Longest race ever!!

So yesterday i participated in the 120 mile pro 1/2/3 road race around the quabbin. It was awesome to say the least. It was definitely one of the hardest races ive done. it wasnt all that bad which was crazy, my legs felt great and i was able to follow moves and actually move around during the race. It was fantastic. With a main group of riders up the road after the first lap, the field didnt really think there was much left to race for. So my team, wheelhouse racing, moved a couple riders to the front and tried to keep the pace up for a while. and after a while at the front, people started racing again.

I learned a lot about racing yesterday. i spent a lot of time next to jeremy powers in the pack. and he would tell me what was about to happen and when it was going to get hard, he was very close on all his predictions, and sometimes within seconds of when he told me. so it was cool racing next to him and telling me what i needed to do. I am very happy that i just finished the race, nevermind actually being able to ride hard the whole time. I even actually through down a little attack before a big climb on the back side hoping someone from bikereg would come with me, but they didnt and that was a big wast of energy so then i just sat in and waited to the racing to happen.

At the end of the race we were going over some rollers and things started getting interesting. bikereg sent a few guys, then the rapha pro dudes followed and al told me to wait for the pros, they went and so did al (team captain and coach), and i was a few seconds to late and missed the final move. i was desperate to get into it because i was feeling so good. i followed one guy and then tried to bridge but it was over at that point. (and this was about 115 miles into the race!!) so then i sat in and waited for the final climb. Then powers turned to me and said "you better hit this hill so hard, i dont want to see you again!!" so i waited for the incline and went for it. I got a pretty big gap and the BAM!!! my legs started to seize and they didnt want to move... so i sat up waited for the group. got back in. and powers said the same thing on the next part of the climb.. "put it all out there" he said. so i went again, got a descent gap again and started pumping... the hill got steeper and so did the pains in my leg as they were cramping, a group of 4 guys bridged up to me and passed me just before the line. But i left it all out there at the end and came in 24'th. in very happy with that, being the longest road race i have ever done. it was pretty awesome.

So that was an awesome part of the weekend. Im very happy with the way im riding and cant wait to race the rest of the season. Ever since i got my coach (alec donahue) i have improved so much. and this race season is looking good so far with the way im training and racing! cant wait to see whats next.

no pics right now, but here is an awesome video of Lee Peters from UVM absolutely losing it at the end of the race on saturday. he unclipped from his pedal as he crossed the line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79STP9QvOPk

it was a nasty end of the race, i went down in the corner coming into the sprint. so that sucked. but im fine and my bike is as well!!

later

-jd

almost graduated!

so these past few weeks its been really tough to balance the work/school/ biking in my life. With the end of my college career winding down there has been a lot of stuff going on. A lot of group presentations that are worth 50% of my grade, papers for finals and still having to go to class. This really hurts my riding time. but because i love cycling so much, i usually will bail on a class during the day or skip out of a meeting a little early just so i can get my training time in. Priorities! But this semester is coming to a close and i have one final out of the way and two more to go.

Last weekend at army was really fun. The whole UMass team did so well. and as the president of the team it makes me really proud of the new guys that have come onto the team and stuck with it. It great to see them having there chance to do well in races and have a blast like i do. I still need to get hucker joe to realize that being directly on the front at the end of a race is not a good thing at all!! hes so strong and could definetly win the C's. UMass is bringing out our secret category C weopens this weekend, so you all better watch out during the C road race for some UMBRC action. and hucker joe, the king of going down hills.... he came in 3'rd at the Army Hill climb... thats nutsssss.

As for me, i did pretty well. i was very happy with my results at the circuit race when i won the field sprint for a second place. too bad max was way the heck up the road for first place, but whatever. winning the field sprint was really cool. I cam in 8'th the next day in the hill climb and 6'th in the crit. so i scored some points and hopefully will go to nationals to get spanked around by guys like Pavel Gonda who has been dominating everything he enters.

this pic is me winning the field sprint

Needless to say, racing is the funnest thing that i do. And this weekend i am preparing for the hardest race i have ever been in. Its 120 mile really hilly road race with a really stacked field. There is a pro team from the UK coming, a lot of guys that races the Pro UCI race last weekend. basically, i thought this race would be really cool to try and do well in last week. but now, i just want to survive in a field like this and hopefully help my stronger/smarter teamates do well. Like Alec Donahue, my coach, who finished with the lead group at Battenkill last weekend. Hes very strong and can stay with these guys at the Quabbin race. so it should be some fun times.

last night i Glued tires to my new HED stinger 6's wheels... and that was the worst thing i have ever done!! it was very sticky and extremely difficult to get the tires on straight. it took us about 3.5 hours to do my wheels and his.. I never realized how much work goes into those things and feel bad for the people that have to glue 25 of those wheels for a pro team! But now i understand all the work that goes into it and it makes me appreciate it a bit more. and i definetly will only be racing on them. After sniffing glue for 3 hours we were a bit light headed and wanted to get some good food. and we ended up at a pizza place at 11pm eating lots of pizza. i blame it on the glue.

But im at work right now and should probably be working.. not blogging... This weekend is also the conculsion of the ECCC race schedule at dartmouth. should be a good time. and the end of year banquet will be going down as well!! good stuff

this beer is awesome and everyone should buy it.

have a good weekend everybody

-jeremy

bike racing and business plannin

So, im sitting here near Westpoint NY at another ECCC race weekend. im eating frosted mini wheats out of my empty hungry man dinner plate thing. The hungry man was definitely a good choice, since the rest of the team had to wait a half hour for rice to cook and have a very lame rice and bean burrito.

Last week was the battenkill race. It was less epic than last year, the dirt roads were very hard packed and not that bad. The race was ended when Pavel Gonda took off from about 14 miles in and stayed away all day. I am very jealous of his victory and his victory salute as you can see in the below image. He looks very happy. I had the privelage of brining him down to Yale after the Battenkill race. He talked about how his legs hurt really really bad. A very nice guy and i wish the best to him as he will be leaving us to head back to the Czech Republic after he graduates from NYU. Congrats Pavel.

Ive recently realized that i need to keep the things that i love most in my life, an active part of my life. So many time you lose track of the things that you love, like friends and hobbies and other things that you may love. Im about to graduate from college, and then im in the real world. I just dont want to work 40 hrs a week for the next 40 years, retire and then do nothing. I want to keep my life a full and active as possible. I think thats the main reason i am starting my own business, so i can have the freedom to be my own boss and be in charge of the amount of money i make by worker hard for it. So before i graduate i want to make sure i have my priorities in line and keep the things that are best in my life as active as possible.

I have completed my business plan for the Real estate investment company i am starting. Although i still have not come up with a name yet. I thought i would take an Native American word, since i am native american, that meant something like security or safe or something. So i looked up some words and they are all a million letters long and un-pronounceable. so now im back at the beginning. I would appreciate some help. if anyone that reads this blog of mine, feel free to comment on this post or message me with some ideas. It needs to be serious and have nothing to do with bike racing. Awesome.

i dont really know why i have this blog. i hope you enjoy reading my crap.

These guys are so fly:

will update on what happens at westpoint at a later date. and hopefully there will be pics

later

New team, new year

So ive been back from Peru for about 6 days now. That was the most amazing trip i have ever been on. I saw so many incredible things while on the trip. The culture there is really cool. Almost everyone is poor there, but they seem to be genuinely happy with the lives they live. It like going back into time before the industrial revolution or something. They dont have factories, they dont have many tractors. They use mules to farm there land, and farming is all they do.

Some parts of the trip were a little crazy, when i took a bus up to Huaraz which is north of the capital we were driving on this windy road that was about 500 ft above the sea, but it was a sheer cliff with no guardrail that separated us from falling into the ocean. it was intense, especially when our bus driver was passing potato trucks on the left side of the road with oncoming traffic. I guess they have no road rules down there.

We stayed in some awesome hostels, including this place where this is what my view in the morning was:

the only difference in the real thing is, i could usually see the white cap mountains that surrounded the entire town.

There were a lot of other cool things that happened, i will tell you a few since it would take me forever to write it all.

Went sandboarding. one of the highlights of my trip:

There was almost a small riot in cusco about water:

I visited this cool town that was made of ancient incan ruins. the people still live in the dwelling of the incans. pretty cool

and on the last day that i was there, i tried a dish called "cebiche". Its basically raw fish. Except its cooked in the acidic juices of lemon and limes. It was actually really good, even though i have never tried sushi or other raw fish in the US. so i was a little nervous that this "raw fish" stuff was going to give me amazing travelers diarrhea, but luckily it did no

So my trip was amazing, and i saw a lot of things. I also picked up a little Spanish which was really cool. I really hope i can go back down to south america some other time, its truly an amazing place.

So besides my trip to peru, i am now back on the bike. And since i missed team camp while i was gone I got my new bike and team stuff when i got back.

The bikes that the "wheelhouse / NCC" team will be riding this year are the carbon fiber BH connects. They are really cool and the only carbon fiber bike i have ever riden, and also the first new bike i have owned!! We got Rudy Glasses and helmets. And the kits are really cool as well!

So i went down the Johnny cake in NY with the team this past Saturday instead of going down to Princeton to race collegiate. The team did well, we had 2 guys in the break and San greenfield came away with 4th place, tremble in 7'th. Nathaniel took the field sprint and that was that. It was fun to race with the team.

I am just really siked to be on an actual team this year. I am very grateful that they gave me a spot on the team. I am really excited to race with the coolest team in the northeast.

Now that i took 11 days off, its time to start re-basing and getting the miles in so i can race well at Battenkill and hopefully i will be going to collegiate Nat's.

But besides that, i am back to school. I dont really care about my classes anymore. I do what i can to get a descent grade. I am more worried about the business that i am trying to start. Its also an independent study, so i will be graded on my business model. Its basically a real estate investement company that i am trying to start. Would be cool if it was profitable in 2 years. We will see. right now im working on meeting the right people and also trying to find investors for the business since i dont have $500K to start it!!!

but that all for now, time to get back to the grind.

o and here is a picture of my dog. His name is Boston, yeah thats right. He is the coolest dog ever.

later

High Altitudes

Wow, peru has been absolutely amazing so far. Im sitting in the Lima airport after an overnight 8 hour bus ride (which i slept for most of) and getting ready to leave for cuzco which is only an hour flight. I hope the race weekend for all collegiate riders went well. I did a 7-8 hour hike 2 days ago at about 15,000 feet altitude. So my blood is as thick as magma, which means i can basically climb mountain one legged on my bike, so watch out!!!

I have seen so many things that fast few days and Peru is truly amazing. I had Guinee* pig yesterday for the first time, it wasnt all that bad. Not a lot of meat on it so i just had to pick it up and gnaw on the bones to get the meat off. They literally serve you a guinee* pig chopped in half and then fried up with head and paws and everything. a little weird, but the locals love it and its not to bad.



The coffee and juice here in peru is absolutely amazing. The coffee is very bold and extremely cheap. I sat in a cafe for about 2-3 hours yesterday in down town Huaraz and drank 4 espresso and it cost around 4 dollars or 12 soles. and i drank fresh squeezed papaya juice and also a banana papaya and pineapple juice, it is a large glass it usually only cost about a dollar. its amazing!!!

We still have so much to do on this trip and i cant wait to see what other parts of the country has to show. I have met so many cool travelers from all over the world, its really cool. Im picking up a little spanish, but im definetly not at the level where i can communicate. But being able to understand what people are saying is a big help.

Liz and I also met up with her friend who is serving in the peace corps right outside of Huaraz and hes in the most poor area of the town and is picking potatoes and living with a peruvian family for 2 years. His stories are amazing.

But we are about to board our flight so i will just post a quick pic of our hike in the andes mountain 2 days ago.

i will keep posting when i have interweb access. but for now we are headed to beautiful cuzco!!

later

IM IN PERU!

hello everyone, So i never updated my blog with a good race report because i have been really busy getting for my Peru trip. Well i am here now and its amazing.

Short race recap. Brought 14 brand new cyclists to the race for UMBRC and they all had a blast and want to come back. Jeff cronin who races C's crashed and shattered his Specialized Tarmac frame and had to go to the hospital to see if his knee was ok. Hes fine. I raced the A's. The race wasnt that fast until about a half hour into the race when attacks started flying and then countered. I got into a move with about 8 guys, we were not riding well together and 3-4 riders got up the road.
After they got up the road, me and Lee Peters of UVM were not having any of that and Lee atacked and i followed closely. We made the break and finished in a 4 man group. i wasnt feeling strong about my sprint so i made an effort to get away before the sprint. didnt work, and then i had to tow the rest of the group to the line because Chris Hamlin was about to catch the break, and theres nothing worse than 2 strong UVM guys in a sprint finish. So i came in 4'th and im very happy with the way i raced.

But enough about bike racing, IM IN PERU!! we landed in Lima Peru last night at 10'ish. Immediately getting into the airport it was like nothing i have ever seen. People yelling at you for taxi services, and following you trying to get some type of business from you. We had to walk in this "ring" of taxi people and crazy screaming Peruvians, i was very frightened but we it to our driver who was waiting to pick us up and bring us to the Hostel where we are right now.

The hostel we are staying in, is in Miraflores a sub-section of Lima, and one of the nicer ones. When we got to the Hostel everyone was way nicer than we could have expected, it was amazing. The building itself is 3 stories and the way its set up is very strange. we walk out our door and down the hall and then we are litterally outside..... but still kinda in the building. its weird but i wil post pictures when i get a chance. There is a rooftop bar at the hostel and we were really tired after our flight but we said, what the heck, and went up and got a few beers. These beers by the way were giant! like 40's! it was very cool. So we drank our large beers and sat out on the rooftop in the 80 degree weather overlooking part of the city.

I have only been here for 3 hours when i was awake and im already having an amazing time, seeing new and weird things and just relaxing. So i cant wait to see where the next 10 days takes us.

Today we are going to get breakfast, then maybe walk to the beach. Then we are catching a bus north to Huarez, (http://images.google.com.pe/imgres?imgurl=http://www.peru-tours.com.pe/huaraz/huaraz.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.peru-tours.com.pe/huaraz/huaraz_tour_5dias.htm&usg=__FLI5EpFFpB6AhtsKMOBjY7qD1_8=&h=340&w=452&sz=22&hl=es&start=16&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=ajRqyvQ45zES9M:&tbnh=96&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhuaraz%2Bperu,%2Bcity%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26tbs%3Disch:1)

All i know is i cant wait to see whats out there. I will write about the food i eat as soon as we have some good. food.

later

Mid race post for Rutgers

Hello. So we are here in New Brunswick, NJ in the awesome Howard Johnson hanging around after a sweet day of racing. Just thought i would do a quick update on how the race is going so far.

We had about 10 new riders here from UMass so getting them all set up for the time trial was a bit hectic. But everyone but one rider got off on time and the one who didnt forgot his shoes at the hotel.... real nice... But most of our guys enjoyed there first TT and had a good time, we had some people in the top 10 in the D and intro fields so that was good.

as far as the A race went during the Crit. it went really well. I was the only UMass rider in the pack so covering attacks is sometimes pretty difficult, but i did a good job at getting in the right moves even though they went nowhere. The race was pretty hard but not as hard as last years crit for me. I was feeling really well going into the last lap and was on the guy from NYU's wheel going into the last turn as the second wheel looking for a big W or a top 3 but a crash had happened right before the last lap and changed the lines taken into the last turn, making NYU take it a little sharp and me the opposite. So i came very close to NYU guys wheel and tapped it slightly going through the corner and went down unfortunately... It sucks and im frustrated about it.. but thats bike racing and i had a good time and got a good feel for where im at in the pack.. and im feeling good about it.

i hope to do better tomorrow, so we will have to wait and see. We have the hour and twenty minute circuit race in store for us, so that should be fun.

Jersey is a dirty place, i dont reccomend visiting it soon

i will have a full update tomorrow in the circuit race.

later