catch-up

A quick update before heading out to New Mexico with the Appalachian State Cycling Team:

CX season began over a month ago (woah..) but I've only done a couple races. USGP Madison was alot of fun, as always. Good fun meeting my new KCCX teammates and getting to play bikes with them in a midwestern thunderstorm.

To be honest, I didn't race as well as I had hoped. To be honest with myself, I was just plain falling out of shape.

And lesson learned- as everyone told me from the beginning- it's better to take a week off to heal an injury than to keep riding half assed on it for a month.

D'oh.

So, in early August I rode mountain bikes with a bunch of the ASU kids. They are all shredders. I am not. Fed up with myself for not holding their wheels on the descents, I tried. And failed. It was a brief act of courage (synonym-stooooopididy .

Because this is Clayton on a bike:

And this is me:

Eight stitches, and a month of slow riding because I was too proud (or scared) to rest, and then, finally, a break. Everything is mostly healed, just in time for Collegiate Mountain Bike Nationals.

Six of us are driving the 25 hours out to New Mexico, leaving monday at 3 and hoping to get in to race by Friday. Only school employees are allowed to drive school vans so all the guys got jobs as intermural hand ball referees. Then took their first week off. Wish us luck as we try to navigate our way across the country!