Confessions of European Racing

I didn't really have any idea how I would feel leaving Europe. It's been my dream to race here since I started biking years ago, yet I've heard all the horror stories of "euro fever". Getting so home sick and lonely that you begin to lose the ability to even function while across the pond. I supose that might be the case for some people, and perhaps my stay was still short enough to be considered a vacation, but I honestly can't relate. The past two weeks I've spent racing, training, eating, sleeping, and breathing Europe has been one of the most enjoyable times of my life.  The amount fun I had is only matched by the amout I learned. Aside from the obvious things such as Europeans thinking that Visa credit cards are evil, and the fact that it costs 0.75 euros to enter a "public" rest room/ toileten, I feel like I'm coming back to the states with a new understating and respect for racing and, for that matter, riding a bike. I wrote about coming over here with a new perspective. A perspective of just having fun in every race without worrying about the results. However, it's hard not to feel slightly hypocritical once you get thrown into that first race.  Let's put it this way. Your out there having possibly the best race of your life. You feel like you could destroy any field in the world, nobody can match your speed, your power, your... Wait was that a euro kid on aluminum 26er' that just flew by... Oh there's another one... Another, another, where do they keep coming from!  You catch my drift. It's hard to be out puting down an effort that should spell pain cave for all your competition and all that happens is you go cross eyed watching them pedal away. But at that moment you must remember why you subjected yourself to this pain in the first place. To learn. It's the little victories that begin to mean so much in every race you do.  When I started to get nervous about a race coming up I would simply just think about what I would need to do to make this a good day. An effort where at the end of the day I can look back on and be proud of. Before this trip that would have meant winning. No exceptions. But now I feel like the one and only true thing that I can control in my racing, that I can depend on, is going as hard as I can. If I go through a race and put everything I have into every single pedal stroke, if I finish a race and I can't talk or have to put my head into my hands then it was a very good race.  So, I guess I think the most important thing that I learned during my stay in the motherland was just something my dear, not-so-old dad's been telling me a while. You can't contol your competition, you can only control how you race them. I didn't really know how I would feel leaving Europe. Would I feel defeated, sad, unmotivated? That's what they say. It's in Europe where you really can figure out if mountain bike racing is for something you want to do, and you know, I supose if the coffee stays this good and the racing stays this hard, I think I could see myself coming back hopefully very soon.

Perspective

Perspective is key. Perspective is truly what creates the good, the bad, and the ordinary in our lives. To understand it is to live, but to master it is to live happily. I'm finding there to be no better place to find a new perspective than sitting thousands of feet in the air starring out at the clouds. I've never seen clouds like this; at least never outside of an airplane. These clouds are tall,it's like a city of white fluff up here, and while I was staring down on this sight, this new perspective of the sky, I began to imagine the perspective I want to adopt to my racing.   Taking off out of the Helena Regional Airport this morning is the perfect time to review my perspective as I'll be needing some pretty soon here. In a little more than twenty four hours I'll have landed in Brussels, Belgium for the US Cycling Mountain Bike Race Camp. This is undoubtedly a flight I've dreamt about making my whole career, but now that it comes around I find myself feeling a bit differently inside than I imagined.  I'll be the first to admit that this season, while being more fun than I could have hoped for, has left a bit to be desired. I feel I'm in a prime position to do something big. Soon. But I just haven't been able to put the pieces together yet. Whether I'm struggling with fatigue, or bad luck it's those adversities that have driven me down.  So where does that leave me in Europe? Well, it's a matter of perspective. I could let those problems drag me down and leave me truly as a loser, or I could control my own destiny. I could turn that devastation into my motivation. Mountain biking is what I want to do, for now and forever. I've said it many times aloud and written it many more times in this blog, but that feeling I get when the dirt's just perfect, the air is clear and crisp,and my blood runs fast through my veins; it's enough for me to forget the pain that comes along with that feeling. It's what I want to do, and I've got a long time to see it though, so that's what makes the right perspective so important. In Europe I'll be racing for the little victories. To ride a lap clean, get a good start, heck, to not get lapped. Those are things I can think about through the race and things that in the end of the day I can feel good about achieving, whether I finished first of fiftieth.  So as I watch these clouds from a new view, and as I go some place that will be very foreign I can always rely on these simple constants. A screaming in my legs, a click of a shift, the grip of my tires (hopefully), and the beating- almost combusting of my heart. These are the things I can always count on, but it seems for them to stay constant my perspective must change. It's going to be a long ride to my dreams and I believe that it begins with a Belgian waffle...

For Now, We Daydream

Well, it’s been too long. That pretty much sums up almost everything right now. This school year’s been too long, our snowy spring was too long, the walk from my soft warm bed to, well, really anywhere in the morning is way too long, but most of all, it’s been too long since my last blog update.  Though, it seems like when things are getting to the point of being too long, it’s when they find an end, or a beginning in the terms of my latest blog entry. I’m beginning my blog update to end the period of no blog update. Now I could probably continue with that and go into some crazy deep theology of how we must begin to find an end and that will be the beginning of another journey and so on and so forth, but really when you boil it down, all that would do is cause you, the reader, to walk away thinking, “Was that a joke, or was he really trying to be serious?” and me, the writer, thinking during the middle of it, “Should this be a joke, or am I really trying to be serious?”. So I’ll just keep things simple.

Livin the good life (not my beer)

As this school year draws to a close it seems like every class is consumed by writing reflections on how the year went, what we expected and didn’t see, and what we didn’t expect and enjoyed. As I look back to remember whether it was a good year or not, it strikes me how it doesn’t really matter, does it? School is just one of those things that at times can be the hardest, most challenging part of your life, while at other times it can be the easiest, frankly, most boring part of your life, either way school is school and it’s what we got to do.

 I suppose the only time I truly feel like complaining about school is on these final two weeks. Everybody’s tired of learning, and the teachers are tired of teaching, but what really makes me suffer is looking out the window at the beautiful, crisp, morning air. It’s always about math class that I see the days as the most beautiful. Where even through the double layered, glued shut windows of Capital High School I can still make out the soft whistle of robins. I can all but feel the brush of the breeze weaving through my hair.  I can see out those windows and look about three miles to the south, and there it is. Mount Helena, standing tall and proud, like a picture from a National Geographic. I trace with my eyes the path that I plan on taking that day. I’m sure the person sitting next to me thinks I have some kind of problem with my eyes darting back and forth. I’m following the trail in my mind. Brake here, Jump that, roost this; it’s all about the sound the tires make sticking to the packed earth. I have a pretty low heart rate, that’s just who I am, but when I’m on my bike it’s different. Every time a tread block beats into the ground my heart beats with it. Bump, bump, bump, bump- a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million tiny bumps that eventually begin to sound like, like… I don’t know… they sound like a tire. Smooth and protective, and that happens to my heart. A symphony of individual sounds that grow and multiply to form something solid and whole. Like the individual instruments of an orchestra, playing such random notes and keys on their own, but together they produce something familiar and comforting.

Every once in a while I have to look away form that window. I have to answer some question relating to numbers that aren’t in Psi or kilometers, and that brings me back to the real world, out of my daydream. But what is the real world? Does the real world lie in trigonometry and algebra, facts and figures you might never use, or does it fly in the dirt kicked up by your rubber? Something you’ll always love. I guess that’s what I think about when school gets hard or long or confusing. The world is built on dreams and built by dreamers, so never let your dreams fade away. No matter if it’s been too long, never stop looking out that window, picking out a path to your future.  
  

Here Comes the Sun

Ok, so here’s the thing. I do not consider myself to be a complainer.  In fact, I sometimes pride myself on my ability to roll with the punches and take things how they come, but looking back I’ve discovered a discrepancy in that thinking. I’ve started every one of my blogs (yes, all four of them!) complaining about the weather in some shape or form. Not today. Today the weather was… different than it has been. Now I understand that those of you in the Midwest and down to the south east of the country haven’t  seen the most fantastic sunny days lately, mainly due to the fact that to have fantastic sunny days you need sun, and it kind of hast to be fairly fantastic. So with that in mind I’ll take mercy on you. If you want to read what you would like to read then continue through and ignore the words in the parenthesis, if you want to know how good it can be, or maybe what might be eventually on its way, then brace yourself for envy.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been hit by nonstop showers (of sunshine) and our trails have left a bit to be desired (for instance, um, nothing). I’ve been so bored while I had the past four days off from school (nope) and can’t tell you how annoying it is to be woken up by the sun shining through my window (you get it). I must say, our trails have been just stupid(indous)ly, (in)credible, (un)beliveablely… ok, forget that! I’ve been living a dream. That’s all you need to know. I wake up, I go for a hike with my dog (pet) and my dawg (dad), I hit the trails for a few hours, and then I have the whole rest of my day to myself and nothing to do.

Yet with all this relaxation, with all this family time at home, something’s missing. Since the first weekend of March I had been flying down for mountain bike races in Texas and California every other weekend for eight weeks straight. After my last race at Sea Otter all I wanted was to hang at home, catch up with school, see my friends. But really how long can that last? The fire to get back on the road, to get out there and deal with the stress, the nerves, the success, and the disappointments, it’s an addiction. You can’t run away from away from it, and why on earth would you want to? I suppose I seeking some redemption after my last race, but it wouldn’t be any different if there wasn’t. We athletes, we can’t slow down. Whether we’re ripping down our favorite trail, of going through the tribulations of life, we live fast and we live life to be the best we can be. That’s why after a little break of some fun, easy riding in the sunshine I’m back at it. I’m riding as fast as I ever had and quite frankly, having more fun than ever before.

I realize this post started with me talking about the weather, and that’s how most mediocre conversations with mediocre next door neighbors start, but I think the weather means a bit more than that to me. In a way you can gather some inspiration from the weather, if you let yourself. Cloudy days happen, and sometimes they happen enough to wonder if they’ll ever end. You wait and wait and just when you’re about to lose hope you have to wait some more, but that sun does shine eventually, and when it does it’s all that more sweeter after all the long days spent wondering if it will ever come.

So, yeah, I don’t really consider myself to be a complainer, mainly because sun’s out, so really what is there to complain about?

Thanks for reading and supporting.

 

 

Bikes, Brawls, and One Slippery Otter

Spring time in Montana is as beautiful
as it is unpredicable

Hello again from the wonderful, wintery, wild world of Montana in April.  I’ve decided that now would be as good a time to take a break from adding to my ever growing stack of never-to-be-sent death threats to my local weatherman and do something I really love. Write about mountain biking. Like my English teacher annoyingly points out much too often, “If you can’t do it, write about it”. Now I don’t know how much water that theory holds when it comes to five page essays dissecting the theme of Lord of the Flies, but it couldn’t be truer pertaining to my sport. When I write about floating through the forest, my tires hooking up with the tacky dirt just as I round a corner, I’m transported to that spot. I immediately feel the sun shining on my skin, making me heed to the need to move faster just to blow its combusting heat off me. The prickly pine trees scratch and tug at me, only to be soothed by away by a swift dose through a douglas fir.

Or at least that’s what normally happens. By this time of spring I’m more in the, “Oh, God, why can’t I be doing that right now!” mindset. The, "Why can’t I live in Santa Cruz or the Bay Area!" mindset. at this time I’d even settle for the beautiful, tropically misty mountains of Monterey right now, but that would be a stretch.  I suppose I wouldn’t be feeling so bitter about the weather if I just hadn’t returned from my third adventure in the home base, the motherland, my fertile crescent. Yes, I mean the one and only sweet, sweet, California.

The song goes, “Do you know the way to San Jose”. I found that out the hard way thanks to my dad’s musical spasms. I gotta say, though, I found myself joining in once I discovered our bags all knew the way to San Jose on time with us. Upon arriving, I left it to Google maps to find the way to Monterey, and one quick jaunt down the Pacific Coast Highway later, I was there. At the single most electrifying, monstrous, hectic, wallet draining event in the western hemisphere, oh yes, I had made it my friends- to the Sea Otter registration tent. 15 minutes later, fresh entry wrist bands in hand, we were ready to enter the second most electrifying, monstrous, hectic, wallet draining event in the western hemisphere- the Sea Otter Classic.

How to describe Sea Otter… I guess the best way to describe it is like a gigantic family reunion of the entire American cycling scene. There’s plenty of deliciously fattening foods, the beer flows freely, and, like all good family reunions, there’s a hearty brawl in the middle of the party. Another word for this brawl is XC mountain bike race, and would it be a brawl to end all brawls…

Ok, don’t turn off your computer! I know I’ve said brawl four times in one and a half sentences, but come on, how many times does one get to freely spout off the word brawl in everyday English now a day? Besides, it’s about time I take on the task of trying to get across with words how innately beautiful, or as some of my Californian hosts might say, totally rad, the single track we got to race is. I mean you want to drive yourself into the ground, you want to make yourself dig into the red zone, and you want to try to leave everything you got on that course, but you can’t. Everything you disperse on the trail is immediately fed back into you by just the sheer love of ripping. Excitement is transferred to energy, and energy is transferred to speed. It’s an amazing thing, and something I can’t see happening on many other tracks in the world.

 

Unfortunately though, even that wasn’t enough to keep me with the leaders on that day. After about halfway around the 22 mile loop I popped like a button on my pants after dinner at a the Whole Foods buffet line. It’s ok, though. Days like that happen, and happen to everyone. I know that the only way to survive in this sport is to take your defeats with as much a grain of salt as your victories, but to not until you’ve learned it’s full lesson. That day I learned how to put up with my defeat. I had to find a centered mindset when it seemed the world should have crumbled down. This was the big one, the most important race of this time in the season, but as it turned out this otter was a bit slippery, and I had to be ok with that. Of course when I was able to come back to BMC base camp and congratulate two awesome efforts by my teammates Ksenia Lepikhina (5^th) and Kyle Bloesser(7^th) it made putting up with my own disapointment all that much easier. In fact, how could I feel anything but pride? Pride for a team that has so many wonderful people, people that work so hard to make us succeed. Pride for a team that makes a tent and trailer feel like home when home’s really a thousand miles away. I didn’t have my best race at The Otter this year, but frankly, who cares? When you’re having as much fun as I am, it’s hard to let one bad race out of hundreds in the future bring me down. It’s all part of the trails and tribulations of mountain biking, and without it, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Thank you to all my supporters out there and the supporters of the team. It means more than you’ll ever know to just have people who believe in you. I’ll be off the national circuit for a little while now, hopefully doing some of that grass roots racing. Like always, I think those will be just what I need to whip me into shape.

Keep that rubber side down, that blue sky up, and the dirt out in front. See you on the mountain.

 

 

From SoCold to SoCal

Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I was raised in snow. That feeling of cold, melting ice on your feet when you step out to get fire wood is exactly the same as the experience of running into the house as fast as you can to dunk you’re extremities into a sink of warm water. The feeling of hurting so good. That’s home to me. Yet, that said, I find myself with a different view of that wintery-wonder when it’s the end of March and it’s still drifting down outside my window. I know, I know. It could be worse. The past winters in Montana have been miraculously moderate and I could always live in Minnesota or on the east coast for that matter. But it still erks me, or at least it does until I remember where I’ll be in three short days. Oh yeah, I’m heading down to Cali baby and with it I’m heading down to the land of palm trees, shorts, and hopefully the opportunity to work on my farmers tan. Actually, when talking about Southern California, it’s probably easier to just name what it doesn’t have. For instance, it doesn’t have leg warmers, it doesn’t have ski gloves, it doesn’t have wind, and, that’s right, it does not have snow. In fact I sure the ratio of snow in Montana is a one to one with the amount of green grass in SoCal. Needless to say, I’m as stoked as a campfire.

I know a thing or two about Cali-Land only because of my first trip down there this year. I remember it like it was yesterday, which isn’t really that impressive seeing as it was only last weekend. I was down for my first race with my new team the BMC Mountain Bike Development Team.  I was a little nervous to see how everything would gel with it being one of my first races away from my trusted soigneur (Dad) and my biggest supporter (Mom), but once I got off the plane and discovered the amazing support that was waiting for me, I couldn’t help but know that everything was going to go great. Mine and my team mates Kyle Bloesser, Ksenia Lepikhina, Shayna Powless, and Kerry Werner’s bikes were running flawlessly due to the careful attention from our manic-mechanic Jack Hinkens, and maybe a little help from the great bike lubrication products at ProGold (wink, wink).  I was happy with my own race, getting on to the third step of the junior podium, and was stoked with Kyle joining me in fifth. Ksenia also strutted her stuff on to the second step, seconds away from first.

After that great day the only pressure I was feeling for my short track was to see how much fun I could have. So after a morning of team photo and video shooting in the beautiful hills surrounding Bonelli Park, I took to the start line again. This race turned out to be just as fun as the day before with sketchy dirt corners, fast attacks, and a little elbow rubbing thrown in for good measure. The bikes were again perfect and Ksenia and I ended up on the podium again. Surly we would have been joined by Kyle if it had not been for an early race chain drop. Even with that bad luck, however, he punched his way up to seventh place in a heavy field.

So how could I not be pumped for my next trip? I have no idea what it will bring and what obstacles will be thrown my way, but I do know that with help and encouragement I’ve been receiving from my friends and supporters up here there’s not much that could push me more and make me more proud. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, especially when I get to share it with as many wonderful people as I do. So thanks, I’ll see ya on the trails.

 

Here We Go

 

Here we go. I say that to myself a lot. Training in Montana during the long winter month’s everybody’s got that one thing they say to themselves that gets them out the door into the cold, the snow, and the wind. Mine's "here we go". I say it as I take that pivotal first pedal stroke, you know, the one that happens after you realize what a long hard day it's going to be, but before you remember how much you love pedaling your bike. That one pedal stroke you've been thinking about all day, that you've been thinking how, if you're lucky, it'll multiply once, twice, ten times over, hopefully cranking you away to your final destination: that smooth, buffed ribbon of single track. Excuse me, it's not nearly the "final" destination, but in a way, I guess it is. In a way it's the final destination that matters. We mountain bikers don't measure our rides in watts and kilometers, but only if those watts are the watts that you use to rip into the next corner, and only if those kilometers are the K's you use to get to up the road to the next trail head.

 

The early base miles are as beautiful as
they are cold.

However, all that said, it's not true. To fully enjoy those perfect days on the mountain, those days the air is crisp and clean and the Dawn dish soap flavored water is worth more than gold, you need to step in the much too tight, Italian made shoes of our more aerodynamic brethren. The road calls. It doesn't matter to what degree you cycle, the road is the integral link in what we do and how we get better at what we do. I've spent the last few months on the road, starting the season barely able to wrap my head around an hour and a half ride, progressing to regular three to four hour rides. Do I enjoy those hours spent out there? I guess I could say for the most part I enjoy the feeling of preparation they give me. The feeling of how much better I'm going to be when I finish this one ride, and the one after that and the one after that. Every once in a while, though, I get one of those days. One of those days where the sun is shining, the wind is blowing just enough to make me work for my dinner, and those days where it all makes sense. Why I do this crazy sport, and, more importantly, why I love it just so much.

 

Being a mountain biker is hard work. There is so much to always think about. You have to climb like a roadie, descend like a downhiller, and finesse like a trials rider, but in the end that's what makes me love it. The challenge of it all is something that you can never perfect, but can hope for those days where you feel like you have. These are the up's and downs, the roller coaster ride that is completive mountain biking. These are the Trails and Tribulations that make you just throw that leg over, saddle up, and head out to your future. Watch out. Here we go and here we come.