Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Things are lookin' up!


Its been WAY too long since my last update so here goes!! I started the season pretty well finishing 17th overall at Valley of the Sun stage race and 3rd u23 overall.  I did some local AZ races working with the team on tactics and just getting to know how we race as a team.  I had high hopes going into the Merco Cycling Classic the last weekend of February.   The first day was a road race, I started out not feeling great, throughout the race I felt worse and begin to have some shooting pain in my right calf when pulling up on the pedals.  I finished the race almost 20 minutes down in a race I should not have any problems.  I stayed in the race as long as I could to help my teammates.  When we got back to our condo in AZ I went to Enurance Rehab to see a physical therapist to see if he could help with my calf issue.  He quickly diagnosed me with a severe Gastroc muscle strain.  I spent the next 3 weeks in physical therapy and not riding much.  I did a lot of stretching, foam rolling and scraping to help loosen up the problem area.  Although I missed 3 crucial weeks of training I was able to learn a lot about my body that will hopefully keep something like this from happening again.  I owe a huge thanks to Nate Snell at Endurance Rehab and to On The Rivet for getting me fixed up as quick as possible!


As my leg begin to feel better we were creeping up on the San Dimas stage race, another race I was hoping to do well at.  We left after my last day of physical therapy, I had to change my goals going into the race quite significantly from hoping to contend in the young rider classification to just finishing the race which I was really bummed about.  I ended up not finishing the race.

Following San Dimas I went back to the Bay Area to put in some miles with my good friend David Benkoski as well as spend time with my coach.  I left CA with much better fitness then when I had come in.  From CA I flew and met a few of my teammates and the Presbyterian Invitational in Charlotte, NC.  It was a great event and was an awesome town to race in while I don’t excel in the NCC crits yet they are super fun to race in.  I flew out the next day to Missoula to see my family and get in another solid week of training.

It is always great to come back to Missoula, but I was not thrilled to fly in and have it snow on me on my first ride there.  The weather was very cold but I was happy to spend time with my close friends and family.

I am currently on a plane on the way to St. Louis to meet up with the rest of my Gateway Harley Davidson/Trek U23 team before we head to Arkansas tomorrow for the Joe Martin Stage race.  We will be fielding a strong team in the pro race and have high hopes for both stage and general classification results.  From Joe Martin we will be making the long road trip to New Mexico for Tour of the Gila.

Thanks for reading! 
  

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