Balancing School and Cycling

A friend at school asked me, “How do you it?”  I responded saying, “How do I do what?”  He said, “How do you balance school and cycling?”  To be honest, I had to think about it before I answered; because it’s not just school and cycling I’m balancing, I also work at a bike shop. This year I am a junior at Bellarmine College Prep.  Typically junior year is the hardest year in high school.  I spend many hours studying and doing homework every day; sometimes even working on homework ahead of time so that I can ride for a longer time.  Time management is a key component to my success.  Though managing my time is sometimes difficult, I continue to work on it every day.  Some people have a hard time balancing school and their extracurricular activities, so they  give up on the activity.  Luckily for me, the masters in Team Specialized inspire me to stay focus.  They are all successful cyclists and have great careers. I am fortunate to be on Team Specialized and to have them as our mentors.

Next for me are the BASP cyclocross races and national camp at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

See you all on the road!

Matt V

                                                                 

Collegiate Track Nationals

This week I traveled to Frisco, Texas with the Fort Lewis Cycling team for collegiate track nationals. I was the only freshman on the team and this is my first collegiate race, collegiate nationals and first track nationals; that's a lot of firsts. I competed in the individual pursuit 4k, kilo 1k, points race, team pursuit and Italian team sprint. 

The pursuit went well and I was in an early heat. I rode a 5:13 which was good enough for 38th place. I didn't expect this to be my strongest event. One of my collegiate team mates got third by .1 seconds and missed first by .2 seconds. 

The kilo was about the same for me. I rode a 1:12 and I was happy with that time. This race was better for me because it was cooler outside and we were racing under the lights. 

The morning of the next day I had the points race qualifier. It was 15k which is 60 laps and was very fast. I tried taking a lap on the field but I only made it halfway. I missed points the first 2 sprints and the race was neutralized because of a crash on lap 27. I won 5 points on the next sprint and I thought I was in the finals that night. 4 riders took a lap on the field which gave them 20 points. I came in 5th in the final sprint and I missed the finals by 2 spots. Disappointing but there's always next year. But one of our riders won the points race even though he was alone with no team mates!

The team pursuit was in the morning of the final day. We had a strong team lined up. I was our starting rider.  We rode a 1:12 first lap which was too fast and by lap 8 we lost a rider and it started to get really hard. We weren't smooth and we finished with 3 riders. We came in 4th by 0.5 seconds despite how chaotic our race was. This is my first time medaling at nationals, so even though we were kind of disappointed I was happy. 

The Italian team sprint is 6 laps where 2 girls ride a lap each and then 4 laps with one lap each for each guy. We didn't start out fast enough with our girls and we came in 6th even though we rode strong with the men. 

We came in 5th in the team omnium so we medaled again, so I took home 2 medals. Griffin Easter of Ritte on our team was 3rd in the individual omnium so we were very successful at this nationals. I am really enjoying riding and studying in college because it is a lot of fun. 

Dean Haas

Because I Can

I have always been a little perplexed by the whole idea of blogging or facebooking or tweeting or whatever you want to call it. Why on earth would anyone want to spend their precious time to read about me or something I’ve got to say, usually about me. Now I do get it when it comes to impacting the world like it did recently in Egypt or other parts of the Middle East but if I wanted to be entertained by reading something I usually find it more interesting and worthwhile when I pay for it. That said, Larry seems to think there is value to our team in us telling stories that pertain to cycling so if you’re actually going to take time to read this, I’ll do my best to make it tolerable.

This one will only encapsulate the Masters Mountain Bike World Championship I did on Friday as opposed to be about it. It’s really going to be more about something that’s been whirling around inside my head for a few weeks now and, as is usually the case, song lyrics and common sayings become more profound to me when such whirlings happen.

In the last month I’ve been home for a total of seven days. I’ve raced five times but to do so I’ve traveled door-to-door 152 hours and crossed 26 times zones.

Now some might think it’s to win world championships and that would be a good guess but it’s not the real reason. The real reason is because I can. I’ve ridden my bike 365 days a year, year in and year out for the last dozen years. Everyone, bar no one, that hears that thinks I am either crazy or a fool and I guess they wonder why? The simple answer and only one is because I can.

Many years ago my sister-in-law’s mother died of a painful cancer (what cancer isn’t painful) at an age that I believe was much younger than me now. I have never forgotten how I sobbed in my office on the phone when I heard about it. My father-in-law died of prostate cancer at a young age a few years ago. I held him only days before he died and I felt the grapefruit-sized tumors in his abdomen. My wife beat breast cancer twice and lives in fear everyday that she’ll have to do it a third time. The last time, in 2006, she underwent chemotherapy and after the first treatment she got spinal meningitis. So if the cancer wasn’t going to kill her maybe the meningitis would or maybe just leave her paralyzed and in a wheel chair for the rest of her life. Oh yeh, she also had 10 surgeries that year including ones to remove the cancer, two mastectomies, a hysterectomy, an ovarectomy and multiple reconstructive surgeries. While she was going through all this she told me the worst thing about it all was the possibility she would not see her daughters graduate from high school.

A few weeks ago my teammate Chris Lyman gets hit by a car riding his bike and the first paramedic on the scene didn’t think he was going to live. Mick and I visited him in the hospital a week later and it was a sobering experience. He had survived but it was still questionable whether he would walk again. I’m really happy to report he’s on the trainer spinning the cranks with one leg waiting for the other one to heal and apparently using hand cranks to complete his workouts.

I went to South Africa and Brazil for world championships this year. In Pietermaritzburg we would drive past the shanty towns every day. That was another sobering experience. Most of the dwellings were nothing more than cardboard shacks, something you would think homeless people might seek shelter in. The second time we drove by I noticed there were numbers painted on the side walls (if you could call them walls) and realized they were actually postal addresses. These were people’s houses where they live, most likely their entire lives. Now I am not a religious person but the only thing I could think of was ‘there by the grace of God go I’. It also dawned on me that the two bikes I brought to South Africa were worth more than the people that live in these dwellings probably made in their lifetimes.

I guess I am more or less an agnostic in my understanding of the term. I just don’t think my brain is big enough to grasp the complexity of God but for whatever reason, I am eternally thankful that I was born to my parents and not one of those in a shanty town in Pietermaritzburg. It hit home again yesterday as I drove past the barrios of Sao Paulo.

On the plane home today I found myself thinking about the portion of the line in the Jackson Browne song The Pretender, “… get up and do it again. Amen.” As I thought about it, it was the first time I actually focused on the word amen. Yes, amen! Thank goodness I can get up and do it again. Because I can!

Oh yeh, the bike race on Friday. Does it really matter what happened? Not really. Not really.

I finished second but the best part about it was that I did it. Because I can.

Now go buy a book.

Thanks, Rob

So Long 2012

The 2012 season is over. It’s hard to believe, but its true. While I’m sad that there is no more racing left in 2012, I am grateful to be able to give my body a rest. This year was my first year on Team Specialized, and I am amazed at how quickly the year went by. But as they say “time flies when you are having fun” and that’s exactly what this year was… FUN! I enjoyed meeting a good group of new people that share my love and commitment to cycling. From teammates to sponsors, everyone involved with this team loves cycling and the pain, glory, excitement, etc. that comes with it.

Our sponsors have been extremely gracious and I would like to say thank you to Specialized for amazing bikes, SRAM for infallible drivetrains, Zipp for fast wheels, Clif for delicious food, Smith Optics for amazing glasses, Strava for training help, and Squadra for really comfortable clothes. Their amazing equipment allows us to do what we love. I also would like thank the Northern California Cycling Foundation (NCCF) and the founders of the team for funding and running a program where aspiring young cyclists can race as a team, and also continuously learn both about cycling and life.

I look forward to returning to racing in about four months time, stronger and more motivated than ever before.

So here is to a winter spent deep in the pain caves, hating and loving every minute of it.

Thank you Team Specialized for an awesome first year and many more to come.

See you next year,

Jason S

Teamwork makes all the difference

Before coming to Bend I had spent a lot of time trying to get information about the road race course. Lots of time was spent pouring over Strava data, speaking to guys who had raced Cascade and even getting a copy of a rider's GoPro footage from Cascade. All of that research led me to the conclusion that it was all going to come down to the final climb that ended 5 km from the finish. Here is the Strava segment. Larry and I had discussed the race on several occasions and felt that our tactic would be to make sure that nobody got away without somebody from our team and to set a hard tempo up to the final climb. At that point it would be up to me to basically try to ride everybody off my wheel.

Teamwork was going to be very important to our race. Even before the race started Larry loaned me his front Zipp 404 as mine got smashed in my crash and had not been replaced yet. It's cold at 6,000' at 8am and with 20 miles of descending to start we were pretty bundled up. Once we started warming up I took off my wind jacket and stuffed it under my jersey so that I could dump it at the first feed. Larry came up and took it from me so that I wouldn't have to deal with it. Teamwork. Then riders started attacking and Don and Larry took turns covering and chasing people down as appropriate. More teamwork.

After the 2nd feed the race really started as we hit the hills. Larry and Don continued to take turns keeping the race under control. Don covered the last break over the second to last climb and then Larry took over to drive the field and close most of the gap to the break as we hit the bottom of "the climb". Not just teamwork, but total self-sacrifice.

As we got to that final climb I was thinking about a lot of things. I was thinking about how much my legs hurt after the previous day's TT. I was thinking about my rivals who were looking really strong. Including the Boulder Orthopedics guys who I was convinced were letting us do all the work so that they could unleash at the end. I was also thinking that, wow, Don and Larry have done a ton of work to put me in a position to possibly win this race. They were throwing their races away to help me and I did not want to let them down. Yes, I was hurting a bit and yes, my confidence was not at its absolute peak, but my team had done their job and now it was up to me. It is great to be able to sit in like a princess while your team does all the work, but with that comes the responsibility to deliver. There would be no giving up, no excuses. It was time to put up or shut up.

I made my move and got my gap. With a lot of suffering on my part and a bit of “you go. NO, YOU go” in the chasing group behind I held on to win. As I was suffering on that climb I was thinking about what teammate Jason Walker said about making this move. He believed that I could pull this off and that helped.

It felt good to win. It felt good to have teammates who were willing to throw everything that they had into a race to help me win. It felt good to repay their hard work and confidence. But this is what we do. We are focused on somebody from Team Specialized winning the race. It doesn't matter who it is. We throw our lot in behind the rider who we think has the best chance. Just ask defending National Criterium Champion Dean LaBerge who gladly gave his race away to protect teammate Jason Walker as he crushed the field to win solo and take Dean's title for 2012. Dean's comment about that? He had fun thwarting the chase. That is team work. That is how we roll on Team Specialized.