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I had a rough go of it in Canada. I ended up having the same issue I had @ sea otter. I was at least able to race for a while before it set in. I was riding well until it went south for me. Baie Saint Paul was a fun time besides from the race. I got to hang out with Snyder, German and Rotem. Saturday night we all went out to dinner along with my parents and German’s dad made the trip over the pond as well. We definitely had a cast of characters @ the table. So now I’m heading back to durango to try to get this issue nailed down and out of my life. I’m bummed that I will miss Mount Tremblant but I’m hoping I will come good for Texas.

During my time back east I got to hang out with Mickey from Spooky for the day. The guy is super cool and it seems like my cross bikes should be dialed this year.

Also Matt of Spooky took me for a ride on the local trails in JPOWS and Al’s stomping grounds easthampton. I was looking forward to picking up my 29ner this week but instead I’m headed back to d-town. Also spent some time @ the bmx trails and started to get comfortable again. Now I probably won’t touch a bmx bike again for a couple month’s that is how it usually goes for me.

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So the big news is my leg is finally good to go. I did joe martin without any leg pain thanks to all the work my dr. frank and elka. The race was going great until the crit. I have to say i saw at least 30 people hit the deck around one corner. I ended up pulling the plug because I wasn’t looking to lose any skin or break any bones. I got to hang out with Singer, Lucy and the panther cycling team. It was a great time all around more like a vacation instead of a stage race. Now I’m back in NY for the next week and half. I’ll be doing the first two rounds of the Canada Cup. I will pick up my MTB bike @ Spooky Bikes and meet Mickey for the first time. I will try to get a video of the shop and all the crazy ideas Mickey has going on.

Today was a rude awaking to the amazing NY weather. It was 44 and raining which made for a short cold ride. After my ride I headed over to hang with chops. He started his own skate park / bmx shop (The CHOP SHOP). It seems like a cool idea it is a little rough around the edges for now but it could be dialed one day. Chops set me up with a sick S&M 38 special though and I got to hit the trails. I was able to get half of the small rhythm section so I’m hoping I can have it dialed by the time i fly back to D-town.

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So after puerto rico I headed home for a week and put in some days of suffering to breath after being @ sea level for close to 6 weeks. I headed to sea otter feeling good and hoping for some good rides in the STXC and the XC. It didn’t really end up panning out for me as my leg ended up going numb in the XC. After suffering around and finishing I started to think what could have caused such a thing to happen. I was planning on attending the first two rounds of the world cup but I decided I didn’t want to head over with a bum leg.

At first I was hoping it would be better soon so I booked a ticket to fly back to d-town the following monday so I could do a road race and crit with the Team Clif Bar road team. I took 3 days off to nurse the leg back to life. I got to spend some time in San Fran which is an awesome city if you ever get the chance to visit. I’ve been taking the BART which is a perfect way to get around in the bay area. I’ve been staying with Dylan from clif bar and his family. His wife’s nephew was in San Fran with a buddy and took the BART to berkeley one night for dinner. He was freaking out about it. I was thinking man good thing he wasn’t in NYC taking the subway I don’t think he would have made it out alive. Dylan just got a new puppy Otis who I’ve been spending a lot of time with. The guy is a Lab Doberman mix who is about 5 months old and is a spazz to say the least so we get along well.

Sector 16 has been off the chain as always. Dylan and Eric are looking @ launching a master and commander line of all sorts of dumb ideas they are coming up with. I’m getting a sweet helmet cam to take home with me though so hopefully I’ll be able to get some ripping action on the D-town single track soon. Also we saw maybe the craziest crew of workers @ the round table pizza in pacific grove. I will never venture into a round table pizza for the rest of my life.

So I decided not to do the road race this weekend but I’m going to give it a go in the crit. My leg still feels off and weak but I’m confident once I get home and see Dr. Frank and Luke Angel they will fix me right up. If my leg comes around I want to do the joe martin stage race in R-Kansas in two weeks. The first two rounds of the canada cups are also looking like they will fit in. Then of course the next ProXCT in Texas.

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So I was suppose to get on a plane and head home last monday. That didn’t happen for this guy. I checked the weather for durango and it looked a little rough. I decided to stay in PR for another week to get in my last big base week in. I also finally discovered how to post photos to the blog again so here we go.

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So the race in Florida, Puerto Rico was similar to bump-n-grind with some single track and wide open fire road.  The start was intense and I found myself in the middle of the pack after a sub-par second  half of the start stretch.  The first lap was a battle for me trying to get to the front before Sager and Broderick had checked out for the day.  By the time I got into 3rd they had close to 50 seconds so I chased to close to flat out and couldn’t seem to bring back any time.  On the fourth lap i started to attack the group of 3.   I got a small gap and hoped I was checking out for the day.  Then the heat hit me right across the face.  What did the 5 fingers say to the face slap..  Then I was in survival mode for the rest of the race.  On the last lap snyder caught me and we rode in for 4th and 5th on the day.  I was happy overall for my first hard effort of the year was yesterday after a month off the bike after cross.  I’ve been back on the bike for 3 weeks now just doing some base training.  Next weekend is the Medalla Light Ultimate Dirt Challenge in Rincon, Puerto Rico. So I’ve got a week to waste in Puerto Rico it is going to be rough..pause..Not!  I do have to put in quite a bit of hours as I’m still working on my base.  That will be accompanied by some beach time of course.  Check out TeamJamis.com for an entire recap of the trip thus far.  Really check it out it has been quite a trip.  I’m not fronting.

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So I’ve been logging in the hours this past week.  It has been a little cold down here in Tucson this winter.  On tuesday Howes and Much wanted to get in some climbing so we packed up a car and drove to kitt peak.  Howes and I planned on doing it 3 times and then maybe heading part way home.  I started out my base day and howes and much went up easy.  The second time up I went all the way back to the highway flipped it and Howes ended up flipping it at the start of the actual climb.  Eventually I  Howes saw me and started to sit up and wait.  But it was a cold day with a 30 mph headwind on the climb and maybe about 40 degrees.  Needless to say Howes started to get cold and went hard again to warm up.  I figured no problem we will just descend down together then ride up the 3rd time.  As I was approaching the summit I started getting nailed with Sleet and quickly flipped it to get below the storm.  As I started descending down the road was wet from the rain that had started to come down.  With about 9 miles left to descend and visibility @ about 25 feet I was freezing and just thinking about getting down the mountain.  At around miles 5 i saw Much who had driven up based on how the mountain had gotten covered in clouds within the span of 10 minutes.  I told her to go up and get Howes who was still in the middle of the storm.  Once I got back to the highway I just started to nail it towards Tucson which is about 40 miles away.  Much found Howes and he sat in the car for a few minutes to warm up then started to head toward home.  He had Much motor pace him for a while so he could catch me.  The tailwind was so strong on that day I was pulling a little above 30 on the way home so needless to say we never saw each other the entire day.

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So I’ve made it out of vacation time and into base training.  I put in a week in durango before i headed south to tucson.  This year I’ve had to rush my base a little on contrast to years past.  I’m doing a 3 week block then it is off to puerto rico for two uci races then back to durango for one last hell week.  I’m really looking forward to doing the races in puerto rico since i’ve heard good things about them from my brother plus its puerto rico.  I made it down to Tucson on saturday with Barthel.  Barthel, Gilbe and Todd had a little golf vaca going on the last couple of days.  I joined them for one day of hacking away with the clubs.  Besides from that I’ve been settling  in out @ the ranch here in tucson.  I’m staying with Howes, Much, Walker, and the Slovak @ Curtis house a.k.a. missing saddle headquarters.  I’ve been logging in the hours on the bike and resting my knee as much as I can.  It is so cool riding in tucson this time of year you see all sorts of people you know out on the open roads.  We are a little ways from the UofA which has taken away from the time i normally spend on university.  My knee is a little jacked right now so I’ve been really good about stretching which is a first for me. Not to mention I’m doing the Dr. Frank exercises and icing my knee a lot.

Here is a photo of my new MTB bike which I got to rip around on monday.  It rides really well and is weighting in right @ 21lbs.

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So it has been a long time since I have given my site any love. I got back
from Europe and was still motivated to ride my bike but knew it was
time to take a much needed break. It was a good time in Durango for
some down time with the annual snowdown celebration going on. I was
planning on doing the polar bear plunge @ carvers but it didn't
happen. I still had some jet lag going on. I always have a lot of
free time during my break and normally just sit around and do close to
nothing. This time I changed it up with some back country action and
shoveling roofs. I figured why not be productive so I did a
week of hard core shoveling. It was actually quite fun until you get
towards the end of the day and you can't move. As the sun was going
down each day though you knew it was time to go have a couple beers.

One of my last days on the roof my buddy Schmidty and I decided we
should check out tickets to Mexico to see if we could swing a trip
with all the extra cash we had made. Before we knew it we were on the
direct flight from Denver to puerto vallarta. We were able to spend a
couple days @ megs parents house then I was off to sayulita for the
last 3 days. I had the great idea of hiking to sayulita from San
pancho. It ended up turning into a solid 2 hours of bushwacking in
the jungle with 35 lbs backpack on. In sayulita we stayed @ a
hostel which was an expierence for me. Schmidty has had expierences
with hostels and said this was the worst one he has ever stayed in.
It was like staying in a jail cell so let's just say we didn't spend much
time in the hostel. I must say though spending a couple days in
sayulita has brough my love for San pancho to another level. We did
find a couple cool places in sayulita off the beaten path though and
took in some fun night life. Thursday morning we were back on the bus
headed for the puerto vallarta airport.

After returning to the states it was off to a cabin in rollinsville
north of boulder. Since the people we were meeting were running late
we got to kick it with Corey collier in boulder for a night. 1 am in
the morning we finally met up with our crew and headed to the cabin.
After two crazy days in the cabin we are finally headed back to d-town.

I will add some pics to this post if i can remember how Zach Mcd showed
me how to post them.  And i will catch you up on my last off week which has
 consisted of building up my new sweet Spooky bikes.  Team Clif Bar has
changed to the east coast frame builders bike for the 2010 season.  They are
sick bikes all the way around.

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So Zach is awesome and figured out how to post pics on my blog so here is the first pic from Mallorca. Also a big thanks to Ken at 3F Sports for setting us up with a great place to stay and helping us find our way around the island. His site can be found here 3fsports.com
When I couldn’t upload pics i started taking some video here they are..

Some Cross practice

I’ve been loving the riding here and actually having the problem of riding too long. When it is 55 and sunny it is easy to do!! Today was a little rough with it raining all day. I flew here with close to nothing and had to go ballin on a euro today. Lucky for me it was the day after Three Kings day so everything was 50% off.

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My phone has been cracking me on the updates. I have written a couple
and they haven’t posted. So here is a quick run down of the end of
camp. I had a really good day in loenhout ended up 30th. Baal I had
some issues and pulled the plug. Sint Nicolas I felt alright and was
able to manage 19th. So with that said @ this point my season
should be over right? Well I decide to stay in euroland and do the
next two world cups. Since the weather isn’t the best in dtown or
izegem I decided on Friday I should head south. Zac Mcdonald and I with
the help of our travel guides fox, els and Noel ended up Mallorca.
Nothing like booking a trip last minute. Thanks to ryanair we were
able to get cheap tickets. Ryanair is a crazy airline. You have to
pay for everything when you purchase your ticket. They say for every
extra kilo over 15 kilos it is 20 euros. Lucky for us our bikes didn’t
touch the scale. Also they are tight on the carry on bags or at least
that is what they lead you to believe. Mcdonald and I went with just
one backpack each but people had huge bags looked like they
were way over the 10 kilo limit. Next it was time to board. Ryanair
is like southwest with no assigned seats with premier
boarding for 10 euros. Zac and I didn’t go for that instead we just ran
all the way to the plane and passed just about everyone. Stupid
Americans!!! We ended up with an exit room right by the main cabin
door. Ballin with the leg room. Since ryanair flys out of some ghetto airport
instead of Brussels they only have two de-icers. After the door closed we sat @ the gate for 2 hrs. I didn’t
care I passed out but woke up to some guy chewing out the flight
attendent for not supplying meals. Finally we were off and we arrived
in Mallorca. After picking up the baggage it was off to our hotel.
Ken whelpdale of usacycling lives here and set us up with a nice
hotel in downtown palma Mallorca. Zac and I headed out checked out the
city got some food actually found the hotel which wasn’t the easiest
task.

Dinner in spain doesn’t get going until 9 so of course we were early
showing up @ 8:15. Then we went to check out a discoteca. We got
there around 1130 stupid Americans. It was basically just us and the
staff for a while. Then when we went to leave our jackets we had
safetly hidden behind a couch were gone. Mcdonald and I were saying
we felt like UNO and Dos two juniors from camp.

Sorry for no pictures my account seem to be messing with me and not letting me upload photos. I’ll try to get it figured out.

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