Weekend off?

That's what I thought at least. I've been busy since that "off weekend" at the Swank. Long story short, the Swank filled up and I missed my chance to race. At the same time I managed to come down with some wimpy sickness. Nothing major, just a sore throat and stuffy nose for a week. Still can't get rid of the cough though, that sucks. Unfortunately (this is where a sarcasm font would come in handy)that bit of sickness wiped off the rest of fitness I had left over from nationals. It's pretty funny how much you slow down from just a few days off the bike. Too much.

Willmurr and Timmy both had some sick rides and held it down for me instead. Big props to them, as well as the King doing what he does best throwing down and trying to fight off the toughest competitor of them all, age.

And yes, I totally forgot to post the pictures from Cali like I said I was going to. My b. This is going to be a short post because I can't really say anything about my plans for next year. I've got some stuff planned, but I can't really tell anyone about it until it's finalized, you know.

In the meantime, I should probably do another shout out to Wes D. He has helped me out a ton ever since I met him and he keeps helping me. So this video is kind of for him. It's amazing, kind of like what this guy is to free running, the KOP is to free riding.




Haha, awesome. Now on to the pictures.

The Crew


The Crib



Sick pictures




Sleep tight 'merica.

End of the Hard Part? Maybe...

Well, if you have been keeping up with anyone else's blog, then you probably already know about the whole story of the Brevard Team winning the National Championships for Division II. Which is not that far behind Division I, but no body will recognize that.

Here's a picture if you don't believe me.




As far as my personal races went it wasn't so great. Coming off winning both the short track and cross country last year, I knew that I couldn't improve without winning them again. In short the cross country went great until the second to last lap. I had been marking my efforts because of the altitude and it was working great up to the point where I blew to pieces with one to go. I slowly slipped back to 5th place. I was pretty disappointed, but all I could do was put my feet up and rest for the short track. It went a little better but once again I attacked too early and blew up with three laps to go. I ended up 2nd on the day. Both of those results were good in their own right and I'm not trying to be a sour puss but it's a far cry from first.

I also raced four cross in hopes of helping out the team with points and improving my standings in the individual omnium. That didn't go so well either, I quailed 30th and made it through the first round before being bumped out in the second round.

Thanks to our girls, we were able to hang on to the overall team title. After some crashes and good results in the downhill we pulled off the overall title. It was pretty cool to watch our brand new team (only 4 years old) take the win.

Now for the gripe. Someone told me a few days ago that I complain too much. So I'm going to try to cut it out, but that's kind of what blogs are for eh? Anyway, I'm getting very frustrated with life in general mostly because I can't say anything. I try to keep this blog as clean as I can because I (hope) that somebody is reading it and.... never mind.

So what am I doing for the rest of the season? Great question. I guess that I have to do the Swank since it's practically in my backyard and it will give the KOP an excellent opportunity to beat me on his home turf. And then he can make fun of me for another year, which will make him very happy. So if you have nothing to do on November the 8th come on down to the Cove Creek Campground to watch it all go down. I'm still tossing around the idea of racing cross this fall but I really need to get a job too so we'll see what happens. Speaking of which I thinking of going home soon to build some more trails and hang with the fam, so if you want to come hang out feel free to swing by. But be warned, you'll be put to work building jumps and berms to complete my new downhill track.

Since I've deprived you of pictures all year long, watch for a blog post containing only pictures from California. Pretty sick. I'm still working on finding all the good ones.

And since this is my last official post of the racing year I'd like to send a thank you out to everybody for the support. And I'll probably forget someone, so I'm going to go ahead and apologize for it. Can you really expect my college aged, sleep deprived brain to remember everything? Just don't tell my parents that I forgot I had a test last week. Hehe. Oops.

The KOP
Chris Herndon
Coach Thad
Pinnett
Chaput
Tamer
Momma and Poppa Squirrel
Dan Ennis
Jeff from I9
Dr. Chandler
Donnie
TEAM Mom
Nate
All the guys from Cane Creek
Miss Heaton
Bracken Mountain Bakery
Charmichael Training Systems
Brevard College
Sycamore Cycles
Gu Sports
all other sponsors of the Sycamore Cycles and Brevard College Cycling Teams

and my biggest sponsors

My Parents


Over and out America, I will not forget that picture post.

Checked out the course today not too bad tacky and flowy with some techy sections i race at 12 tomorrow 828 represent!

Roundabout

So, I happened to look up just where at the race I'm going to in a few days is located. Turns out it's at the Northstar Ski resort in Truckee California. It's oh, like 30 minutes from Reno or something and about an hour from Sacramento. It's also about three hours from San Fransisco. San Fran is where I raced in my first ever "national". It was actually about an hour from downtown in Sonoma. It was a crappy course, wicked hot, and my race fell apart. I finished like 11th. Good result, but not what I wanted. Now three hours away and a lot more experienced I hope to pull it off.

Those first few years when I started getting really serious into mountain bike racing were the best because I kept on discovering new things. Although I will never say that I know everything, I do know that I have learned a library full of facts, techniques, and tricks about racing.

When I started out racing I never thought that I would make it to where I am today. Not saying that I'm a superstar or anything but I've had a successful career so far. I was just thinking about all the people that have helped me along the way. Last year was awesome after I pulled off two national championships. I've had a ton of close calls and I was able to pull it off last fall.

Now here is the bigger question, can I repeat? We'll see, I've been taking the past couple of days easy but you can never know what will happen. It will be a hard race since everyone will be looking at me. It's one thing to win a race straight up but a completely different thing when it's all on your shoulders. I super stoked about traveling to Cali but at the same time I've had a long season and I will be happy to be back and finished. I was telling a guy at lunch the other day. It really doesn't matter what happens in the race, I just love racing my bike. That's true until the race starts. I'm a racer so I want to win everything. But once it's all done I can sit back and be satisfied. This is sounding sooo corny, but if I win another national title I'm doing it for you guys. It's my way of saying thanks.

Hopefully my throttle will get stuck...
T

P. S.
Put this one down on the X-mas list.

Warheads?

Yep, sweet and sour. That's how it went down this weekend in the dirty, dirty south. For the final collegiate race in the normal season (that is, not counting nationals)I added a little bit of spice to the flavor of the weekend by rolling up with full on golf gear. If I do say so myself I was looking pretty fly. However, no podium groupies by the end of the day....bummer.

The short track was a little behind but it's all good with collegiate racing. It was a bitter fight down to the end with Zach and I barely squeaked by with the W. I took some time off and went to town with the 'rents and had some pizza with a mushroom that knows how to chill out.

Came back for some slalom action in the afternoon. The track was a little better than years past. Still pretty awkward. Whatever, if your fast you can win anywhere, any time, any conditions. Don't believe me? Check it hater. Quallied 8th so not too shabby but had a few rough runs to the round of 8 where I met up with Danny and rolled it so he could save himself.

XC was the final event of the season. I moved up one spot in the overall after Perley didn't show up to race on Saturday. I held it down for the first bit of the race but four weeks on the road were catching up quickly. Zach and I had another battle for most of the race before I crashed and got gapped. I was riding pretty crappy so I just shut it down and rode it in to get my 2nd spot.

The team didn't have any amazing rides but we did enough work to get the team allocations for nationals. That means we get to take everybody we want to. Sick.

To those of you who are not making the trip to nationals. I'm going to miss you. Even though we had a huge team and I wasn't super stoked on the idea, I bummed that we can't take the entire team to Cali and race. It was awesome hanging out and I hope we can do more of that when the seasons over and everybody's done riding.

On to that, we finally have a weekend off and I need it. I'm looking forward to some quality chillage and riding and eating some amazing food. We're leaving North Kack on Wednesday and the first race over there is the XC, my favorite. I'll be updating the blog and letting everybody know how things are rolling. It looks like it won't be too cold but we shall see eh? Ah, whatever. If it gets too cold my Canadian genes will kick in and I'll be immune to it. So nice having super powers that other normal people don't. I guess that's why they call me the Captain.

I'll probably skip out on some home work to write another blog this weekend. I'll even add some cool facts about Cali and where we're racing at. Cool huh?

Instead of having sweet movies of nats, I found some off of Dirt Mag. And even a movie of the Clemson race this weekend. Albeit the dual and downhill. You can even see some 828 riders. Sickness.

So go get that microwave going or if you're like Sportlegs then use the oven and watch some quality movies.