Thank you sir, may I have another....

...... windy ride that is. Today my Dad and I got in about an hour and a half on the road bikes. Since the weather has been so great, we just had to get out. It was about 45 degrees and sunny, but there was one problem, and it has been the same problem all year long...... wind. Everytime we go out for a ride, it is windy. It's not an easy breeze or calm wind, it is just plain WINDY. Most of the time around my house the wind is pretty tolerable. But the last couple of days, including today, it has been around 20-25 m.p.h. I don't know what has been up with this lately. I mean we are used to riding in pretty strong winds, but not this bad. O well, at least the weather is great, especially for this time of the year.

Riding outside is so much better than riding the trainer. Yesterday I got in a hard trainer workout. If I did that workout on the road, it would have been so much better. But, the reason why I didn't go out is because of........ the WINDS. That's mother nature for ya.

LATE

Saturday's ride.

Awesome ride on Saturday. There were about 21 total people. From the team, there was Rudy, Robert, Me, Dad, Jim Gilmore, Pete, Scott, Matt, and Shawn. Others that showed up were, Dave Chernosky, Sally Price, Ernie, Jane, Rick Adams, Gary, Elves and More, and some summit riders. We got in about 41 miles in 2:15. We started at the top of the Brecksville Reservation and rode through Medina and then into the Valley. We kept it at a good pace throughout the ride and even picked up the pace in some parts. This is a great loop to do if you want to get in a good hill workout.

Again, it was a great time spent on the bike with everyone, and the wind really wasn't a factor at all. Awesome temperatures and awesome conditions. Thanks Shawn for putting this ride together.

LATE!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone and their families.

Rays is calling my name.

Since racing season is over for the winter, I'm going to try and make it to Ray's a few times. Nick is the one that is talented at the obstacles at Ray's. He's pretty crazy on his Chase Cannondale bike. I'm gonna try to not crash this time if we go to Ray's. The last few years, I have crashed as soon as I got there. I gotta get some pointers from my bro. This is him rockin out a monster bunny hop on his Chase. Nice.

Nice pic Robert!
Late.

LAZY...

Today had to be one of the laziest days I have had in a long time. I woke up around 7:45 this morning and got a bowl of fruit loops and got back into bed to watch my teli. Got outa bed around 8:30 and went into Nick's room to play some playstation. After about an hour, I looked outside and immediately shut the blinds and walked around from the window. The driveway had like a foot and a half of snow on it. It didn't help that there were like 40 m.p.h gusts either. My bro and I got outside and shoveled the driveway and it wasn't bad at all. It's a good thing that all the snow on the driveway was just powder, which was a lot easier to shovel. After all the shoveling, got in and just layed around the house until about 2:30 when my Dad got home. Around 3:00 put on the bibs and rode the trainer with my Dad for about an hour, it seemed like two hours. I hate riding the trainer, but you know when its 13 degrees and 40 mile an hour winds, the trainer is not bad at all. Now for the rest of the night, Im gonna do some more layin around and being lazy. That is until I have to go pick Nick up from work at 10:00.

So other than riding the trainer and shoveling the driveway twice, it was a lazy day for me and actually this might sound crazy but I hope I have something to do outside tomorrow, whether it be going out for a run or playing some snow basketball. I don't feel like really calling any of my friends to do something because all they want to do is sit inside and play video games all day or sleep in until 12:00. LAZY!

Late

Slippery ride.

My Dad and I got in a really good ride today. We started out riding in the nursery roads and we were having a lot of trouble. Not anything mechanical or anything wrong with our bikes, it was very difficult to stay upright because the nursery roads were nothing but ice. I took a nice fall in the first nursery. After some more riding, my Dad and I rode to Indian Point Park and rode some of the trails along with runnig up the steps along side of the huge hill. This time, the camera didn't break. Nice Dad, way to not break the camera! While we were riding home from Indian Point, my Dad slipped out and landed hard on his knee. We were both riding our cyclocross bikes, and on his bike, he had those small block eights for the tires and those are just like riding with road tires. They get no traction whatsoever on the ice or in the mud. But other than the crashes, it was a really fun and I can't wait to do the same ride next week.

Git it! Git it!

Trouble

with my laptop recently. A blue line appeared on the screen of my laptop in the middle of last week. I thought that it would go away as time went on. I gave it about two days, nothing happened. The blue line was still on the screen. We had no clue what could have caused it or how to get rid of the the annoying line. So we called up my Grandpa because he is really good with computers. We asked him what it could be and he said that pigments in the screen were bad and if I would have waited longer, it would have gotten worse. Today my mom took my laptop back to the place where my parents bought it. They exchanged my laptop with another one because it was only a couple of weeks old. It is the same kind of laptop but it is better because it doesn't have that dang line on the screen.
The weather has been really crappy to be training outside lately. I have been doing a lot of running. This is actually good weather for running, just not good for the bike. I rode the trainer on Monday for about 45 minutes, took yesterday off and rode the trainer again today for about an hour, doing some occasional jumps to keep my power up. If the weather is good tomorrow, I would like to get out on the road with my Dad. It has been a pretty long time since I rode outside because of the weather. But, even if the weather is crappy again tomorrow, my Dad and I could maybe go out on a good run or something. We'll see.

Later days

Bad but good.

Bad weather today, with it raining, windy and pretty dang cold. Instead on going out on the road, my dad and I went out for an hour run. We ran for about 7 or 8 miles. It was a perfect run averaging 7:45 to 8:00 miles. We kept it easy all the way because the loop that we were running had quite a bit of hills in it, pretty big ones too. We didn't have any problems with any cars the whole entire run untill we had about a mile and a half to go. A big truck, once again, came inches and I mean inches away from hitting my Dad. And to make it better, that truck had those side mirrors that extend about a foot away from the truck, so the mirrors on the side is what almost hit my Dad. After the truck passed, the rest of the cars were good. So no matter what we do, bike, run, walk on our hands, there is always that person that has to run you off the dang road. But other than that, perfect run and we did some push ups and pull ups when we finished up. Gotta keep the upper body goin too.

Later days.

Chad Gerlach is back.

Started off racing when he was a junior, and soon became pro. Raced for many different teams in the 90s and in the early 2000s including Team Mercury and Postal Service. While he was on the Postal Service, he won many races. He raced with Lance Armsrong and Chad didn't really like him at all. Chad even punched Lance in the mouth one day in 1991 because he didn't like Lance's attitude. He got kicked off the Postal Service and a couple of teams after that. All the team coaches said that Chad was uncoachable. Chad states that you don't have to have a coach to stay with the leading pack. If the pack rides away from you, train harder next time so that you could be in the pack next time. His best win was when he was on the Postal Service team, winning the Tour of China. It all went down hill from that.

When Chad was on one of the many cycling teams, his bestfriend and teammate was murdered. That followed to drinking, then drugs, and so on. His drug abuse and drinking abuse put him to live on the streets. He went from being a proffessional cyclist to basically nothing. He had no home, no money; if he did have money, he would spend it on dope and alcohol.

Five years later, Chad amazingly has been sober for a long time now and back into proffesional cycling. He is going to race for Amore & Vita that is out of Italy and his goal is to win Nevada City Cycling Classic. This is an amazing story and I think that every cyclist should read it and I guarantee you will love it!! Chad's story has even been on tv and now it is on Pez Cycling.

Here is the cite, http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=6550&status=True&catname=Latest%20News

Later

Wow

I'm already thinking of road season next year. Cross season went by so fast. This was probably the funnest racing season for me and I met a lot of new people. Now its over until March, wow. Well, this off season I will be training still for this coming road season. I will have more off days, but I want to get stronger this off season so that I can get better for road. This winter my time will be basically training, school and work. I will have time to do free stuff but not as much as I did this past couple of months. I will be taking my high school classes, then I will still be taking my classes at Lakeland Community College. I also added another class to my LCC schedule to get more college credits. Luckily it is an online class, so I can do it on my laptop.
Back to training. My dad and I are planning on doing a lot of base training this winter. Lots of time on the bike and riding quite a bit of hills so that we are prepared for the early races this coming road season. All are welcome to ride with us on saturdays this winter in willoughby. Our group rides will be posted on our team site coming up pretty soon. They are great rides and sometimes we stop at the half way point to get some coffee or some lattes. (I think that is how you spell it)
So thats about it. Looking foward to this winter's training and I'm already thinking about the road season. Perfect.

Over and out

Sunday's race at Copley

What a beautiful day today. It was cold and windy but the sun was out and it was great racing conditions. In the C race, Robert dominated. That kid is something else. He better be moving up to the Bs next year or else there will be consequences. :) Zack Johnson got 2nd in the Junior race also. Nice job man!

In the Master's race, my Dad got 5th. He had an awesome race today but he was saying that every time he entered into the first set of woods, he would always have to unclip to stop himself from hitting a tree or something. He was right behind Ray on the start of the race. When they reached the open field, he said Ray went down hard right in front of him. Ray ended up ok and said that it didn't even hurt. That's you Ray!! Dad ended up 4th overall in our series. Awesome job Dad! Rudy got 2nd in the race and 2nd overall in the series, Jeff Craft got 3rd and 3rd overall in the series. Derek got 4th in the race and 5th overall. Nice job guys!! Julie had a dominating race again and won overall in the womens field. You go girl!! HAHA

In my race, there was me, Shawn, and Matt. It was probably one of the hardest races I have ever done. Started off very fast through the open farm field. Soon I found myself in third place behind Shawn and Paul Martin. Caught up to Shawn and was feeling very strong. Shawn looked awesome and I wanted to take him with me so that we could work together if we caught Paul. Next lap, I caught up to Paul. I looked back to see if Shawn was with me, but unfortunately he dropped back. When I caught up to Paul, I stayed on his wheel for a while. Then before the barriers, I passed him and was then in the lead. I stayed in the lead for about 3 laps. About 3 to go, Paul took over up front and I stayed on his wheel for most of the rest of the race. That is until the last uphill on the backside of the course. When Paul and I reached the base of the hill, he downshifted and TOOK OFF!! I tried staying with him but couldn't stay on his wheel. I ended up getting second in the A race. Paul won, Shawn got 3rd, and Matt got 10th. I ended up getting 4th overall in the A series, Shawn 2nd and Matt 6th.

Thank you to Mr. Boughton for letting us tear up his farm once again and thank you to the Johnson's for setting up an awesome course. All in all, everyone from the team did an awesome job and everyone did great this cycling season. It kinda sucks that today was the last race of the season, but im ready for the base training for next years road season. Bring it on!

Nice job to everyone today!

The ride before Copley.

My Dad and I had to get a ride in for at least an hour today. It was another cold, windy and snowy ride. Perfect for preparing for tomorrow's race at Copley. While we were on our ride, my Dad's chain was skippin and making all kinds of noises. We stopped down at Fairport Beach to see what the problem was. Come to find out the chain link was coming out and that's what was causing the chain to make all the noises. Other than that, it was a good ride today, nice easy ride for tomorrow's race. Also, my Dad and I are making up a song about the rednecks with the big trucks around my house running us off the road and trying to sound cool with their loud exhausts. It's a work in progress. See everyone in Copley!

Today's ride.

Today I got home from school at around 12:15 and was planning on doing a ride with my Dad. He took a half a day from work and was already home before me. Got home, suited up in lots o layers, and took off for our ride. We rode our cyclocross bikes because we were planning on doing some nursery roads and do some riding at Indian Point Park. About 10 minutes into the ride, our bikes were already muddy. As time went on, the mud started to freeze because it was like 23 degrees or something like that. VERY COLD AND WINDY! We ended up riding for about 2 hours. While we were at Indian Point Park, my dad and I were going to run up the steps on the side of a hill. While we were walking down, shouldering our bikes, my dads pedal kept on hitting him in the back. When we got to the bottom of the hill, he took out the camera to get a pic of the hill that we were about ready to run up. When he took it out, he found that the screen on the camera was broken. So, when we got home from our ride, Nick, my Dad and I headed up to Walmart and got a camera. But other than the camera breaking, it was a very good ride today.

Now I gotta go to the car wash and spray off our frozen bikes!

Nice run

today when I came home from school. Got home around twenty after two and the weather was just beautiful and that means good riding today. Unfortunately, I had to work at 4 so I went out for a run. I got in about a half an hour run in and did some running in the local nurseries and rail road tracks. Those conditions are so much better than just running on the road. Running on the road is too boring for me. Tonight is my last night to work for this week. That means from tomarrow untill saturday, I'm going to try and get in some good bike workouts for this weekends race at copley.

Later on!

Finally

I got my blog all set up. Did the finishing touches this morning before I left for school. Thanks Robert for putting me on your blog and putting up those awesome pictures. I haven't done anything training wise in the last two days. Tomarrow will either be a trainer workout or a run.

Gotta get to class!

Hello fellow racers!

Im finally making a blog now. I just got a new laptop yesterday, probably an early Christmas present. Its gonna take me a while to get used to all this, hopefully there wouldn't be any problems. Well thats all for right now, I got to mess around with my new blog.

Later