Ok guys, its been a while since I posted, and quite a bit has gone on since. So where to start? Ok, cool stuff, I have been in touch with a couple of long lost friends via myspace. Now I know that MS gets a bad rap, but I have to tell you its a great way to find friends from High School, and College. My parents are going to be out to visit next week, and its been about a year since I've seen them so that's going to be very nice. Now on to bikes.

April was a tough month, after a quick start to the season in March and some good results, the results went down the tube with some not so smart racing and some heavy duty training time. The intent was to come out of the gate hot, and get some quick results, but when they start to go bye bye, you can start to question things.
The training in April consisted of a lot of days in the mountains doing climbing repeats, along with some long days in the saddle. Throw in a couple of races on the weekends, and I was pretty spent. All of this was in prep for the Tour of the Gila in Silver City, New Mexico. www.tourofthegila.com For the Cat IV's its a 3-day stage race with a 62 Mile road race, with 4600 Ft of climbing on day 1, a downtown criterium on day 2, and the Gila Monster, a 72 mile road race, with 6000 ft of climbing on day 3. I ended up finishing 13th overall for the 3-days, about 3 minutes off of the winner. Now this is a huge improvement over last year. In most climbing races I finished about 20 minutes back from the leaders.

The stay in Silver City was something special. Last minute, I found myself with no one to share hotel costs with, so I contacted the housing coordinator with the race with the hope of finding a host family to stay with. Now this was extremely last minute, so I had no expectations. Within 2-days I had housing, WOW! The family I stayed with was absolutely amazing. These people let me into there house to stay for a couple of days with no worries what so ever. I actually had the house to myself for one night. That says a lot about people. And the Towns people of Silver City were another surprise. Every time we went out riding, or around town with the bikes on the top of the car, we would get the thumbs up, or a "good luck". You want to talk about some positive energy!!!! I was asked to sign an autograph for one fellow, and Im just a Cat IV starting out in racing. Needless to say the entire trip was incredible. If I could, I would register for next years race yesterday!

So, Im back in Denver now, and after this weekends race I will be taking it easy while my parents are in town. This works out great since I've have had 5 races in 8 days, and I'm about due for a little rest.
~Later!