Prove It!

You think you know all there is to know about the pro peloton? You think you can call the winners of the classics and major races? You think you can pick out pretty names and add numbers that sum to 150? If you answered yes to any of these questions I highly encourage you to head over to the Podium Cafe and sign up for their free Virtual Director Sportif competition. I assure you it is both free and easy, and I'm betting it makes watching the races even more enjoyable. 

My strategy for selecting a winning team was to pick out the guys I like the most. I probably won't win the competition, but I will be able to scream passionately at the screen for them during the races because I'm now personally invested in their success. I also picked a pretty classics heavy team, but thats the racing I really love. Hmmmm, cobbles...

If for some stupid reason you need a better incentive for signing up, I've decided to personally pony up some prizes for the top three teams at the end of the season (only readers of this humble blog are eligible). I'm not sure what those prizes will be yet, but being as there are about 7 people who will read these words your odds of winning something are pretty good. I might also toss in some odds and ends for the best team name or anything else I deem worthy of praise. The deadline for signing up a team is this Friday so don't delay! Seriously, it takes all of 15 minutes to make a team, which is nothing compared to the lifetime of glory you could earn by winning, not to mention the magical mystery prizes.

So go sign up. I'll get to work making a page where you can list your teams, track everyone's progress and brag about how your roster boasts the most riders with trashy, yet oh so stylish, Euro-mullets.

In personal news, I had my intervals disrupted today by a herd of escaped goats. It was shitty (literally), but tolerable until the...goatdogs(?) decided I was dangerous. They say the bark is worse than the bite, but I wasn't going to call their bluff and got shooed off before I could even get a picture. Yay, Davis!

Make Money Riding Your Bike!

My old man forwarded this article to me the other day. He knows I'm looking to supplement my income, but I don't think he was suggesting I try this particular method. I can't imagine the ride quality on those weed-stuffed tires was very good, but it couldn't have been worse than armadillos. It seems crazy to me that you'd put your life on the line for $1300 worth of dope, but what are the odds the border guards are going to check your tires? Pretty slim... unless you look like this.

In other news Pat McCarty is going to join the Yahoo! Cycling Team roster for the Redlands Bicycle Classic and Sea Otter Classic (cyclingnews article). McCarty has a wealth of experience and seems jazzed to show us young pups the tricks of the trade. Our management has been looking for someone to fill this role, and despite a ton of inquiries from big name riders they were holding out for someone who was not only super talented, but also willing to help out and mentor. I'm ecstatic to have a rider of this caliber around. We've got a wealth of young talent, but I think having someone like McCarty to help lead the team is going to be invaluable. Personally, I know I can always dig just a little deeper and find that extra gear when a teammate I respect and trust needs me to. That's why team time trials have always been some of my favorite races. And that dates all the way back to my first year cycling when I would turn myself inside out for Ueyn and we'd smash things up in Men's Bs TTTs. Man... good times. He's probably already dropped me in that photo, and his frightening speed may be causing Daniel to wet his pants. Its unclear.

Snelling is coming up this Saturday and its my first real race of the year. I'm still miles and miles from being in real race shape, but this will be the first time this season when I can cut loose and give 'er. I'm stoked. Snelling should also have a lot of riders and I'm anxious to see how we Yahoos do when we don't have half the field. I have high hopes. Snelling is 78 mile (or thereabouts) road race with bad pavement over rolling terrain and it can be a little dull. But if the winds are howling or the rain starts to fall then people can get a taste for blood and it becomes a miserable, guttered sufferfest. My favorite kind of race! In anticipation of something along those lines I'm off to do my first local race ride in the pouring rain. Should be a blasty!

Drive to Ride? The Quest for El Diablo

I headed over to Oakland today to have a little adventure with T. Dibbs. We were living in fear of getting soaked, but the rain held off and I had one of the best rides I've had since... well, Pine Flat was pretty awesome, so lets just say it was easily in this season's top five. I've never climbed Mt. Diablo before and everyone has been giving me a lot of crap for that. I keep trying to explain that I've been riding on the Peninsula for years and the idea that you'd have to drive to ride is just complete nonsense.

So I felt a little stupid dragging myself out of bed at 6:30 this morning to drive to Oakland, but it was well worth it. The climb itself is just shy of an hour (50 minutes if you're lighter than I am), which is pretty much unheard of in the bay area. I kept seeing signs marking every 1000 vertical feet and they just kept coming, though not quickly enough for my liking. Having become accustomed to the riding around Davis, it was a real treat to be able to bang away on a climb for almost an hour. No, I never thought I'd say that either.

It was so cold on the descent my mouth went numb and I couldn't speak clearly, much to Tyler's amusement, but aside from that the whole ride was just a gift. I went to spin an extra half hour and by the time I got back to Tyler's place there was a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs waiting for me. Awesome ride + meatballs + Amy's insane homemade cookies = happy, happy, Ryan.

I did get stuck in a wee bit of traffic on the way back to Davis, which wouldn't have been that bad except the old Windstar has a short circuit. The car thinks the doors are open all the time and if its traveling less than 20 MPH it bings like crazy! I get pissed enough with traffic alone, but when you toss in an incessant, deafening binging to remind me that I'm stuck in traffic its almost unbearable. I seriously considered pulling to the side of the road and using a rock to find the source. So its more my transportation than Peninsula snobbery, but I just can't help it: I feel like a chump driving to ride.

Dinuba Criterium & Weekend Recap

First off, the Yahoo! Cycling Team's race reports have been posted on the site. If you want the official rundown that's where to get it. Velo Promo has been incredible about promptly posting race results this year. I'm completely impressed. You can already get results online for Cantua Creek, Pine Flat, and Dinuba. I'd like to say a huge thanks to Bob and Co. at Velo Promo and all the officials who put on three stellar races this weekend. Velo Promo races may not always have that NRC glitz and glamour, but there are dozens and dozens of them every season. There aren't a lot of places in the US where you can race two new courses every weekend. Those guys (and gals) do a hell of a job and NorCal cycling owes them a huge debt.

The Dinuba Criterium on Monday was another chance for the team to come together and work on our timing and leadouts. Tyler and I rode our TT bikes down to the race so we were a bit cooked, but not too worried about hurting the Y!CT's chances. We again had roughly half the field and I'm only surprised that the other racers were so cool with it.

I once did the Idaho State Road Race Championships in Melba, ID and it was a 12 man field with six riders from the regional powerhouse, Bob's Bicycles. It was, perhaps, the most terrible experience I've ever had on a bike. They attacked the hell out of me, and I flatted while mounting a solo chase with a Bob's guy glued to my wheel. He thought I was trying to trick him somehow and slowed down to a crawl with me until he could see my tire was dead flat, and then sprinted away instead of offering any help. I sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes in triple digit heat with no shade, unable to drink any water due to a recent e. coli outbreak. Finally a truckload of migrant workers let me hitch a ride back to the start. Needless to say I'm never going back to Melba, and I don't fancy doing any races where the strongest team has half the field. So sure, I feel a small twinge of guilt to be on the other side of things, but we're not the first to use these races for training. It wasn't mean-spirited, but I can see how it could be frustrating.

Which is why everyone's positive attitude was so welcome. Here I have to give props to the guys from Chico Corsa. Mike, Michael and Alex were out for all the races this weekend and despite the long odds against them they were throwing down attacks, working the breaks and chasing stuff until it looked as though they'd puke on their top tubes. The guys have heart, and if they keep displaying that kind of temerity and perseverance then results are sure to follow.

There was one guy who was not so happy with the situation. I'm not going to name names, but this chap decided he was going to to slam his way into our leadout train even though five of our riders had already lapped the field. Sure, it was still a bike race, a point he made at the top of his lungs while trading elbows with Kevin, but if you really wanted to race your bike why not do it as the podium spots are all rolling up the road? We did manage to set up a pretty good train. The Dinuba Crit could very well be the last time we line up a 12 man leadout, but it was a pretty slick thing to see.

Everything really came together for a stellar trip. We had superb host housing (that's our host Shana with Nacho), great weather and fun courses. I was a bit worried about racing so soon, but the races turned out to be more like a second training camp and I think I sneaked in a lot of quality miles. We were dog tired driving home, but somehow made it back in one piece, and not even the throngs of housemates and neighbors watching and cheering the Olympics in "my" room could keep me awake. I fell sound asleep surrounded by all of it. The three day forecast is for 70 degree, sunny days and I can't wait to peel off the arm warmers and go enjoy this extended early taste of spring.

What Month Is It?

Just finished a the Pine Flat Road Race and it was one of the most scenic courses I've ever raced. We started with an out and back along Pine Flat Reservoir in the Sierra Nevada foothills before dropping down into the San Joaquin Valley and ripping through some orchards before winding back up into the foothills for the finish. With a 7:30am start we were riding through the mist in the first 10 miles and it looked for all the world like the floating mountains in Avatar (which you should go see in Imax 3D if you haven't already). As the sun burned off the fog you could catch glimpses of snow-capped peaks in the distance, but the weather was so pleasant everyone ditched their vests and warmers. Truly and epic day in February.

I don't even want to talk about the race. We had half the field again and the outcome was almost identical to yesterdays Cantua Creek. I had a much better day personally and put in some good tempo work and covered some moves before the big finishing climb. The boys rode well again and we're figuring out how to work smoothly as a team.

After the race it was so nice that we couldn't help but get in some extra miles. We ended up doing another 2hrs for a total of five and something near to 100 miles. Back to the house for a swim a home-cooked meal and some Olympics to cap off one of the best days I've had in a long time. Epic. Photo credits to the one and only Phil Mooney.

The Sweep

Seems like we can't have a decent bike race these days without some silly upstarts trying to steal the show. First its the Superbowl, now the Olympics. Sheesh. If they'd just start televising Velo Promo races nationally I bet we could get tens of... well tens of people watching. Then who'd be famous? Yeah.

Do I wish I had taken a nice long snooze and awakened late in the day to leisurely watch some maniacs go way to fast on the snow and ice? Yes, definitely. To be perfectly honest no one really wants to get up at 5am to drive through pea soup fog to race on dull frontage road outside of Coalinga, but we're addicted to bike racing and if thats what we have to suffer to feed the monkey on our backs then so be it. Also, it smelled like a feed lot and there were swarms of bees, but like I said, its a powerful addiction.

It was early, it was cold and the lines for the portos loooooong. We Yahooligans made up maybe half of the field, but frankly I was happy to see that many after the particularly sad pre-reg. There's not much to tell about the race itself. It wasn't really fair. Yahoo! Cycling ended up sending 4 guys up the road and then took 1st, 3rd and 4th in the field sprint. There are some big ethical questions surrounding the teams decision to send a full squad to Cantua. Sandbaggers, bullies, @%$holes. These are all terms that have been thrown around, and I can easily see the point. From a certain perspective it does seem like a mean thing to do. But consider if from Yahoo! Cycling's standpoint. We're a brand new group of guys who have never raced together as a team before. We're planning on going head to head with the best cycling teams in the US. We need to have as many opportunities to learn each other's styles, hone our teamwork and work out the kinks in our tactics. So yes, we probably the race pretty miserable for everyone not on Yahoo! and for that I feel bad, but we did take advantage of an opportunity to learn and grow as a team and sometimes you just have to look out for number one.

At this point I should note that I suffered stomach cramps after the first lap and pulled out of the race. So the only person's day I ruined was mine.

In other news we're being taken care of by the most amazing hosts ever. I've managed to anger them already by leaving my bag in the hall, but I'm a country bumpkin and don't know any better. Rats! I didn't think I was causing a ruckus, but the man of the house is ex-military (Bronze Star recipient!) and he may have slightly different standards than I do. His house, his rules, my bad. But back to the hospitality. On top of giving us each a sack lunch they welcomed us back with a hot soak in the spa and a jump off the 3 meter high dive in their back yard. Awesome. I miss winters back in Idaho, but at times like these I can say only good things about California winters. Relaxing in the tub post-race suckin down tasty beverages under bright blue skies I couldn't help but think of my buddy Jono and his famous phrase: "This is livin'!"

The Joys of a Cycling House

The name of my blog might not be that accurate anymore. Sure, I'll still be traveling every weekend and then some, but for those little times in between I'll no longer be camped out in a Kia Sedona ripping across the US. I have a home base now, and its actually pretty sweet. Sure, I'm in a living room and my lease says if someone wants to watch a movie at 2 in the morning its still technically a common area, and no, there aren't any "doors", and I have to fold up and put away my bed every morning(my contract says I have, and I quote "fewer rights than a Gitmo detainee.") But hey, I have a dresser for my clothes! Thats right, no more living out of a bag for this homebody, and most importantly the price is right.

There are other perks aside from low price and a dresser that make this place pretty sweet and most of them have to do with my most excellent housemates. For the first time in my life I'm living with other people who either race bikes, used to race, or at least understand and respect cycling on some level. Its a revelation. I don't get condescending looks if I walk through the door still kitted up, no one bugs me if I'm stretching on the floor (sometimes they even join in!) and best of all our garage looks like this:

All the cars get kicked to the curb and the bicycle takes ascendancy. Between a garage like this and one verified bad ass mechanic as a housemate there aren't too many bike related problems we can't solve. It is an absolute joy to have the tools and knowledge at hand to keep my bike running like a dream. When the bike is happy, I am happy.

Another bonus to living in a house full of cyclists is the shared love of food. Specifically good food in large quantities. At this point you've surely guessed I don't live with a bunch of climbers. Our resident climber and professional is Max(im) "Casper Stalingrad" Jenkins, and he packs away more food than any of us. No matter what he eats or how much he doesn't seem to gain an ounce, which I think is a combination of black magic and complete crap-o-la, but it may have something to do with the 36 hours he rides every week. No matter how he does it I'm jealous.


Anyway, every now and again we'll get together and bang out bulk ride food. PMTG and I managed to mass produce some flapjacks and waffles with chocolate chips, walnuts, almonds, flax and cinnamon just the other day. Thats a little tip for all you riders, cash-strapped or otherwise: there's no need to pay $2 for some packaged fructose when you can buy a 10lb bag of flapjack mix at costco and have ride food for a year. They taste better, go down easier, and if you time it right they'll even keep your back warm while you start off on a cold day.

Stockton Superman

By day Keith Williams is a mild mannered wheel magnate from Stockton, CA, but in his secret double life he's actually Andre Greipel, German cycling sensation and ProTour man of steel.

Clearly these seemingly separate entities are one and the same man. So the next time you see Keith slinging neutral support at a crit or just hanging out be sure to compliment him on his fantastic performance at the Tour Down Under. Either one would be impressive in his own right, but for one man to run a successful wheel company, raise a great family and still find time to dominate ProTour cycling is just out of this world. Good on ya, Keith.

The Yin and the Yang

We'd all love to be spending our winters riding in southern Spain where the roads are great and the weather is always agreeable, but sadly thats just not the case. Up here in NorCal it can get a little nasty at times and there's just not much to do but saddle up and take it like a man.



It can get to a point where its either just too brutal to go outside, or you've simply done too many days in the rain and can't muster the courage to get out the door. But you can't skip a ride. No no, thats a slippery slope and soon enough you'll find yourself riding only as far as the coffee shop and then only on the brightest and nicest of sunny days. No, if the gods conspire to rain on your parade you have to do the one thing that anyone with a true love of riding absolutely despises: get on the trainer.

For those of you who don't ride a trainer (or rollers if you're a champ) is a device that lets you set up your own bicycle to ride in place like a stationary bike. For those of you who do ride, you'll be familiar with the trainer as one of the most hated, yet necessary, parts of being a bike racer. Its kind of like going to the dentist. You hope you don't ever have to go, and if you're lucky your visits are rare, but when you do go its torture. I've heard some east coast pros say that if you can't ride the rollers for four hours a day you're not a real bike racer. To them I say: I could punch myself in the nuts for four hours, but it wouldn't make me an ultimate fighter. Riding the trainer sucks, straight up, and don't let anyone tell you any different.

Like I said though, sometimes you don't have a choice. That happened to poor @PhilipMooney my teammate (and housemate) the other day, and I took a few seconds of footage of him suffering like a dog:



Luckily its not all rain and rollers up here in NorCal. For every freezing nasty rain ride or trainer session I've had a dozen gorgeous rides on some of the most scenic roads America has to offer. And lest you think I'm lying, here's one last boring video that despite its lack of action clearly proves we can ride outside in the sunshine in February. Huffman wasn't even wearing knee warmers.



The Napa scenery is nice to look at, but the most impressive part of this video is my camerawork. Imagine what I could do from a motorbike!

Sweet Cherry Pie

Two days ago as most of the nation sat stuffing their faces with mountains of hot-wings, swallowing mounds of molten seven-layer dip, and watching Superbowl XLIV kickoff a small legion of spandex bandits descended upon Napa for the official kickoff of the 2010 road season. A few hearty lads and I decided to ride over to the Cherry Pie Criterium from Davis, and though my legs certainly don't agree I think it was wonderful. Plus I had some great inspiration. Sure Switters and Dibble and @TheStaz were cursing me at every rise in the road (and not because I was driving the pace, I assure you), but it was a nice three hours of base on some beautiful roads. Riding to a race reminds me of Belgium where that was standard practice instead of a rare treat, and anything that makes me nostalgic for Belgium is typically good. We were so fired up that we decided to do a little commemorative pre-ride photo shoot that somehow turned into a video shoot. I blame the camera(wo)man:


Despite my lackluster climbing we made it to the race with plenty of time to get kitted up in some new Yahoo! Cycling corporate threads. The socks were the highlight for me. I think the highlight for Tyler was that he got women's shorts with no bibs. Ha! It was a joy to get all the guys into the same kit, and with all the talk of being a serious NorCal hit squad I think we finally looked the part.

I don't know why, but I was more nervous on the start line of Cherry Pie than I have been in a long, long time. I think it was a combination of the first race of the season and the pressure of wanting to ride hard for a stellar new team. As the announcer was firing up the crowd before the start I think my heart rate jumped 20 bpm. The race itself was great. The Y!CT had things on lockdown from the gun and all I had to do was mark moves and watch the guys run rampant on the field. Dirk got some great help from Filip, Phil, Tyler and Adam up front and took the win out of the break by a mile. Mark Adkison has some great shots from the race and I'm going to see if he'll let me toss a few on the blog. Until he gives me the okay you can scope them out on his site, Hors Categorie Photography. Also, I think we managed to impress someone from the Berkeley Bicycle Club who had some kind words to say, and who in turn impressed me with his crazy video that syncs race footage with his power, speed, etc. Wild.

"Yahoo! Cycling Team put on a clinic, animating the race, winning and filling the top ten. If you google “bicycle racing”, you should see a picture of the Yahoo! squad after today’s mastery. I imagine you would get the same result if you Yahoo’d Yahooded googled “bicycle racing” on Yahoo."

The racing was great and the team worked incredibly well together in our first outing, but for me the coolest part of the day was before the race when we got to meet some new fans. A couple came up to us with their little pup "Chili Dog" who was decked out in a Yahoo! Cycling Team sweater (I'll look for a photo). They weren't Yahoo! employees and they didn't have friends or family in the race. They had just heard about the new team in a cyclingnews.com article and decided to come check out the nearby race and cheer us on. Normally I'm not much for pet-sweaters, but I'll definitely make an exception for Chili Dog. What a champ! It was an honor to have some fans out there and I'm glad we could put on a show for them.

Speaking of cats and dogs that's exactly what its raining right now, but I've got to go do three hours and if I don't get out the door now I may never go. Time to put on the fenders and rain jacket and, as Switters just instructed me, my big-boy pants. HTFU, Parnes.

Videos and Boring, Pseudo-scientific Logorrhea

Blogger has a sweet new function where they allow you to add pages to your blog. I got all kinds of excited and decided to add a page before I had anything good to put there. I am now the proud owner of a "videos" page, the only problem being that the only videos I could come up with are a couple from some the testing I did with my coach Judd Van Sickle the other day. Hopefully in the future that page will feature videos of the Yahoo! Cycling Team crushing some sprints or me doing no handed backflips on my Fuji, but for now its just these two boring videos. They do, however provide me with a decent segue into a post about testing and training.

There is a constantly raging battle over what the best way to train is. It seems like in this day and age we'd have a pretty good idea of what to do to become a fast cyclist, but the knowledge is constantly evolving and its only ever as good as the last study. Throw into the mix the fact that a lot of coaches and directors are champions of old, still convinced that the way they did things 20 or 30 years ago is best. On top of that you have a great debate between people who are fired up about incorporating the newest studies and technology, and those who think all the numbers stuff is so much B.S. There are some people who refuse to ride with a speedometer while others ride along with their noses glued to their power meters, sticking perfectly to their training zones and barely looking at the road let alone the scenery. Its crazy because there is no consensus and you get champions from both ends of the spectrum.

I've always found myself somewhere in the middle, though I'm starting to lean a bit more towards the scientific end of things. Part of it is that when you first start riding and racing regularly you see huge gains in fitness just from spending time on the bike. After a few less structured seasons I think I'm at the point where if I want to see significant gains I'm going to have to be more meticulous about my training. With that in mind I went up to do some testing with Judd.

I'm extremely lucky to have Judd as a coach. He's a bright guy who knows his stuff backwards and forwards, we get along well and he has access to some really cool toys up at UC Davis Sports Medicine. I'll run through the testing protocols, but first I'd like to give a little background on what we were doing. Scientists forgive me, but I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible and hopefully not embarrass myself in the process.

The body has a few different energy sources and it draws on them in different ratios depending on how hard you're exercising. At a low intensity your body is mostly burning fat stores in the body and as the exercise gets more intense muscles start burning carbohydrates stored as glycogen. A byproduct of burning glycogen is lactic acid which builds up in your blood. Your body can buffer a certain amount of lactic acid, but at some point your body can't flush it quickly enough and it begins to build up. When too much accumulates it becomes really, really hard to maintain the level of intensity. One can then do a test where the rider exercises at gradually increasing intensities and blood is sampled for lactate levels along the way. By doing this you can plot at what wattage (how hard the rider is pushing on the pedals) and heart rate the lactate is no longer being flushed properly (that point is called OBLA, which stands for onset of blood lactate accumulation). From this you can derive training zones.

So that's what Judd had me doing. I rode over to his lab about an hour away in Sacramento where he weighed me, did a skin fold test to determine body fat percentage and then he set me up on a computrainer. A computrainer is like a regular wind trainer except it allows the tester to set a specific wattage. No matter how quickly or slowly the rider pedals, and no matter the gear the computrainer will adjust the resistance so the rider is always pushing the specified watts. We started at a low wattage and then upped it by a percentage every ten minutes, all the while testing my blood for lactate levels every three minutes from a small cut in my ear. You can see him do this in the video. Judd was also testing my VO2 efficiency during this lactate test. The crazy mask I'm wearing during the video was only on for the last three minutes of each ten minute block, but it pipes my breath into a machine that measures the volume of breath and the ratio of oxygen to CO2. In the end we couldn't even use the VO2 numbers because the intern didn't calibrate the machine properly. Oh well, not as bad as when the same intern messed up a skin fold test and almost told a pro triathlete that he was fat. That would not have been pretty.

So whats the point of flogging yourself on a computrainer while someone cuts open your ear to steal your blood? Well, with the information you glean from the testing you can specify your training so as to get the best results from your hard work. You get a great picture of what your training zones are by wattage and heart rate. For example, if you're out riding and you're trying to work on your endurance then there's a specific zone where you train the physiological systems associated with endurance riding, and its actually a pretty small window. Go too easy and you're not really getting a good endurance workout. Go too hard and you're not working on endurance at all and worse, you're making yourself too tired to finish the effort or recover well.

Beyond dialing in your training zones the other great thing about lactate testing is that the results will change over time. Now that we know where I stand and what kind of training I need to do we can come back in 6 weeks, retest, and hopefully see some marked improvement.

Okay, I know that was a long-winded yet decidedly poor explanation of lactate testing, but hopefully it gives someone somewhere a bit of info on another side of cycling beyond just pedaling a bike around all day. If you are interested in exercise physiology and by some minor miracle you've read this far I highly recommend you go check out The Science of Sport blog. Its written by two bright young PhDs and they have great, informative posts on cycling and whole lot more. Also, I've been doing some reading recently on training, especially with power and for anyone who wants a professional view on all of that I'd point you towards these books: "The Cyclists Training Bible" and "Training and Racing with a Power Meter".

I hope that wasn't too dull for everyone. I'm thinking I'll try a bit harder in the future, but remember: no one is making you read this.

I'm Back!

Ho ho! I have returned, though I don't really know why. There must be a dearth of inane ramblings on the internet and I guess I'm the guy who has to fix that. Really though, I think I'm blogging again because its finally racing season. This is a cycling blog after all, and as much fun as it would be to write for a couple of months about training rides in the rain and the intervening bouts of utter sloth, I just couldn't bring myself to bore people (mostly myself) with it. But as of 3pm PST tomorrow I'll be a full throttle race monkey again.

I'm on a new team this year and I think this one could really be something special. The Yahoo! Cycling Team has a roster of 12 talented guys and its a great mix of wizened, established hitters and some up-and-comers with a lot of potential. I have a lot more to write about this, but I'm going to save it. For now just know that I believe the sky is the limit for the Yahoo! Cycling Team and I'm fired up to see how this season plays out.

I'm certainly not trying to get famous with this blog. I think its mostly friends and family that read it, and many of you might not have an intimate knowledge of cycling. With that in mind I'm thinking I might try to write some posts on basic cycling principles and maybe even take some questions if I'm feeling saucy. To all you "real" cyclists out there please forgive me, but I'm thinking there might be some out there who'd like to know more about stuff such as: tactics--like drafting, and why it matters at all; tech--tubulars, what they are and why I ride them even though I hate gluing them more than just about anything in the world; and culture--why are elite cyclists such image obsessed prettyboys. Okay, I'll grant that most people don't care at all about any of these things and certainly don't care about my take on them, but that's the perk of having a blog of my very own. I can write whatever I darn well please.

I'm definitely fired up to put a wheel on the start line again. Yeah, some of this giddy feeling is probably from tubular glue fumes, but a good portion is surely that sweet cocktail of uncertainties and aspirations that I get before a good race.

One last note meant more as a warning than an apology: you may have noticed the blog has changed a little bit. I'm going to try to spice things up and get some more interesting content for you all to waste your lives with. I'm also thinking about hooking up that twitter stuff just to see what being a total hypocrite feels like. All of this is a work in progress, but so is life I guess.

Cherry Pie Crit tomorrow! Think happy thoughts.