3's on Sunday.

Happy New Years!!!

If you ain't first, you're last!!

2008-12-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

This past weekend marked the start of a few new things. The first being my official start to being a Hot Tubes Development Team member, and the second being the start of my cyclocross season. The first race of the weekend was over in Tinsley Park put on by GCCA. It was about a 7 minute course starting with a steep gravel road with a 180 turn at the top. We then rode some on a paved bike path before we tackled the off road section. After riding off road for a while we got onto a steep paved hill with switchbacks. After climbing that hill we rode straight back down the hill before the tricky U-turn onto the finish line straight. With my lack of racing this far into the CX season I opted for the Men 3/4's with 45 minutes of racing. At the very beginning, I went to the front and went all out for the first three quarters of a lap to break up the field. When I looked back there was only three others behind me. I then pulled off to get some rest. The next guy kept the pace high to drop everyone except me. We then traded pulls until Southern Elite's Cody Foster bridged up to us with a Woodlands rider. Cody went straight to the front and then slid out around a tricky turn. Being right behind him I, slammed on the brakes and went over the handlebars trying to miss him. Fortunately, neither of us were hurt, so we jumped back on the bike and chased back on. Later that lap, I slid out again on the U-turn before the finish. I jumped back up again and was able to chase back on. By the time that I had caught back on the Woodlands guy had been dropped making it the original Bike Lane guy, Cody, and me. With about two laps to go Cody flatted, making only the Bike Lane guy and me. With one lap to go, I attacked at the top of the hill to open up a gap. I was able to keep that gap, and ended up winning by about 5 seconds over the Bike Lane guy with Cody recovering from the flat to get third. Today was a little different....With the payout a little better, I made the bad decision to race the Men Opens for a hour worth of racing. The course was fun and technical with a difficult uphill run-up. Everything started out well. I was able to stay with Bryan Fawley, one of Texas' best CX racers, until the really technical section. By the time that I had gotten out the that section, Bryan had opened up a pretty good gap. I kept riding at my pace before two Bike Lane racers caught up to me. I was still feeling pretty good up until I was behind both of them, and the guy directly in front of me eased up to make a pretty big gap to his teammate. I then got to the front and started chasing pretty hard. To say the least, I made it about a half of a lap. My legs then just blew up and my day was done. I kept riding, but I was passed by the remaining five riders only to hang on to their wheels for about five seconds before being dropped. I ended up finishing the race in ninth out of nine :( Special thanks to Andy Gonzalez for working on my bike so that I could race.

Austin Rocks!

2008-11-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

Happy belated Thanksgiving!! This past week we visited my brother up in Austin. While we were there I got a TT bike fit, went on a ride with Lance Armstrong's best friend, and watch UT slaughter A&M. Nonetheless, I would call it a fun and event-fulled trip. With only two days of school this week, meaning a limited amount of work, I would also call it a stress-free week. My parents and I made the 2 and a half hour trip up to Austin early Wednesday morning, so that I could do my one hour endurance ride then meet up with Dave at the Source Endurance Headquarters for my bike fit. After arriving at Source, Joseph Lafico took my dad and I on a "flat" ride in Austin. Upon arriving back at Source, I got started on my bike fit with Dave. He set my bike up on a trainer then attached these little circles, from a Colorado company named Retul, that show how my body moves when I ride (at least I think that's what it does). He ended up moving my saddle way up and forward, putting shims on my cleats, and moved my handlebars pretty far upwards. After doing all that we left Source to go meet up with Parker for a snack at Whole Foods Market. After eating a rice ball, some pot stickers, and an egg roll, we headed back to the hotel we were staying at to clean up, so we could go over to an outlet mall. When we got there at around 6 we only had an hour do look around before the mall closed at 7. When everyone was done shopping we headed back to Austin for some dinner. After looking around town we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant. After dinner we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel for some sleeping time. The next day I woke up early with my dad to meet at Mellow Johnnies for a group ride with Dave, Ian Dille, John Korioth, and four others. We rode out west and back for a total of about 3 hours. After riding back to the hotel I took a quick shower so that we could meet back up with Parker for our Thanksgiving lunch, before we went to the UT vs. A&M football game at 7:00. To say the least about the game: A&M got killed. The final score was 49-9. The next day wasn't that event-filled, all we really did was take the trip home to spend the rest of the Thanksgiving holidays here.

And three weeks later...

2008-11-22T12:33:00.001-08:00

Still not a lot to report. Only one thing has really changed. After being a much appreciated coach of six years which led me to all of my National Championhips titles (and now that I come to think of it, every other race that I won), we decided to place me under the direction of another coach. Not only has my dad been a great coach and mentor he's managed to complete the package being an excellent father. After much thought we decided to choose Dave Wenger at Source Endurance. Dave is one of the top Texas racers who recently got fifth at the State Championship RR in Chappell Hill, which helped him seal the deal for the P12 Texas Cup title. So far, I haven't done any CX races yet but I plan on racing on the weekend 12/6 for the only CX races in Houston, and I'll give it a shot at the State Championships in San Antonio on the weekend of 1/3. Wish me luck!

What cyclists do when they are not riding...

2008-11-02T13:21:00.000-08:00

Some good advice: Never give a cyclists more than two weeks off the bike. They might get a little antsy, and end up doing something that may be embarrassing (See photo for an example). This past week I don't really have much to report. After a week of school I had a few people over, Daniel, Shelby, and Andy, for Halloween. After some tortilla soup we decided to go trick or treating like little 8-year olds. We only went to about 10 houses before we came back and "chilled" at my place. I then volunteered at school for the family fun festival for elementary kids On another note, I have one more day off the bike until I start my off-season training. As far as cyclocross goes, I plan on doing a few races in Houston and attempt to defend my State Championship title. Wish me luck!

Catching Up

2008-10-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not keeping up with my blog. With school and everything else going on it's been hard to find time for this. Right now I'm half way into a two week break before I start to train for next season. Speaking about next season....A couple weeks after I got back from Nationals I was asked to join the Hot Tubes Junior Development team. Hot Tubes is an extremely successful six man junior team that is directed by Toby Stanton. They take multiple trips all over the world during the spring season giving the riders on the team a real taste of life as a cyclist. For these reasons I have decided to accept the offer starting with first cyclocross race.
Now for an update over the past couple of months....When I got back from Nationals I took a nice break from the bike, so I could start training again for the P12 State Championships at Chappel Hill (aka Dave Chappelle). Unfortunately, Hurricane Ike caused the race to be postponed. When the race was rescheduled I decided that the best choice was to skip the race and just get ready to start training for the off-season. But, about a week before the race I was talking with best friend, Alan Ting, and I thought "What the heck?" I might as well do it. With my parents not being able to drive me to Dave Chappelle, the plan was to meet Alan at a parking lot so he could drive me out there. Nonetheless the race didn't go so hot. This was the longest race I had ever done. I was feeling pretty good for the first 60 out of 86 miles, but it started to go downhill from there (actually with Chappelle it would be going straight uphill...). I tried to go on an attack with Super Squadra's Phil Wikoff to bridge up to the group of about ten that was up the road. I made it about half way there then my legs completely exploded. I saw Phil pull away from me as I turned around to see the pack starting to pass me. I managed to hold onto the back for about another mile until I completely blown right before the feed zone on the last lap. At first I decided to get a ride back to town with Alan Ting Sr., but I saw another Super Squadra member, Ian Dille, ride by and decided to tough it out and finish the race with Ian. I ended coming in 40th with Super Squadra's Steven Wheeler winning in an early breakaway that contained Master's National Champion, John Korioth. After the State Championships I just tried get some time on the bike which included some cyclocross riding. I attended the last two weekends of the Alkek Velodrome winning the P12 omnium on October 10th. The next day was endurance night. It included a 30 lap scratch, a 60 lap points race, and a 75 lap scratch. Due to this being a TX Cup race, some Dallas guys had come down to race. I ended up placing second in everything behind Andrew Armstrong. This past weekend was full of racing. There was the usual Friday Night Racing, a TX Cup race, and the Jr. Regionals. On Friday, I ended up third in the omnium behind Daniel Walker and Alan Ting. On Saturday, the schedule was a keiren, a Miss & Out, and a 50 lap scratch. Being in a keiren heat with Andrew Armstrong, Ron Huijsman, and Andy Weathers, I wasn't that disappointed that I didn't make the final. In the Miss & Out I attacked hard with Alan and Michael Carey on the first lap. We ended up staying away the whole time with Alan taking the win and me getting second. For the last race of the night the plan was to attack a lot. With about 10 laps to go I attacked all out with Alan on my wheel. We built up a solid lead of about 1/3 of a lap. With about 3 laps to go Andrew Armstrong launched an attack from the field. I immediately started going all out. Due to a problem with with his back wheel, Alan lost my wheel only to be caught by Armstrong with about a lap to go. I somehow was able to hold of Armstrong to take the win. The next day, I ended up finishing second in the omnium behind super-stud Daniel Walker.

Track Nationals

2008-08-27T12:14:00.001-07:00

Finally, I have decided to write up an update the the track part of Jr. Nationals. I would say that it was a pretty successful trip. I am coming back with two gold and two silver medals. The races started out with a 200 Meter TT to qualify for the sprints. Surprisingly, I qualified in fourth. The first round had me racing against Houston Comrade Jameson Tomlin. The two of us just kinda rolled around the track until one to go until Jameson jumped. I quickly got into his slipstream and was able to come around him for the win. In the second round I was up against the promoters son, Jesse Marans. In the first round he jumped in the sprinters lane with one and a half laps to go and when I tried to come around him in the last lap he accelerated very quickly and I wasn't able to come around him. With this being the 1/8ths final I had another chance to redeem myself. At the very start of the next race I jumped hard at the very beginning to try and "kilo" him. He ended up catching up to me on the last lap and flew right by me to advance to the next round. I then went into the 5-8 round to try and earn a point for the omnium by getting fifth. Leigh told me to get to the front of everyone and stay there. I did what he said and stayed on the front the whole time....except until about 100 meters to go when everyone passed me. I wasn't too disappointed about this because I wasn't all that excited about doing sprints and didn't have that great of expectation for them. The next race was the 500 meter TT. This was the first time that I had done a 500 since the last time I had gone to track nationals, which was two years ago. I surprised myself once again and ended up fifth. This gave me one point for the omnium. Unfortunately, Benny Swedeberg had won both the sprints and the 500 which made it impossible for anyone to catch him overall. With the scratch race up next I had only one plan. Attack...a lot. During the race I attacked many times, but nothing would stick. When I would attack someone would come with me, but they wouldn't pull and I was forced to sit up because I wasn't going to drag someone to the line just so they could out sprint me at the line. With about four laps to go someone attacked and no one reacted. Thinking that I didn't want to waste my energy and chase him down I decided to sit in the pack. Then, the person in front of me got into the sprinters lane and put in a heroic effort to bring the person back in. It was the perfect lead out. With about half a lap to go I started my sprint and was able to hold everyone off for the finish. With the seven points from the win that put me up into third place, one point behind second. The next race was my speciality, the Points Race. The qualifying was kinda scary because I ended up crashing in the heat, but still qualified due to an early point that I got in the first sprint. During the final my plan was the same. I attacked right at the start and got away with one other. After the first sprint I found myself alone. I then put it into time trial mode and stayed away for another 15 laps or so until a group of two bridged up to me. We all worked evenly with me winning the next two sprints. This had given me a total of 20 points with second place with 5. The pack then caught us a few laps later and I counter-attacked my one move. I was quickly chased and ended up fourth in the next sprint. I then kinda just chilled for the rest of the race and sat up with one to go. The final points standing was me with 21 points and second with 8 points. With this win it put me up into second overall. After collecting my medals I then started my warm-up for the Team Pursuit with Alan Ting, Jacob Rathe, and Austin Stewart. We ended up placing second for that which gave me my second silver of the day and my sixth medal of the whole trip.

Memorial Park Crit

2008-08-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

After returning from a fairly successful Jr. Nationals, I decided to go out and give the Memorial Park Crit a shot. I had no pressure at all to do well. My main goal for the race was to go out and get in a hard workout to try and keep my fitness level from dropping too dramatically. The race started out pretty easy with the usual break going off from the beginning. Kremke then got to the front and rode tempo for about 20 minutes until the break was finally brought back from a flurry of attacks. With a few counter-attacks going that never got more than five seconds ahead of the pack, we ended up rolling around from 23-26 mph for about the next 15 minutes. Trying to get the pace back high, I tried an attack with about 30 minutes left. I quickly built up a good gap, but trying not to completely blow up and get dropped, I rode tempo until I was brought back by a two man break. I quickly jumped into this group and we worked together pretty well until we were caught by the field with about 20 minutes left in the race. After some more failed attempts at attacking I was forced to sit in when we came around with five laps to go. An attack went with about three and a half laps to go with no one really chasing. Over the next lap many people tried to bridge up to the break, but they ended up just reeling it back in. When the break was caught the whole field just sat up, and I found myself shooting past everyone of the left side. Just like before, I quickly built up a large lead. I then buried myself for the last two laps. Coming around with one lap to go the gap had grown to about 15 seconds. I made the mistake of looking back too many times, and found the gap quickly shrinking with about half a lap to go. I then went around the 90 degree turn and looked back about halfway through the long sweeping turn to see a yellow blur/Ronnie Strange fly by me. I then sat up to see Kremke take yet another win, and rolled in at the very back of the pack. This was the second time that this exact thing has happened to me in the past two weeks. The first time being the Nationals Crit. Oh well, it’ll work one of these days.

National Championships Update

2008-08-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

The road side of Nationals is finally done. So far, I am bringing back one jersey and one other medal. Nationals started with the 18 km TT, then the 25 km crit, and finished with a 56 km road race. This year my whole family came to California in an overloaded car with three bikes on top. The drive up here ONLY took about 22 hours over two days. We got here late Sunday night to check into La Quinta Santa Ana. Over the next few days I went out and studied the TT course and Road Race course (which I later learned that I was riding the course backwards). The TT course was uphill for the first 12-13 minutes than downhill for four miles until the turn around, then slightly uphill for another 2.5 miles to the finish. The best way to ride this course was to go all out till you get to the top of the hill and then recover on the way down. I did exactly this and found myself coming into the finish line a minute and a half faster than the second fasteset time. I then sat in the "hot seat" for about another 15 minutes until the rest of the 15-16 riders had finished. The closest rider to me was fellow Belgian teammate Anders Newbury forty seconds back. It took a while to sink in that after fours years of tyring I had finally been able to step onto the top step of the podium again as National Champion. I later found out that I had the fastest time out of the 17-18s as well. The following day was the 25 km crit with 15 laps of around 1.5 km and around seven turns. The race started out fast with many riders trying to get an early break going. Nobody was given more than about 10 seconds before being brought back by the 5280 team. With a little less than three laps to go I attacked after a break had just been caught. The next time I looked back I saw that nobody had reacted at all. At first I was a little hesitant because if I was caught there was no way that I would have enough "juice" to contest in the sprint. When I came through the start/finish line with two laps to go with about a 10 second gap I knew that it was now or never. I then went all out for the next two laps only to be caught 200 meters from the finish line. I then just sat up and rolled into the finish, which apparently took me over twelve minutes and 62 people passed me. My average watts for the six minutes that I was off the front were 415 with my average heartrate being 206. Today was the 56 km road race. The course was 8 km in length with a couple of small hills in it. Right at the start three people got away and quickly built up a gap that hovered around 15 seconds. On the second lap I was leading going into a U-turn when I slid out. Thankfully everyone else had avoided me and we were going so slow around the turn that I was able to jump back up and get back into the race with only about 20 guy's passing me. The only damage done to me was a thin layer of skin off of my shin. Over the next few laps two other riders had bridged up to the break and two of the original riders in the break had been shelled off. The two riders that had bridged up to the break had were both "Belgian Teammates", Anders Newbury and Alex Battles-Wood. With two strong riders in the break the gap had quickly opened up to around 28 seconds. With two laps to go the gap hadn't come down all that much. I then attacked out of the U-turn, bringing two others with me. We quickly built up a gap. One of the guys with us dropped off a little less than one lap to go. With about half a lap to go we finally found ourselves latching onto the back of the break. With no one really wanting to sacrafice their chance of winning I got to the front and started pulling with some help from Anders. With about 750 meters to go the pack was quickly pulling us back with the gap falling down to about 10 seconds. From then on the road was a gradual uphill till the finish. When the sprint started with about 200 meters to go I couldn't match the others and barely managed to roll in for fifth for my second medal of the week. I've included a screenshot of the TT.

HOME!!

2008-07-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'm back!! After an exhausting ten hour plane trip, I am finally at my own house sitting in front of my own computer writing my blog without five other kids looking over my own shoulder. Only sleeping a few hours at the airport after staying up all night after the 64 kilometer cobbled race, I was tired enough to fall asleep standing up. The race course was only like 3.3 kilometers with literally only 200 meters of paved road on the whole course. The race was a bigger race than the day before, there were a few more racers and the prize list was a lot bigger. The race had ten euros to the first rider across the line and five to the second...every lap....all twenty laps. This was a great oppurtunity to earn a few bucks, I mean euros, before the trip home. The race started out extremely fast due to both Alex and Anders getting on the front and pushing the pace for the whole first lap. By the time that we had finished the first lap the people in contention for the win had gone down from around fifty to about ten people with three Americans, Alex, Anders, and me, in the group. After the second lap, where the pace wasn't nearly as high as the first, and a few guys had caught up with the lead group, I decided to try an attack. When I looked back I saw that only one other person had reacted. He was a pretty small dude with some awesome looking gold handlebar tape, who will be referred to as "Goldie". The two of us worked pretty evenly for another lap or so until I looked back to see Alex bridging up to us. When he had caught us we immediatly started to try and work Goldie over. Whenever Alex was on the front and I was on his wheel I would start to sit up and let Alex get a pretty big gap until Goldie would jump around me to bridge back up to Alex and then make him chase all the way back to Alex. After about eight or nine laps of this (about 9 or 10 laps to go), where Alex and I tried to get 1-2 in all the primes, Alex and I went on a flurry of attacks. Alex attack first, and when Goldie bridged up to Alex I attacked. When Goldie had caught back up to me on the worst cobbles of the whole course Alex went on another attack that immediatly did it for me. I couldn't accelerate on the cobbles and lost contact with Alex and Goldie. The good thing was that the gap was so large to the next rider that it took another five laps just to be caught by the single rider chasing. When I was passed I tried hard to try and jump on his wheel, but we were on the bad cobbles again and I didn't have anything at all left in the tank. I then sat back down and tried to get back into my own rhythym as I watched my podium spot ride away from me. After another lap I saw another rider closing the gap to me, but I knew right away that the cobbles had taken it all out of me and that it was no hope for me to jump on his wheel. Riding the rest of the race by myself, just waiting to be swallowed up and spit out the back of the field, I was pulled by the officials. Confused that they had thought I was off the back I quickly found out that they had pulled everyone except Alex and Goldie and I had ended up in fifth. I then sat and watched the finish as Alex took his second in two days by attacking Goldie with about 500 meters to the finish. It looks like this trip ended with success for the 15-16 National Team.

Zwevegem Race Report

2008-07-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Lady Luck finally granted the 15-16 US National Team its wishes today as we were able to sweep the podium on the 62 kilometer circuit race. The race consisted of 17 laps of around three kilometers. The race had a late start so we were able to get a few extra hours of sleep. After waking up at around 11:30 Anders and I walked over to the local bakery and bought some breakfast and "race recovery" food. When we got back and ate our breakfast we then chilled for a few hours before we started getting ready for the race. We left at around 1:45 (oops. I mean 13:45) for the 20 minute drive to the small town of Zwevegem. Arriving at around 14:10 we walked over to the local bar to get registered. When we had all gotten our numbers and had gotten them pinned on we set out on a warm-up/preview lap. When we had ridden the course twice and taken a quick pit stop on the side of the road we rolled up to the start line to get a good starting position. Due to the fact that this wasn't a very big race there were only about 40 or 50 starters, but according to Yogi one of them had already won seven races in the year. After a quick start we slowed down to an easy (and I mean EASY) pace. With a few more attacks, that all got reeled in, in the first lap we crossed the line to see the red flag waving which indicated that a prime was the next lap. This was kinda weird because they said that there were primes every 3rd lap, but oh well! After going another few laps Alex attacked and quickly built up a large lead. With no one really chasing we just kinda rolled around the course for another few laps until the attacks started coming that ended reeling Alex back in. Soon after Alex was caught Anders attacked. Just like Alex, he quickly built up a huge lead. After a couple of laps, with Anders off the front and many attacks going on in the pack, a large group of about 10-15 guys rolled off the front with Alex and me in it. Because Anders was still up the road it gave Alex and me a free ride in the breakaway. With about five laps to go the group had been reduced to only 7 or 8 guys in it. We then could look back and start to see the main field closing in on us due to the lack of cooperation in the break. Alex and I then got to the front on a strong head wind section and "hammered" for a while. The only others that could hang on were the guy who had won seven races that season and some other random dude. When I pulled off and got onto the back of now reduced break the "random dude" got dropped and I realized it to late to try and bridge back up to Alex's group. I then dropped back to the rest of the break that was about 15 or so seconds back. After sitting on the back of that group until about two laps to I put in an attack at the same spot where Alex and I got on the front. When I looked behind me the rest of the break were already pretty far back. I then set into "time-trial" mode to try and catch back up to Alex. After about one lap I looked up to see the light green jersey of the guy who had won seven races by himself. With a "carrot" in front of me now I tried even harder to catch him. With a little over a half lap to go I finally reached him. I then tried to attack him to try and get away, but that didn't work. After just kinda spinning around for a little more. When we reached the section where we had the extremely strong head wind I tried another hard attack. I only gained about ten or fifteen meters on him, but due to the head wind it was like 30 seconds. After keeping that up for a while he finally just sat up which gave me the opportunity to roll in for third place with Alex taking the win over Anders. After rolling around for a couple of seconds we saw Joel get second in the field sprint for 14th. Peter had tried to bridge up to the break, but he was unable to catch up and went "Ffffffwwwwweeeeeuuuuuuuw (exactly Peter's words. It was really hard to spell) off the back" and James ended up getting dropped and pulled off.

Astana Team Warehouse

2008-07-17T23:45:00.001-07:00

We had a fun day today as we were able to go and visit the Astana Team Warehouse. Due to the long drive to the house we had to wake up farely early so that we could make it to the house by 9:00. When Tim came into our room at around 7:00 we all jumped out of our beds like little kids on Christmas morning and ran downstairs to get some food in our bodies before the trip. We left the house in the big blue USA Cycling van at around 7:30 with Yogi as our guide/GPS. As we pulled onto the street that the house was on we all started looking for a sign or something that would let us know which building it was. After driving for about a kilometer we saw the huge baby blue bus with ASTANA written on the side behind a fairly large building that was also used as a furniture store. We waited a few minutes till it was 9:00 then we walked over to the door and rung the doorbell. After a few seconds a lady answered a door and after a few words with Yogi in Flemish she invited us inside like she had known us her whole life. When we first walked inside my first impression was that it was just a small house where all the Astana people hung out at when there were no races going on. There was a small office and little kitchen. THEN.....a kinda oversized English man walked through a door in the kitchen and invited us to come see the rest of the house. We walked with him through the door and you could hear thumps on the ground as all of our jaws hit the ground. There had to be probably 150 bikes in the room that were all worth over 6,000$ and about 300 wheel sets that were 3,000 Euros a set. We also got to witness the bike that Alberto Contador would be riding the 2008 Olympics. The bike had been painted so that it resembled the Spain flag and where the bike usually says Trek it said Spain due to the rule that at the Olympics you can only have the bike manufacture's name on the bike twice. After wondering around the room, where we got to see the bikes that had been raced on by Levi, Kloden, Contador and everyone else on Astana, the English man walked us into the next room that had all the team cars and two of the team busses, and another billion bikes. As we were touring that room we got to see the new forks that are on the Trek bikes. Instead of having the speed sensor zip-tied to the fork they built the sensor on the inside of the fork. It was amazingly awesome. We also got to see the bike that Contador had won the Giro on. After examing the awesomeness of the bike we set off outside to witness the two other busses that drove the riders to and from the start/finish line. We then went back into the small kitchen and walked down a secret hidden stairway into the cellar where they kept all of the tubular tires. The tiny room might of smelt like rubber, but it sure was pretty awesome seeing about 1000 tires stacked all the way to the ceiling. We then walked back up to the kitchen where we were given some Cokes and Astana swag. After talking to the English man for about another hour we made our way back home and went for an easy one hour ride before we had some dinner and "hit the hay."

Ronde van Oost-Vlaanderen

2008-07-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I haven't had any time to "blog" due to the late nights and busy days.

Stage 1

Not much to report on the first stage of the Ronde van Oost-Vlaanderen for me where I lasted a total of three out of the five laps. The races were pretty late in the day so we all had a chance to sleep in and hang out for a while before we made the hour drive to some small town for the first stage of three. We arrived at the town at about 2:30, or I should say 14:30, so we would have time to get dressed and then go ride a preview lap. After the preview lap, which we did half of it backwards, it was about 30 minutes till the start of the race. We then switched out all of our bottles, grabbed a few energy bars and made our way to the start line to get a good starting position. Even if we thought that it was kinda early to get to the start line we were completely wrong. By the time that we had got there we were forced to go to the very back due to the fact that about every single rider had already lined up. On the way back I was lucky enough to find a small gap around the middle where about half a person could fit in. After somehow getting over there I managed to fit perfectly into the spot. After sitting around for another 20 minutes and the official was done yelling in Flemish the race started. At the beginning of the 60 kilometer race there were about 7 turns before we got out of the town and onto the skinny country roads. When we finally made it out of town and we actually started racing I found myself drifting uncontrolably to the back of the 140 man group. After trying extremely hard to get back to the front I finally was able to move in the top quarter and stay there. After making it through the first lap where kids were jumping onto curbs like no other, and there was probably a total of three seconds where someone wasn't screaming for no reason at all, I was able to kind of relax a little. About three quaters the way through the second lap I found myself behind some tiny kid that looked like he was twelve. On a downhill part where we were going at least 50 km/h that kid decided he would jump on to the curb. I would of been perfectly fine with this had his back wheel not be crossing my front wheel. After flipping over my handlebars I jumped back up to examine the damage. I had re-opened my scrape from the first day...again. And added some more to my elbows and my left knee. Feeling like I was still able to ride I picked up my bike and spun both of the wheels. The front one was fine, but the back one wouldn't roll (it actually turns out that the wheel was fine it was just the brake that had pushed up against the wheel). I took off the back wheel and waited until the team car finally rolled up (we had picked car 19 out of 23 in the caravan) to get a spare wheel. By the time that everything was ready I jumped back on the bike to try and get in the caravan so I could motor pace back up to the pack. It turns out that the saddle had been shoved to the left when I had crashed, but no one had realized it. After trying for another lap and a half to draft back up to the pack the officials pulled when I rolled across the finish line with two to go. I rode back over to the team van where the mechanic had gotten out of the caravan to help me. I was then able to ride in an ambulance over to the start/finish line where the medics where cleaning up all the other "fallen soldiers". The day ended up in a pack sprint with Joel, Alex, and Anders all finishing around 50th.

Day 2

Today was another extremely fast day that was indcredibly hard to move around in the field. We got to the race a little later today and we where unable to do a preview lap. The race started similar to the previous day, fast and scary. I pretty much sat in the middle of the pack the whole race while Alex had gotten into the early break-away that stayed away until about two and a half laps to go. With about two laps to go I could really start feeling the previous days events and was starting to go deep into the pain cave. With about a half a lap to go I had finally had enough and dropped off the pack on a downhill section where we were spinning at around 8 RPMs. The day finished exactly like it did the day before with the same guy winning and Anders the only USA guy finishing in the pack because both Joel, Peter, and Alex had been caught behind a crash a little before the finish, but they were given the same time as the leader due to the three kilometer rule. James had also finished off the back.

Day 3

Today was a little more action filled than the previous days. I was feeling way better than the past days and the course was a lot flatter than the others. I was trying to be a lot more aggressive today in terms of position and was able to stay up in the top twenty for a good part of the stage. Due to my role as domestique to the team I tried to pull in a few attacks at the beginning of the race. After the first lap I just stayed in the top twenty and recovered a little. With a little less than three laps (6 kilometer laps) I saw Anders and a few others attack with no one reacting. Knowing that I needed to be in that group to help Anders I attacked up to the group with still no one reacting. I then sat down and went to the front of the group and pulled all out to try and distance the break farther away from the pack. When I pulled off the Begian National Champion pulled through and I was able to get back into the pace line to take another pull. The group had about 8 or 9 guys with one of them on the team that had the leaders jersey. Knowing that this would be a problem later I pulled even harder when my time came. We quickly opened up a fairly large gap. Practicly all the people in the break worked pretty evenly except the guy that was on the team with leader, the team is called Avia for future reference. The gap stayed pretty even for another lap until the guy on Avia started to come to the front the pace line and slow down so that it would be easier for us to get caught. With a little under one lap to go the gap had started to drop pretty quickly. On a small rise the Belgian National Champion had had enough of the Avia guy and attacked. I got to the front of the break to try and pull him back in for Anders. After bringing the gap down a little I pulled off to see a small gap of around 20 meters to the pack. I had used all my energy in the break to try and get to stay away. I then just kinda sat up, much to my legs relief, and rolled to the back of the pack only to be caught behind a crash that took out the leader of the race. That did it for me. I didn't have the energy to chase back on and rolled in a few minutes behind the pack. Anders finished in 23rd on the stage, and Joel finished somewhere in the pack. Alex, Peter, and James all crashed on the last lap. After the race Tim, Joel, Alex and I were talking when the Avia team director came up to Tim and told him that Alex had pulled the race leader's handlebars out from underneath him. I'm not gonna really go into details about the rest of the conversation, but I'll just say that Alex got kinda mad at him....

Belgium Trip Day 9

2008-07-10T02:56:00.000-07:00

Today was nothing but a fun and enjoyable day. The six of us, along with Tim and Yoghi, woke up at around 8:30 for a quick breakfast before we left the house for a fun filled day. The first place that we stopped at was the Mur. The famous and decisive cobbled climb that is placed around 15 or 20 km from the finish of the Tour of Flanders. Tim drove the USA Cycling van to the top of the hill so that we could jump out and take a few pictures of the chapel that is on top of the hill. We then set off down the 20% grade hill taking some pictures on the way down. After the 1.5 km we walked on the way down we started to make the extremely difficult ascent that was extremely difficult just walking. I couldn't even imagine riding a bike up it. After racing back to the top, where I barely won the sprint only because Yoghi slipped a little before the top, we jumped back into the van to look at another famous cobble section used in a Pro race. After walking about a kilometer down the road we turned around to go drive over to Freddy Maertens famous cycling museum. By the time we got there all of our stomachs were growling so we decided to stop at the little restaurant at the museum. Everything on the menu was related to cycling, with an example being a ham sandwich with Boonen sauce. After having Yoghi translate the menu to us I narrowed my decision down to two choices, pasta with sauce or pasta with brown sugar. Thinking that I wanted to keep my food in my stomach I decided to go with the regular pasta with sauce. When we got our food I decided that I had to give the brown sugar pasta a try. When Joel had finished with his brown sugar pasta I grabbed the rest of his pasta and took a bite. It actually was quite tasty. Yoghi even said it was the "perfect" thing to eat after a hard training ride. When we had all finished with our lunch we bought our tickets and walked down the stairs to the museum part of the place. When we first walked through the door the we were like 5 year olds in a candy shop. They had tons of awesome stuff to do. There were stationary bikes that simulated riding on the cobbles. There were podiums that you could jump up onto and stick your head in the little hole so you could act like you won the Tour of Flanders. They also had videos of about every single Tour of Flanders that had been recorded. And the thing that had attracted all of our attentions was the stationary bike that sat in front of a T.V. that simulated the crucial parts of the Tour of Flanders. After messing around in that room for about an hour and a half we went into the video room to watch a 15 minute movie about the Tour of Flanders. By the time that we had gotten back to the house it was time for dinner and after a shower and teeth brushing we all jumped into our beds and fell asleep immediately.

Belgium Trip Day 7 Race Day

2008-07-07T00:57:00.000-07:00

Today was a 62 Kilometer circuit race started in the small town of Huise, Belgium, about 30 kilometers away from Izegem, the town where we are staying. We went on an easy spin at around 10:30 to see how the bikes where holding up and to see how we were feeling. About half way through the ride Alex was standing up when his gears slipped, he came unclipped, and slammed down on his top tube, putting a small crack in the bike and racking himself like no other. After he recovered we looked at the damage on the bike and decided that it would hold up the rest of the ride, but we would talk to Tim about racing on it. When we finished up the rest of the hour Alex found Tim to talk about the bike. Tim said that he was pretty sure that the bike would hold up for the race, but that was it. We then went upstairs and chilled for a few hours before we would have to start packing up the van. At around 1:45 the van was all packed up and ready to go. When we got to the race at around 2:30 we walked down to the local bar to get registered and to get our numbers. With a little mix up with the registration where Yoghi had to run back up to the van and get a form that lets us race out of the country we where running a little behind schedule. By the time that all of us were ready to race we only had about 30 minutes before we raced. We all did a small warm-up before we raced over to the start line to get a good position. The start of the race was similar to a junior crit in Texas, extremely fast but then we practically slammed on our brakes and were going around 15 km/h. About half way through the first lap someone swerved into my front wheel and his skewer hit about 8 of my spokes, and although I didn't realize it at the time my brake started to rub. On the second lap of ten I found myself leading the pack into a U-turn with cobbles with a tiny 15 year old on my wheel and two american teammates behind him. I then attacked going out of the turn with the tiny 15 year old coming with me, but other than that no one else had reacted. The two of us easily built up a good lead. The kid then easily rode me off his wheel on his on an uphill headwind section. I then rode at my one pace until another group had gotten away from the pack that included Joel Shaffer had caught up with me. I then jumped into that group where everyone worked fairly evenly until we had caught the 15 year old kid. Everyone in the 7 person group worked pretty evenly for the next 5 or so laps until Joel dropped out of the break with another kid while someone from the pack had bridged up to us. The then 7 man group turned into a 5 man group where one kid was just sitting on. With about one and a half laps to go I had had enough and couldn't hold the pace any longer. I then made the mistake of shifting in my little ring so that I could spin a little before I was swallowed up by the 15 man pack. When I shifted down though my chain popped off on the inside and by the time that I had gotten it back on the pack had already passed me. I then rode at my own pace to finish in 27th out of around 70 starters. Only until I had gotten off my bike I realized that my front break was rubbing and my back break had come loose and was slightly rubbing against the wheel. So....both of my brakes where rubbing for the majority of the race and I had spent 8 out of the 10 laps off the front. I then found out that Anders had bridged up to the break in the last lap and had finished 7th. The next best American was James in 21st, Joel in 26th, then me in 27th. Peter had flatted on the first lap and didn't continue and Alex's shifter broke and then he flatted and didn't continue.

Belgium Trip Day 3 and 4

2008-07-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has taken me so long to post another blog post. I just really have not had the time to get on a computer and write about this trip. I have to try and make this one short because I'm about to go ahead and turn in.

Day 3

Nothing all that special happened today. We all woke up at around 8:30 to eat some breakfast. Mine consisted of some toast with some tasty Nutella, kinda like chocolate peanut butter, and a few apples. After we all finished our breakfasts we set out for an easy hour and a half ride with ride leader Yoghi (sp...) aka Yoshi...the son of Erly, the junior coach of Tom Boonen (......) and Stijn Devolder. After cruising around for over an hour that included riding to Wevelgem (sp?) where I ended up winning the sprint (watch out Oscar Freire!) at the same finish line that the pros use, we headed back to the house to make some lunch. When we had all finished lunch we had a quick meeting with Tim, saying that we would go back out at around 5-ish for "Cycling School". With a few hours to waste we decided to take out the crappy cruiser bikes and go tour around town. When we stopped at the bank so I could add a few Euros to my current 8.50 that would have had to last me the entire trip. When I slid my bank card in and punched in all the numbers the stupid machine ate the card and wouldn't give it back to me. After a conversation with the bank lady that consisted with a ton of sign language she finally realized what I was talking about and went into the back to retrieve my card. We left that bank and headed to another one that ended the same way. When this had happened I whipped out my phone and called my mom. She ended up having to call Bank of America and was told that my card had been shut down for some weird stupid reason and that they would re-open it for me. To make a long story short I ended up having to go back to the bank by myself and was finally able to get some money from the machine. When I left the bank I ended up getting lost for a good 20 minutes because all of the stupid roads look alike... When I finally found my way back to the house I immediately wolfed down some dinner and went to bed upstairs. Also, we didn't do that thing at around 5-ish because it had started to rain kinda hard.

Day 4

Today was pretty much the same routine as the day before. We woke up at around 8:30 and had some breakfast. We left for the ride this time without "Yoshi", so it was only the six of us. We rode out to some random town that was bout 30 minutes away and turned around to head back to Izegem. When we arrived back at the house we had another meeting with Tim and we were going to try and do the same thing that we had tried to do yesterday. We then rode into town again and ate at a sandwich shop before we came back to the house and chilled for a few hours. We then ate an extremely early dinner so we could head out to the 1K course that we would practice water bottle feeding, Musette grabbing, Slaloming, and Motor-Pacing. I can only describe this with one word, superduperextremelyfun. When we were riding back to the house I tried to do a U-turn and had a little slip on some sand where I opened up my scab from my crash a few days ago. (I haven't even told my parents about this. Sorry Mom and Dad!! I haven't really had any time to call you!) After a quick shower I walked downstairs to clean up my share of the kitchen, which consisted of about 300 water bottles and the drying and putting up all the pots. Geez, I will never complain about doing the dishes at home anymore, anything compared to this 1.5 hours of work is considered easy in my books. With my hands raw from doing all those dishes and writing about my day I think I'm looking forward to climbing up the ladder to the top bunk and crawling into my nice and cozy bed.

Happy 4th of July!!!!! And don't forget, the Tour starts tomorrow!! Yay!

Lawson

Belgium Trip Day 2

2008-07-02T14:02:00.000-07:00

Today was the first of nine races that we will be doing while over here in Izegem, Belgium. It was a 68.6 km course that consisted of 12 laps of 5.5 km. The six of us did a quick one hour spin a few hours before we left for the race. After that we ate some a quick lunch which consisted of a few apples and a turkey sandwich. At around 1:00 we packed up the van and departed for the small town where the race was being held, about 30 km away. After we arrived we jumped out of van to head over the Primus, the local bar (and no, not to get a drink), but to get registered for the race. The moment I stepped into the bar I wanted to leave. The air was filled with smoke that made me want to puke. Nevertheless, I waited in there long enough to sign the paper and grab the numbers. The numbers here in Belgium are extremely different than any number that I have ever used. First of all, they are pretty much a piece of cloth with ink printed on it. Secondly, the sides are littered with tiny holes where other pins pierced through the material used by numerous racers before me. I made sure I arrived at the start line with plenty of time to spare so I could start at the front. The start was probably one of the fastest starts I have ever been a part of. I was already going all out before we even hit the first turn. I was able to get right at the front of the pack to conserve some energy for later. A few times I found myself all of a sudden at the back of the group, and had to work pretty hard just to get back in the top 20 or so. The best way for me to work my way back up to the front was the corners. I would just slip in on the inside and pass about five or so Europeans that were slamming on the brakes for a sweeping turn. With about six laps to go two things happened. It started to rain pretty hard and I found myself off the front with three other juniors. I put my head down to take my pull and didn’t see the corner man waving the flag for us to go right. I rode straight ahead before I realized that I didn’t turn the right way. I slammed on my brakes and did a quick U-turn. I jumped back up to speed, trying to stay ahead of the pack that was coming up to the turn fairly quickly. As I went around the turn I felt my bike slip out from under me as I landed on the ground (who can’t corner now?), giving me a nice raspberry, right into the middle of the pack. I stayed on the ground to watch multiple cyclists swerve around me. As the last one passed I jumped back up and onto my bike to try and limit my losses to the back of the pack. I spent the next half a lap chasing back on to the group before I made contact, and I spent the next lap just trying to move back up to the front. When we heard the bell with one lap to go I tried another attack to try and bridge up to the leaders that were about 10 seconds up. Right when I made contact with the leaders a kilometer later I looked back just to see the field sitting on my wheel. I sat up to try and get a better position for the sprint. With about 250 meters to go I saw American Comrade Joel Shaffer slide out due to a rider taking out his front wheel. I tried to keep my focus ahead to the slightly uphill finish as riders were swerving around Joel. With the finish line coming closer and closer I tried to spin my 52X16 a little faster to end up in 13th, the best placed American Rider. After a quick cool-down I headed over to the bar to get the results and to pick up my winnings, which was 10 Euros. After getting back at the house I took a quick shower, and went downstairs to another wonderful pasta meal made by Els. After dinner we had a quick meeting with Tim before hitting up the Wall, a huge vending machine the size of a store window, and washing our clothes. Tomorrow we plan on going on an hour and a half easy spin then a cycling class in the afternoon. The next race that we plan on doing is this Saturday. I’m not sure of the details, but I’ll keep y’all posted on what is going on. Also, thanks to my parents for making this trip possible along with NWCC and Optimist International.

Belgium Trip Day 1

2008-07-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of my three week "vacation" in Belgium. I left Houston at 3:30 yesterday afternoon for a ten hour flight to Amsterdam. I fell asleep after I was served dinner which was about 12:00 A.M. Belgium time and woke up at around 5:30 A.M. With in interesting breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs with cream spinach and spicy apple cobbler, I plugged in my earphones to finish the move on the T.V. We arrived at Amsterdam at around 7:15 A.M. to go over to gate B27 to meet with the rest of the team for our 30 minute flight to Bruge. After touching down at Bruge we all got our luggage without a problem. When we located our driver we walked into the parking lot to find a fairly large bus with USA Cycling and sponsors all over it. We all packed our luggage into the back and fought to keep our eyes open on the way to Izegem due to the fact that it was around 1:00 in the morning back in the U.S. After unloading all of our stuff into the rooms the six of us, along with the coach's 20 year old son, went for an easy 1 hour spin on the S-Works Specialized Bikes that we were supplied with. The riding in Belgium is WAY different than in the U.S. The roads are extremely skinny where only 3 riders, at the most, could ride side by side. The cars, with the exception of one or two, were extremely friendly and would drive off the road just so we could pass. We got back from the ride to find an extremely good meal made by Els, the wife/"mom" of the house. As I sat down at the table I found myself sitting next to none other than Danny Summerhill. When we finished dinner Tim Redus, the 15-16 Camp Director) gave us a "debriefing" on tomorrow and the race that we have. We don't really know the course yet, but it is a flat 68.8 KM Local Race. Ill keep y'all posted on how I do. Also, special thanks to Northwest Cycling Club for helping be able to afford this awesome trip and also to Optimist International.

June 29, 2008

2008-06-29T10:33:00.001-07:00

Today was the NWCC 10 mile Time Trial out in Hockley. I woke up at five 0'clock this morning to acclimate myself for the time difference of seven hours to Belgium. After surfing the web for and hour or so I decided that it was time to start getting ready. I left at 6:30 with my dad, but about half way there I realised that I forgot my trainer. After a quick dash home we finally arrived at the Hockley Community Center. After a good warm-up I followed my dad to the start line. My time for the TT ended up being a 21:49 with average watts of 339, which showed that I had pretty good fitness, good news as I am leaving tomorrow for Belgium. I did a quick spin with my dad before heading home to go to church. My plans for the rest of the day include packing, partying, and packing! Hopefully I will be able stay awake for it all! I've added a screen shot of the file to this post. Click on the file to enlarge it.

June 28, 2008

2008-06-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Lawson Craddock. I created this blog so I can record my travels and cycling experiences. Ill update this blog as often as I can. Also, special thanks to Carlos Rosario at SportsDuo.com for this awesome picture!

Thanks for reading,
Lawson