YES its true!!!!

I am still on cloud 9 and don't know what to write other than my teammate Mark lapped the field at Athens twilight and pulled off a huge win!! 8 guys lapped early and with about 12 laps to go I asked Mark how he was feeling and he said "we are going to win twilight"... from that point on he was glued to my wheel and I kept him up front along side the HealthNet train and out of trouble.. it was carnedge everywhere with crashes left and right and in the end the Big Red Head came out the winner.... It was a rush of a lifetime riding up the home stretch as the winners with 30,000 people going nuts!! We just rolled in from another race so I will write more and add photos tomorrow as we have a rest day.. UNBELIEVABLE!!! Here is a pic from the front of the Athens newspaper...

Here are some more pics! check out Mark Hekman's blog as well....

who's the big winner??

Rockstar....

Mt Vernon Circuit Race

Its been an up and down week since I got back from FL. I have been fighting a cold/allergies all week and it came full circle on Thursday. After a few days of easy pedalling and some rest I decided to give the race a go on Saturday. My latest teammate from NZ Josh England was in town so Tim S and I met him at the race. The course was pretty cool... a 4 mile tough short circuit with a short steep climb to the finish. From the get go I could tell it was gonna be a tough day for me... Just cruising easy I felt like I was breathing through a straw.. so needless to say going hard up the climb was not fun. I wanted to drop out every lap but suffered through it.. Josh made the break of 4 about 4 laps to go and that was the race. Josh's 1st race here turned into his 1st win here as he beat Kirk Albers from Roadhouse in the end. I surprised myself and actually sprinted up the steep climb winning what was left of the field for 5th. I am actually leading the spring series now as well. Not sure how many races are left but I hit the road soon so I have a feeling I will miss the remainder of the races which means it will be tough to keep the lead.. oh well.. bigger fish to fry. Saturday night I felt like complete ass again so I bagged the race on Sunday to relax and try to kick whatever I have. I leave Friday to start the SE US Crit Series so I want to be as healthy as possible. The season will be full swing this coming week with 8 races in 9 days... I will try to keep this as updated as possible... till next time! m@

A&F on the news!

Pretty cool News clip that we filmed at camp in Feb. This just aired before Tour of Georgia... check it out!

http://www.13wmaz.com/sports/sports_story.aspx?storyid=37658

Jacksonville

1st NRC race of the year and it was a doozy. I flew from the bus down to Jacksonville and hooked up with my old teammate and friend Kevin on Friday night. Our race was not until Sat night so we had some down time on Saturday. We enjoyed the nice weather and went for a ride and bummed around town for a bit. I hooked up with my teammates Hekman and Harper before the race as they drove down from Rock Hill. We were all looking forward to racing together for the 1st time this year. Just my luck about 30 mins before the race a storm moves in and it starts pouring.... race in the rain, at night.. brilliant. I have struggled for some reason for the past couple years in the rain so I was a bit nervous before the start. I got myself psyched and figured I was either gonna crash out or do well... those were my only options... so I came out swinging and rode the top 10 for the 1st 10 laps or so as the chaos got worse and worse behind us. The course was insane with one of the straight aways having oncoming traffic on the other side of the cones(nice, NRC baby!). And the race was just about as crazy... crashes all over and gaps opening all the time. I was able to stay upright and only got caught in one crash.. but that crash split the field and when I got thrown back in I was in the 2nd group somehow.... we still had a long time to go so I wasn't too worried. I was feeling pretty decent and gave the sprinting legs a go winning a prime about halfway through the race and helping Harper win another (cha ching!). 2 different groups ended up lapping... 3 guys 1st and then another 3 guys which included my teammate Hekman.. As he was lapping we were catching back onto the 1st group bringing everything back together except for the 6 that lapped. At this point there was only about 50 riders left from the original 120. I did what I could for Hekman for the next 10 laps and turned him loose... My legs gave out on me and we watched Hek come home finishing 6th.. Great result for him and the team... I was super happy with the way the race went. We only had 3 guys and were pretty animated. I struggled a bit with the heat and the heavy air, but I think for the 1st big race I came out pretty good. Sunday we did a real boring 100 mile road race in 3.5 hours... It was super windy and super fast. I pretty much chilled out and stayed out of trouble in the crosswinds and after 8 guys slipped away I tried to give it a go in the field sprint. Hekman jumped with me in tow, but we misjudged the finish and went WAY to early. Needless to say my legs weren't there anyway as I was cramping from having no feeds in that crazy heat and I got my doors blown off me.... Overall it was a great weekend and I think my fitness is on the up and up.... Hopefully this weekend help me polish up for the US Crit series that starts in 2 weeks... really looking forward to it... till then! m@

Cancelled race?

Well I was really looking forward to this weekends race in Sugar Grove as I have won this race the past 2 years. The road course suites me nicely as the climb is short and steep. The forecast was for cold temps and snow but we were still gun-ho on racing. Bennett and Jimmy Mac made the trip to C-bus and we were going to drive down together but as we were packing up "T Squared" (race promoter) called and said it was snowing too badly and the race was off. Damn, what now??? We were all hopped up on coffee and no race... after some long debating we thought we would do some team bonding and head out into the cold and train. A couple hours of freezing our toe's off and that was enough... we headed home and watched our fellow cyclists race through the streets of Richmond VA on national TV while we drank more coffee. If anyone missed it.. the US Open was pretty cool. Was nice to see they pushed aside the national bowling league and bull riding to show a little bike race for once. Next week is our 1st NRC race of the year in Jacksonville, FL. Really looking forward to getting out there and bumping bars with the big boys. till next time m@

Oops....

The wonderful Mark Hekman pointed out to me that you could not make comments on my posts... which means he has some smart ass comment to make.. haha.. so I have fixed it so everyone can make comments... sorry about that... I'm new to this whole blog thing... stay tuned for the weekends race (kinda) update.

Malabar Farms and Lynchburg

Another race weekend has come and gone. Saturday we started with a hilly circuit/road race about an hour north of my house. The course was a tough one with 1 long climb and very rolly terrain. We were 4 strong.... Jimmy Mac, Tim, Ryan and myself... I was a full go for helping the team out today as the finish was halfway up the damn climb again... so I just did what I could and survived the climb. Tim ended up getting away in a 3 man break and that was pretty much the race. On the last lap Ryan jumped away with another guy and I was just kinda chillin in the field until Jeff B from Roadhouse attacked... I went up to him and we had a pretty good gap. We ended up linking up with Ryan's group about 4 miles later and we could actually see the break now. With about 3 miles to go the field was somehow bringing us back and we were bringing the break back. I told Ryan to save his legs and sit on and I drove our group until the hill. Tim's group stayed away with Tim finishing 3rd. And amazingly we got caught as soon as we hit the bottom of the hill... Although it didn't matter as Ryan had fresh legs and dusted everyone up the hill for 4th. I came unglued and crawled in for 15th.
Sunday we traveled to Lynchburg Ohio where the terrain was flat... YES!! I was overly excited about that and with 5 guys A&F was in full effect. Boss man Chad told us the plan was to have 2 of us in the break and 1 of them must be me... Sounds good to me.. the course was a flat 8 mile loop and the winds were like 20mph.... love it! I was a bit excited that there were no hills and wasted no time getting to work in the 65 mile race. 2 guys had slipped away about 1 mile into the race and 2 miles in I was ready to go.... I attacked and Tim came with me... The weather was turning on us as we rode into a storm... As the rain started dumping Tim and I got caught but continued to drill it in the crosswind to blow the race apart. The race stayed aggressive and coming around for the 1st time I attacked again and 4 others came with me. We layed it down pretty hard into the headwind and we had a good gap straight away. We were 5 riders from 5 different teams including 1 from Roadhouse. We worked well together and a couple laps later we were totally out of sight from the field. With 2 laps to go Kevin Attkisson from Roadhouse and my teammate Ryan finally caught up to us after chasing for a couple laps. Kevin attacked immediately and we dumped a few guys from the break. We were now 6, 2 A&F, 2 Roahouse and 2 lone guys. The 2 loners decided they weren't going to work anymore and the 4 of us just rolled through. Things were pretty calm the last lap and coming into the last 4 miles I was licking my chops as I knew I was the fastest guy in the break. BUT, there's always a but... I started to feel a slow leak in my rear wheel....not good. With 2 miles ago I was getting really low and it was decision time. My thoughts were Kevin is the 2nd fastest guy and he seemed content with trying to let his teammate go up the road and stay with me... so here were my thoughts: Option 1 - keep it together and sprint everyone with a flat? or Option 2 - Let Ryan roll up the road with the other Roadhouse guy and keep Kevin with me... and roll the dice with Ryan beating the other guy. Tough decision...My ego said option 1(of course), but option 2 seemed smarter.... so with 1km to go my tire was pretty flat and I choose option 2. We rolled the dice but we came up short and Ryan got beat at the line and finished 2nd. I finished on a flat in 5th. Very frustrating day as I could smell the victory.. but I guess that's racing.. Did I make the right decision??????? guess we'll never know...

m@