This year, my brother and I moved out to California for college, a new experience for both of us. I will be attending UC Berkeley and Liam will attend Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Aside from the increased course load, college offers a lot of new challenges for training and racing competitively; especially being new to the area. The first challenged I faced was finding new roads to train on, a process which usually consisted of about 50% ride time and 50% navigational time. Eventually I was able to gather my bearings and find some amazing roads to train on.
I also made my way out to the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin Headlands which offered an amazing view of the bridge and San Francisco
The second obstacle I faced was bike maintenance and storage which also proved to be very difficult in my dorm room. Gluing tubulars was an interesting experience, and raised a few eye brows from my roommates, but none the less was a successful process.
With new training roads discovered and bikes ready to go, Liam and I checked out our first cross race in Sacramento two weekends ago. I did not have the race I was looking for, but Liam managed an impressive 2nd place in the elite field (see his blog post below). This week I am preparing for the 3rd Sacramento Cross race at Lange Twins Winery, which is known for its amazing course design and all around good time. Following that I will be working on my form for CXLA and Cross Nationals in Asheville, NC.
Thank you to CLIF BAR, Niner, Challenge Tires, Crankbrothers, SRAM, Docs Skincare, Kappius Components, Fizik, Capo, Pategonia, and Pedro's for the support this season. It's going to be a great one!
