Monday, April 27, 2009

Regionals!!!!!!

Saturday may have been the most epic race I have ever done. It was definitely the hardest I have ever worked in a race. It was an 80 mile road race in the hills of South east Ohio and it was about 85 degrees at the start. The race started and a break that included my old friend Matt Jones. That break had a 12 minute gap after 20 miles!!!!! There were 2 tough climbs each lap and another break went on the second lap of 4. I decided I should be in it so I bridged up on the descent and flats which was really hard. I made it up and then we dropped the Wisco guy on a climb. It was me, 2 marians, Clayton from LWC and Will Nowak from Northwestern. We were motoring and by the end of the lap had caught the entire break and dropped most of them. A Wisco and Tim from Lindenwood managed to hang on. Our group of 6 ended up being the winning group. I felt pretty good but unfortunately I screwed up my feeds and ended up getting water instead of Heed for 2 laps which caused major cramping problems for me on the last lap. Will and the Marian guys rolled away from me and Tim on a climb but Tim and I worked together to the finish. I was basically dying the entire 20 mile last lap and Tim beat me in the sprint because I was cramping so bad I couldn’t really pedal. I was very happy to take 5th in the regionals road race though and pretty much clinch my nationals spot. Joey broke away on the last lap to take 11th. It was a weird race with huge gaps between groups. Luckily there was a lake at the course to cool off in.
The crit didn’t go as well. I ended up in the break that got away and lapped the field but they kept attacking and I was so tired from the day before chasing every move was just killing me. I ended up back in the pack after 20 minutes of being off the front constantly chasing down attacks! Chris managed to get away for 9th and I won the field sprint for 12th. I am getting pumped up for nationals. My goal is the podium but I will be extremely pleased with another top 10 in either the RR or crit. I can’t believe I am graduating! Only 6 more days of school left for me and then off to Colorado for my last collegiate race ever!!!! This week I am taking a few finals early and going to Warsaw for the RR on Saturday. I also plan to try to train hard to build up my form a bit more.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

New Orleans!!!!!!

I spent the last 4 days in New Orleans at the Experimental Biology conference, which is national meeting for the American Society for Nutrition. New Orleans is an amazingly awesome and crazy city! We had a ton of fun going out on Bourbon street. You can drink on the street there and it is like a football game weekend only crazier every day! The conference was good as well. I presented my research on exercise’s effects on appetite and food intake on a poster and people came to ask me questions about it. I also went to a lot of talks and got some good information and ideas for potential graduate school studies in the future.
I also found out that I didn’t get a dietetic internship on Sunday night, which is a mixed blessing for me. I would have done one if I had gotten it but at the same time I really want to do something fun for the next few years and something that I will really enjoy. I don’t know what I am going to do yet but I do know that I will be staying around West Lafayette to race bikes and work at my lab until August.
We ate a lot of great food and down there in New Orleans! I had never tried a raw oyster before and Abita beer and hurricane drinks are also good. I did manage to lift and ride the exercise bike in the hotel a few times as well. I probably logged 6+ miles of walking every day as well. Today we took a ferry across the Mississippi river to walk around the Old Algiers neighborhood. It was a really cute part of town with lots of little houses. New Orleans probably has the most dubz per capita of any city I have ever been in. It was like a car show! We also went out to a dance club one night that literally played all of my favorite rap music! I think they played 4 different soulja boy songs! I would love to visit New Orleans again in the future it was a really great time.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Science, new bike, new kit


We got our new kits over this past weekend and they look awesome! We also just got our Ritchey bars and stems in too. Now my bike is fully built up and ready to go complete with Cateye cycling computer! Yesterday was my first ride with a cycling computer in about 5 years. I am kind of excited to actually know how far I have ridden and how fast I am going since it has been since I was 16 since I last had a cycling computer.

In other news I am leaving for New Orleans on Friday for the big conference. I am excited and nervous but I am confident that it will go well since I know my own research pretty well. I will also be finding out Sunday at Midnight where my dietetic internship is going to be! Lots of exciting things this weekend and in the coming weeks with the end of my collegiate cycling career as well as my upcoming graduation. My stomach also finally started to feel better yesterday which is good news so that I can eat all of the spicy food in New Orleans. Maybe I will buy a disposable camera for new orleans so I can take a few pictures. Good luck to everyone racing this weekend in Wisconsin!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Epic Ride to Illinois

This past weekend I decided I would combine 2 things I really like; visiting my girlfriend and epic bike rides.  So I decided I would ride my sweet new Felt F1 (pics coming soon!) from West Lafayette to Urbana, IL a ride of about 90 miles.  I left Saturday morning at 9:45 and it took me about 5:15 to get there with a cross/tail wind most of the way.  It is an extremely beautiful ride!  The hills in Warren County, IN are amazing with rocks, cliffs, streams and forest everywhere.  I even spent a few miles on dirt roads which the bike handled excellently.  After riding through Kickapoo state park the ride got a little less epic.  I rode the same road for 25 miles in  almost a completely straight line!!  It was cool sort of because the road was really narrow and basically only wide enough for one car.  Along the way there were also quite a few crazy dogs.  Once I arrived at my girlfriend Ellen's place I realized something was wrong with my stomach.  She had made an awesome lunch of chinese foods for me but I could barely eat.  My stomach felt like it was gonna explode after just a few bites.  So I basically didn't eat hardly anything for the next 2 days in order to try to get rid of the problem.  Thankfully on Sunday Ellen drove me to Kickapoo state park to start my ride home which cut out the 25 miles of boring roads.  It was still tough because I couldn't eat anything so I did the whole ride on 3 bottles of gatorade!  There was a killer head wind too (how often does the wind come from the East??!!)  I bonked pretty well with about 25 miles left and I broke my chain but i fixed it and made it home in time to continue not eating for the next 24 hours.  My stomach is still not completely better but at least I am able to get some food down.  Any ideas as to what might be wrong with my stomach are welcome.  Thanks for reading.  

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Home Race!!

This past Saturday was the Purdue Road Race and Team Time Trial. I wasn't the official organizer this year because I was sort of teaching Joey and Brian how to organize the race so they could do it completely without me next year. They did a great job and everything went really smoothly. I think it was even better than when I organized it the past 2 years especially with having plenty of volunteers. The racing was fast and furious and most importantly no one got hurt. I don't think there was a single crash in the road race for any category. My races went well. We got 3rd in the TTT even beating Lindenwood who had gotten us at Depauw. We rode very well together and I think we have a good shot at getting 3rd at regionals even. The road race was good too. I wasn't feeling very strong this week but I was feeling good after the TTT. I missed the winning break of 12 at first but after 1 lap I had joey up the pace leading up to Eagle hill and then I attacked at the bottom and managed to bridge the gap a few hundred meters after the top of the hill. The group ended up being 3 marian, 3 lindsey wilson, 2 lindenwood, Chris and me. I was happy we both made it. The last trip up the hill there were some attacks and I was riding so hard I was cross eyed. I managed to hang on but I was spent for the final trip up the hill and only managed 8th place. I still earned some good points towards nationals and Chris Won. He outsprinted everyone up the hill! It was awesome to finally see a Purdue rider win our home race in the A category. Stephen also won for Purdue in the Men C category. The crit at Marian got cancelled for the Men A due to a thunderstorm which sucked because I could really use the points for my individual score towards nationals qualifying. I won't be in Wisconsin because I will be presenting the research I did all of the last year at the national meeting for the American Society for Nutrition (www.eb2009.org). Pretty exciting stuff. Well I better get back to doing school work and writing my research project.