get a grip

Good times as of late.  pics tell the story best....

Went straight from Picardie to the homeland for Tour de Leelanau.  Super cool to get a shot to do a hometown race where the entire teams is there.  We need more races like this one in the states. Team rode great and Taylor sealed the deal.  We also snagged the kom prize with the boys lining me up nicely to take top points on every climb.    You can't coach this...

Jamie made her first trip to the mitten and we made good use of the saturday race, spending sunday in authentic northern MI.  

Back to the south.  Unfortunately, no philly week for me this year, but that meant I finally got a shot to hit up the Roan Groan road race and the Settler's Life Omnium which its part of.  Not often you get to finish a local race with a 7 mile climb!!  botched the road race, but snagged a win in the crit and the overall.  former teamate and michigander scott stewart joining me in the post up after we pulled off some nice "unofficial" teamwork. 

Sheedy took a go at his first masters race.  yes, that means 30+.  He handily stormed away for a slick solo win.

Sick nasty heat over the weekend.  Rough for the racing, but perfect for hitting up some of the area's sweet spots....  despite what you see, i'm actually not wearing a white t-shirt in this pic.  and yes, we took a flying leap off the waterfall in the background :)  

Jumped in the truck for the brutal drive to Michigan.  The drive was brutal has usual, but I can happily say I finally have all my junk out of storage in the LMC bike room.  Only took me 18 months after graduating.  Anyone interested in beefing up their collection of garage sale items??

The reason for the trip?  My first rate homie from high school, Steve, was getting Married to his longtime girlfriend and also good friend of mine, Carrie.  scary, but an event I just couldn't miss.  (mr. groom to my immediate right)

"Mossy oak" Camo vests and ties.  Serious style

Swapped out the truck while in Mich for somthing a bit more comfortable and friendly on the wallet when it comes to the crazy gas prices.  Maybe pics of the new beast to come.  Banner Elk has been in prime time summer mode since I've been back.  quiet, but you can't complain with dreamy temps and sunny skies.

Finally, the big news of the day... Jamie scored a solid top 20 result at the mountain bike world championships today!!!  Started DFL and worked her way up through the field for a very solid ride in the U23 women's race.  Awesome to see it work out well after watching her work so hard to make it there and then be ready to compete with the worlds best.  Congrats Jamie!!

Training, training and more training on the menu with maybe a local race here or there until I meet back up with the team at Cascade in early July.  Quite the change of pace from the race race race routine that i'm used to, but compared to last summer, I am living large and enjoying it! 

comment yo! 

And another one

No crashing for us today. Whew! Team rode well, and Alex rode like an
alien to lock up the k.o.m. Jersey as long as he finishes tomorrow.
Fighting almost all day in the pack. Not to the death, but enough to
keep it stressful. We got franced on for an hour or so. Danillo
flatted with 15 km to go so I gave him my wheel. Good to work on that
caravan riding stuff. Double day tomorrow. I've never been a fan of
two road races in one day. You tell these dudes they only have to ride
for 100km at a time and its pretty wacky how fast they can go.
Tonight's hotel is a hit so far. Our rooms are big enough for me to
completley open my suitcase!!

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Do you like baseball johny??

Kinda feels like I'm stepping up to the plate in the major leagues,
but have been playing more t-ball than hardball this season. Its
coming along though

Tour of picardie. Not my favorite part of france. Plenty of meat
wagons laying down the power here. Covered over 100 km in the first 2
hrs of racing.

Crashing sucks. Crashing because you hit a teamate who has also just
crashed is double whammy. I think I'm fine though. Guess that's what I
get for trying to help the boys mix it up in the sprint. Sketchy. Knee
is a little sore but other than that, just touched up the road rash
from romandie. Just building character, right?

Looking forward to the mitten next week. Check out...

http://www.tourdeleelanau.blogspot.com/

Overcooked pasta. Mmhhhmmm

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up to the date

Whoa, comments.  That deserves a bit of an update...

made it through Tour of Romandie.  Plenty of character building during over the week long race, but what an amazing event.   Scenery, competition, and the race in general were all top notch.  A few pics...

Hung out in Grenchen, Switzerland for a few days before the race.  I think this was the flattest road we rode the entire time i was there.  

As I mentioned before, race kicked off with a 2km prologue.  Take it from Nathan, you can in fact smash yourself from a 2km effort.  

Louder perfecting his prologue form on the trainer
Made it to foot of the Alps for the stage 3 tt.  
Amazing views on the big mountain day where we climbed almost 11,000 ft in just over 60 miles.  After full gas for the first couple hours of the race, I transformed into a grupetto superstar.   No easy way up a 20 km climb, but I limped my way to the finish and actually got to soak up some scenery.   

The rest of the epic terrain was taken in during transfers

After finishing up in Lausanne, I jumped in the car and headed to Luxembourg to meet up with my old homies on the national team.  Cool to kick it with them after missing much of last season.  They are tearing it up this year coming off some recent big results at Fleche du Sud.  Luxembourg was not a bad place to hang out.  Amazing weather and some really nice roads to ride.  

Also a few rare moments to relax and play tourist for an afternoon

The city of Viandan was probably one of the coolest euro cities I've checked out.  Check out our accommodations for the week!

Ok, just kidding, but we did take the time to check out this killer castle and force a little culture into our brains.  

Blast from the past, back to Izegem, Belgium for the moment and kicking it at the national team house.  Tour of Picardie is next weekend and then its back to the homeland for Tour de Leelanau.  More when I have it.

Giddy up

Yea, really

Tour of romandie this week. No small feat, but a great opportunity.
Last year at this time I was on my back dreaming of racing again so
I'm doing my best to soak it up and make the most of the leg crushing
that's being dished out. A brief recap so far...

Progue: a whoppin 2km and I think the shortest race I've ever done. It
still hurt a plenty but was good for opening the legs and getting
easing into the racing from all the pre race hype.

Stage 1: ouch and brrrrrrr. Rain off and on all day and temps
dropping to near freezing at one point in the stage. I learned right
away that there are few flat roads in swiss land, felt like we were
goin up or down all day. But mostly up. Carried a few 30 lb. Rain
soaked jackets for the big dogs on the team and did what I could to
help. Limped in with the grupetto.

Stage 2: super ouch. A bit more flattish meaning we were only
climbing for 5 or 10 km at a time. Went alright until abou 60 km to go
when the pace started to pick up. I got tangled in a wreck and did my
first real pavement surfing of the year. Chased my brains out in the
caravan for about 20km but never could latch onto the pack. Went into
tt mode to make the time cut and finished 13 min. Down shatered.
Luckily the body seems to check out ok so far. Soreness and scrapes.
Props to ian for making the early break and scoring the team some tv
time.

About halfway through but the hardest is still to come. Ill be
accepting donations in the form of leg power for the rest of the week
so send it on over.

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Have I quit blogging??

No, but for anyone who still checks here for updates, I know, I am way overdue.

As usual, no news is good news and I am now on my way to switzerland
for my first dose of euro racing in over a year. Made it through my
first few races back while spending the month of march in cali. There
are still plans for logging a few pics and maybe even a detail here or
there. I'm sure the racing life will allow time for that!!

Wordicle

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Mobile test... Check 1 check 2

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been a looong time...

and just like that, I'm back in the blogging world. Plenty of good excuses for my absence. All kinds of exciting developments in my world since my last post. Walking, standing, riding, new team. Boom shaka-lacka Here's a few of the highlights, in attempted chronological order...

Even though i wasn't quite cleared to do so, I started dabbling in the bike riding thing towards the end of September. Also kicked things off with an amazing new lady in my life, Ms. Jamie Dinkins :)


Headed to Indianapolis to take part in the rockin wedding of Jake the Snake.
We all broke it down "freestyle" but were no match for the slithering of the snake on the dance floor. check those guns!



Made it back to NC just in time to celebrate Mr. Sheedy's /the roomates bday. He got a singing reindeer and won't stop raving about the thing that it does with its tail.It was supposed to be a surprise party so we hid out in the kitchen. 30 minutes later and we were still waiting for him to walk inside.

Not too shabby of a place to be once the colors start changing


boo ya
made a trip back to the mitten. Was actually kinda stoke for my first road trip since my crash, but the novelty wore off about an hour in.


celebrated a bday with my bro taylor. yea, he's 17 and rockin a sweet stash.

Even grandma made it back to kick it. Wow, it feel s good to be standing on two feet!!!



Back to Banner Elk to spectate and cheer on the LMC crew at Collegiate MTB nats. MI boy and LMC freshman Mike Anderson stormed to the Mens D1 STXC title. Shizam!!

Sunglasses were mandatory after dark. Teamin up with former roomate "Balls Hayes" for a wicked pasta feed at the banquet.


Carved a couple Pumpkins with Jamie. Mine is the tough looking one. you know, because I'm... ok, whatever. Sheedy didn't have a pumpkin so we set up a golf ball and candle for him. At least it was round, right? Back on a road bike and loving every minute of it.

Riding + Jamie = Smiles

My first summit of Roan Mtn. since March.

Back to the great lakes and the mitten for Christmas


Did I really train here a few years ago???

more solid times with the fam.


Then out to Cali for a way overdue week of hanging with former roomate, current teamate and first rate homie Taylor T.
Diggin the west side.Ok Taylor, you win. the riding out there is rad.


Finally the long awaited kickoff to the '08 season with Team BMC at training camp. We look good eh?

Black is the new white

Super stoked to be part of such a great team. The full sha bang!
fortunately, i think my tt setup will be a bit faster than Taylor's.


That's all for now. more to come if there are still people reading it???

no news is good news

Even though blog activity wouldn't suggest it, I am alive and well. Making good progress with leg rehab and getting back to "living" in general. I can't describe how great it feels to stand on two feet and get back on with some pedaling. Good happenings to recap on, so I hope to do it up in detail sometime soon!

Round 2

Just over 2 weeks into the second go with my leg, and the days of the longest summer I've ever experienced are still continuing to pass. Some of the days are just passing by slower then others!!! I've decided that if you ever want to really savor "time" or are scared of that "where did the time go" phrase, you can either A) Induce yourself into a large amount of pain. B) Do nothing but lay on the couch or in bed. or C) Both of the above for really making time stand still. (may cause temporary or permanent insanity).

The good news is that the surgery went well. Doc's were pleased with what went down and say there is no reason now that my tibia should not really begin to kick into gear. Out came the erector set...
And the finished product....A few less days in the hospital this time around helped my cause, not to mention being at home. No one likes spending time alone in a hospital room, so my brother Taylor brought me someone to keep me company. she was quite the trooper, just standing in the corner day after day. A few of my friends finding that "brent on high amounts of pain meds" was a solid source of weeknight entertainment.
The only hicup with round 2 thus far was the discovery of a small amount of infection from cultures taken during surgery. It was suspected that the type and size of infection found was perhaps just a contaminated culture, but since we are dealing with a non-union fracture and one which required hardware, we leave nothing to chance. that means.... massive amounts of sweet antibiotics for about 6 weeks!! which in turn means i get to walk around with this lil buddy sticking out of my arm for the duration of the antibiotic injections which I have to do daily. Other then hooking up for those infection destroying sessions, I've been doing what I can to keep my mind busy and the body from fully going to sleep. Of course plenty of DVD/TV action, luckily the Tour is on now. Kinda hard to watch guys doing what I'm missing so much, but it knocks out a chunk of the day. Dabbling in a bit of reading and continuing to make up for the lack of time I've spent in the "homeland" over the past couple years. No swimming this time around since I can't submerge the above apparatus in the water. Bummer! The leg is looking good though and I begin some therapy next week to get my knee mobility back. I thought I had stiff legs after a long flight, but 2 weeks with no knee movement has made me realize what real stiffness is!

more whenever I sense the days starting to roll by a bit faster

Here's to "seeing the forest, not the trees." thanks to BR for that one.

Mulligan?

I've been staying somewhat busy lately. Filling up my days with whatever I can and generally continuting to improve. Less pain, more mobility, more crutch time, all good things. Unfortunatley, the bone in my leg isn't following the same trend. I got the word last week that there is still little to no healing around the main fracture area. 11 weeks + no bone callous = surgery. I never really did like math, and I don't like that equation, but that's the fork in the road that i've come to and it's time to bite the bullet and go to the next level with my recovery. Thursday is game day. At least this time I will be close to home and in an english speaking environment! Plus, I don't have the issue of my bone EXPLODING right before surgery to factor into the equation so it won't be so bad.

Game plan? remove current plate/screws, drill a hole into the top of my tibia, gather bone shavings from inside my tibia, pack shavings into fracture site (circled in red), and then pound a LONG nail down the length of my tibia and secure it with screws. at least they will be using adult construction equipment this time and not pieces of erector set like before.
Sounds like 1-2 days in the hospital followed by a return to my pro couch surfer lifestyle. A true pitty since I have been working hard and making progress at moving in a more active direction. Mellow kayaking and some beech time have been thrown in the mix latley. Neither are very crutch adaptable. The river has already claimed one crutch and the sand almost ate another. Yes, I still can't shake those tanlines or my mid section paleness. Is it genetic?...
The pool has become a daily routine. Still a rockin release and great way to get the heart rate kickin, but I don't know how triathletes do it. how could you truly enjoy swimming after you have experienced the beauty of the bike? Other than that, kickin with with a few of the MI homies and trying to make the most of my longest stay here since I was in high school.

Oh, USADA dropped by the other day. I haven't raced in 3 months, likely won't be racing any sort of bike for at least another 3 months so its a good thing they felt it necessary to collect some of my urine. There are races all over the country right now going on with no control, so I guess I just have a hard time understanding what they are doing having some guy (a nice chap by the way) drive hours to come visit me. Don't get me wrong, I would drive a few hours to hang out with myself and watch myself pee in a cup, but seriously, right? time and dollars better spent elsewhere?

before i forget... A big CONGRATS to Scott Stewart and my VMG/National Team boys for bringing home the "best young rider jersey" at The Nature Valley Grand Prix last week. This kid has been a cat 2. for like 12 months and scored his first pro/1/2 road race victory recently racing up Roan Mtn. in Tennessee. Now he's baggin leaders jerseys at NRC stage races. more big things to come from this skinny kid.

Enough for now. I'm accepting luck, thoughts, prayers, energy and anything else positive which will help with the surgery/recovery routine. I'm sure my blog will be getting more action in the near future. until then...

stay away from those light poles.