Off to a rough start my friends.....

My week started off pretty rough. Tara and I caught our flight out of Columbus and headed down south. Was hoping to have a nice easy flight down Friday evening, get down there and relax and have all day Saturday to chill before the race. Well, that was far from what happened. We made it to Charlotte easy peasy and then that’s when it all went south. A handful of flights got cancelled and our final option was blown to bits as well finally at 10:30pm. They cancelled the last flight to Atlanta so we were stuck in Charlotte. We shacked up in a nice roach motel that the airline suggested and finally got to bed around 2am. Up bright and early on Saturday to get back to the airport and we finally got out of Charlotte and into Atlanta around noon. Another hour car ride back to our host housing and we finally arrived for the race with a good 7 hours to spare. Yikes.

Tara and I stuck at the Charlotte airport.

Was hoping my crazy travel didn’t take effect on my legs but I was so wrong about that. Warming up I knew my legs were rough but I was just hoping they would come around.

Twilight was twilight with crazy crashes all over the place. I came pretty close to dying at the beginning of the race when a handful of guys decided to cuddle up on the pavement. The field split like the red sea and as I tried to make it around on the right side I quickly realized there was no way I was gonna make it and my only option was up and over. So I braced myself and pulled off the best bunny hop of my life. After just knicking the front wheel and handlebars that were stuck straight up in the air I smashed back down and somehow was still riding straight and not on the pavement.. shhhwwew! That could have ended ugly. Needless to say I made it through that, but jacked my carbon handlebars. I got stuck in a couple other crashes and my legs just would not get going so my night was cut short.

Pretty bummed but that’s twilight. The team rode strong and Hoppy did what Hoppy does putting himself right in the mix for the win. It was close in the end but Hoppy ended up 5th in a great ride with my good friend Rahsaan Bahati taking the win (congrats my ninga!).

With a couple days off we chilled at my old friend Brian DeRose’s house. Brian and his wife Kim put us up last year and were generous enough to have us back again this year. They have a beautiful house in Atlanta and apparently don’t mind filthy bike racers. They also have a beautiful new baby Emmy that I got to see for the 1st time. Thanks guys for putting up with us for another year!

Sunday night we were pretty bored so we headed out to a nice little place called Taco Mac. Sounds like a Mexican joint but ended up being a sweet sports type bar with over 100 beers on tap! Yes Baldy, I know you are jealous…. You would have loved this place. This was Tara’s last night with us too so we had some fun with the highlight of the night being B2D2 doing a famous shot called a buffalo fart (you don’t wanna know whats in it). Had some good beers and called it a night.

nice selection of beers....

me and T

B2D2 looking the part...

True athletes downing some chicken wings...

A nice little bike ride down to the damn on Monday and then onto our next city. We are in the car as we speak heading to Beaufort, SC where we kick of 5 days of racing tomorrow night. Hopefully I will find my legs by then! Till next time…

Here we go...

Speedweek and Athens twilight are here! Today I jump on a flight down south and hit Athens Twilight on Saturday. We follow it up with 5 crits starting Tuesday again through Sunday. Last year we had great success here winning Athens and the overall. It gave us incredible momentum for the whole year so hopefully we can kick off the season on the same note. I am super excited about our squad down here again this year and look forward to these upcoming races. I have been feeling pretty decent this week but we will have to see what that relates to in the big show. Tara is coming down for the weekend which I am super excited about. This is her first time to twilight... can't wait to show her how crazy it is down there! We don't race on Sunday so it will be good to catch up with some old mates after the race:-) Will try to keep this updated with pics and what not.... here we go.... m@

Good race weekend....

This week was great. My leg is feeling better and better and I had my 1st real good week of training since I have been hurt. With big races on the horizon I opted to train straight through this weekends racing. So I was a little tired but the leg held up great.

Saturday, Josh, Joe, and I rocked up to Cleveland to do the 1st RATL race of the year. We hooked up with Chad "the boss and don't you forget it" Thompson and Jeff Braumberger to make us 5 strong. We rode a good hour out to the race and had a good go. We had a good team plan and I was lucky enough to be able to just be aggressive and do my thing. Our plan worked pretty good except we only put 1 rider in the break... Josh was teamed up on pretty good but showed his talent in keeping the 5 man break together and then beating all of them in the sprint. Jeff gave me a great lead out for the field sprint but I got a little antsy and jumped to early into the headwind and didn't have enough gas to hold it to the line. So I ended up 8th on the day and was pretty happy with that. A nice ride back to Chad's made a great day of training.

Sunday we rocked up just the 3 of us and the weather was pretty rough. 50s and raining... not my favorite race weather. A pretty small field with our biggest threat being Kirk Albers from Roadhouse so our plan was to try to attack the field as much as possible. This we did as Joe, Josh, and I took turns attacking. Joe had the ride of the day as he soloed for about 25 miles and was finally caught by Kirk and a little chase group that included Josh with about 15 miles to go. Joe went again with about 5 miles to go and got caught with about 500 meters to go but set up Josh perfectly to take home his 2nd win in as many days. Joe hung tough for 4th and I rode in with a small group for 8th.

All in all it was a good weekend for the team and was great to be back in full swing. Next week we start Speedweek with Athens Twilight on Saturday. and then 6 straight days of big money crits down south. Really looking forward to hooking up with the team and getting some top notch racing in. I am sure I will have a ton of updates, hilarious stories and hopefully some great pics as well as some great results.

Look out for these gansters.... they will be running around all over the south reaking havic in a city near you!!

till next time... m@

On the up and up

Well the leg is getting better and I am almost back to 100%. Have still been training but the doc told me to have the governor on and not to ride to hard and be cautious of real quick twitching like sprinting etc... which is pretty difficult when you are racing... so needless to say I have just been training waiting to get back to 100% so I can really give it a go. Thanks to everyone that has sent me messages or asked about how my knee is doing. I didn't realize people actually read my blog, so that was really cool.. thanks everyone!

If you haven't seen our add in ROAD Magazine go pick up an issue.. I have a full spread in there and there is a great article about our team in there. Here is the add and a couple pics from a race I did a couple weekends ago. A couple of our friends from Canada came down for the weekend as well and were Team Inferno's number 1 fans for the weekend.

All Fired Up.....
















Our friends Chris and Sarah from Canada