Monday, December 24, 2012

Base Training

Late fall and winter mean base training.  Lots and lots of hours where your coach tells you to go relatively slow (but some how it still makes you sore!) This year my coach has me doing 2, 4 week blocks.  I am in the middle of the 2nd one currently; I will not be sad when it's over.

Learning to manage your time to schedule class, studying, big base hours, finals and of course your social life in college is definitely an important skill.  Training and just going out and riding while you are in college, especially when you live on campus, is a great way to get away from everyone and everything; the stresses of everyday life.

I planned on having a strong fall of racing; collegiate track, MTB and cyclocross.  But I got the illness known commonly as mono.  It only put me back for around 2 weeks of off the bike even though I was extremely sick.  I was planning on having an awesome cyclocross season but this illness hit me the first week of November.  So I was only able to race 4 cyclocross races: the Ft. Collins USGP and Boulder Cup UCI weekends.  As fun as these races were, they were some of the hardest races I have done and doing a few races where I had been competitive would have been nice or at least finishing on the lead lap.

Base is a good time to step back from racing and just go out and ride. You can plan your race schedule and contemplate the next year.  Racing season will come soon enough because the first RMCCC race is March 9.

I have found teams for next year.
Mountain Bike team where I will be racing mostly locally along with Nationals in PA and a few Pro XCT races: The Hometeam (New team for 2013 details to be released very soon) we have a factory sponsorship from Spooky Bikes, a custom fabricator in VT.

Road team is soon to be announced but it is very very likely I will be riding a Specialized bike in 2013.

Dean Haas

"Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet." Seneca 

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