Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Monday, August 14, 2006

Snowbird out

Snowbird, UT
Sunday, August 13, 2006

I’m here in Snowbird for another day before leaving for Barcelona tomorrow morning. I went on an easy 2 hour ride in the morning, but other than that didn’t do too much. Snowbird’s probably great during the winter, but during the summer there’s not a whole lot going on… I rode up the tram yesterday after the race, drove up to Alta, and thought about how nice the skiing probably is. It’s funny that I’ve been to all these resorts during the winter but never during the winter… I haven’t even touched my skies for like two years, which is strange because ~2 years ago I was a ski instructor every weekend during the winter. Now I’m not sure the old boards would be able to withstand being skied on…

Snowbird, UT
Saturday, August 12, 2006

Today was the hardest of the stages. The whole team except Mike Creed and I made it into the break. It was perfect tactically for the team, they were able to drive it to the finish line as Blake sat on to take the win up the final climb to Snowbird. I rode the pace up to the finish line and finally climbed as I knew I could. Moninger followed Chadwick as he attacked about a third of the way up the climb. Then another Navigators guy went with about 3 km to go. I wasn’t super confident so I stayed with Werry and Louder up to the line. Riding like that has definitely boosted my confidence, I’ve been waiting for it all year and I think I’ve finally lived up to it. I know I can beat Moninger fairly handily, but until I do it I won’t be sure… so I will wait until next time.
With the tactical superiority of the team and the developing strengths of all team members, I’m sure that we’ll soon be unbeatable.