Back to Blogging – New life/Coaching/Bike Racing

OK… I am going to start getting back into this blogging thing. It has been a rough couple of years, but I am excited about my life and where it is going. I gave up women for about 9 months last year and spent time with my kids and raced my bike. We took a couple camping trips in the summer, one to Acadia National Park in Maine and another to Muskegon State Park in Michigan. We also made stops at Michigan Adventure and Cedar Point. It was an awesome summer!! The best part of 2010 came at the end when I met the most incredible woman… Mary Ann.

At the start of 2011, I was contracted out to Borg Warner to support calibration work on their active AWD systems. I then was offered a job at Borg Warner, which I took. It has taken me to proving grounds in the UP, Sweden and New Zealand. Mary Ann and I also took Nathan and Arianna out west to Yellowstone. While we were out there, we also visited the Corn Palace, Badlands, Wall Drug, Black Hills, Crazy Horse, Mt. Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Grand Tetons and the Buffalo Bill dame and museum in Cody, Wyoming. It was a great trip and totaled 4200miles!! We drove the Fit out there with a Thule box on the back… it was a tight fit, but we survived!

On to the biking update which this blog is suppose to be about. CX finished up a little rough last year as I got busy with my kids activities and lost focus. The change in jobs had me running around last winter and traveling up to the UP, so I didn’t find much time to train and gained some weight. With all the rain early in the season it was hard to get out and ride as much as I did in 2010… so as the season started out I found myself feeling slow. Looking to improve, I bought a Powertap wheel for my road bike and worked with a coach to get an initial plan put together. The Powertap was later swapped out in favor of a Quarq, as swapping to race wheels meant no power reading! I wanted to focus a little more on the road and try and get upgraded to CAT3. I also upgraded my road bike to a Giant TCR, this was a huge gain (Outside of the motor). First race was an early season TT at Willow… not the best result, but I knew I was not at my peak. As the year went on my fitness improved and had some top ten finishes. Traveling the whole month of July put me a little behind fitness wise, but it was worth it. I didn’t race my mountain bike but a few times this year and with so-so results. I finally made it up to Ore to Shore this year and had mixed feelings about the race. I will probably go back to do it again as I feel that it defeated me this year and I want another go at it.

After working with the powermeter data for a while and doing some reading, I decided to hire a coach. A coach can really help to hold you accountable and work to make sure that you are not over doing it and put the proper rest periods in your schedule. I did some looking around and decided to hire Brian Matter at Momentum Endurance for coaching. Brian has had great success in both Mountain bike racing and CX. I look forward to seeing what he can do to help dial in my training and reach my cycling goals. So far, I have felt great at all my events with good results. This CX season and Iceman will be a good test for me as usually I fall flat in the fall. Wish me luck as the first CX race is coming up this weekend!!