almost time for 2 big things!

April is a big month for me!!! This Friday im taking the GMAT and there are also 2 big races. I've been studying hard for the test and I think i can push my score up a few points. This Friday is my schools founding anniversary day so we have the day off. Next Sunday is the Misiryeong hill climb too which is the first race of the season for me. I did it last year but riding it in the team competition this year will be a little bit different I think. Finally the 10 day tour de korea is in 4 weeks! They posted the website about the race in english too so check it out. tourdekorea.or.kr im participating in the special competition not the UCI race. It should be really cool from the looks of the course profiles. There are a few climbs every day so hopefully that plays well to my strengths by softening people up a bit for small group sprints. My team should be really strong in both races so im really getting psyched up! Gotta get back to studying only 3 days until the GMAT! Wish me luck!!

nice weather and lots of school dinners

With the arrival of my new principal and a new english teacher there have been lots of school dinners lately. First our school has 12 male teachers this year so the principal (who is a guy too) decided we should make a male teachers club and have dinner together once a month and play sports. so last friday we all played volley ball and went out to dinner. The new guys are all a lot of fun. The weatehr was pretty good for bikign last week too and I got in a lot of good riding. All of this has been mixed in with trying to prepare for the GMAT too which is happening next friday. It looks like the week after the GMAT should be a really good time to get in some long rides with out having to worry about studying too. Our team should be getting our new kits soon too! I will post a pic after the first race in 3 weeks. Other than that nothing too exciting has been going on here. trying to study and bike a lot coupled with these school dinners has definitely reduced my social activity quite a bit so im looking forward to getting the gmat out of the way and hopefully boosting my score a little bit! im planning on doing 2 4 hour rides this weekend and a lot of riding after teh gmat!

riding a lot and getting read for Tour de Korea

Its official that I get to race the Tour de Korea. My new schools principal is a really nice guy and is letting me have a vacation for the race. Its going to be really cool I think and the longest stage race I have ever done. Its 10 days 9 stages and about 100km per day. I don't think the courses are going to be too killer. There will be a few hilly days with but no crazy mountains it looks like. My team is definitely looking to repeat the success it had last year (they won the team competition) and a rider placed 2nd overall. The race is going to be april 15-24th with stages all over korea. Im not racing the pro tour de korea though. They have an ameteur competion held at the same time as the pro race which they call the Special competition. The prize list sounds like it should be really good too. This is definitely gonna be the biggest race of the year so im training hard to get in shape. My goal is to win at least one stage and to do as best as I can overall. I don't have a great feel for how strong the field is gonna be really but I just wanna race hard and do as best as I possibly can. also im taking the GMAT one more time on april 1st so the next 3 weeks are gonna be busy with studying and biking.

riding and getting back into school

Last week was the first week of classes at school. I have a new korean teacher who I teach together with. She is really nice and really good at controlling the kids we are getting along pretty well! Last week the weather was really good for biking so I got in a lot of riding. I rode a new course north of where I live that was really aweome it had a lot of nice 3km or so climbs. I definitely wanna go ride there again soon. Saturday I went to everland with some of my friends which was really fun too. Im getting really excited to start racing but im really glad there are a few more weeks to train before racing starts. I need to put in some more miles and probably work on my sprint a little bit. I definitely find that training here in the mountains makes it a lot easier for me to get into really good shape though. other than that nothing too exciting happened but it was a pretty good weekend!

Germany!

I went to Germany to visit my parents over the schools spring break. It was a blast! My parents live in a town called Weinheim which is about 60km south of frankfurt and pretty close to Heidelberg which has a really famous castle. We toured heidlberg then I did some awesome biking with my dad around the Odenwald which is a huge forest preserve right behind their house. Its definitely some of the best bike riding I have ever done. Its all forested or on small farms with really well paved roads that go up gradually for 3-7km then down gradually. There are tons of roads and loops to make too. It would be an amazing place to train. After that we went to the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart which was really cool also. I didn't know that they invented the first car! We also spent 2 days cross country skiing in the black forest which had just gotten about 40cm of snow. The trails there were amazing as well with lots of gradual climbing and descending as well as amazing views! All in all it was a great trip. Came back last friday and we had a good bye party for one of my good friends Danny who is going back to america soon. Today is the first day of school here and we have a new principal and I have a new teacher to teach english with. Yesterday was a holiday in Korea too so yujin and I went to the 63 building which is the tallest building in korea. It was pretty cool and had really good views of the mountains around seoul. It is also the worlds tallest art museum and they had an exhibit of picasso up there. This week I plan to keep on biking and hopefully getting in good shape for the races in april and may.