This blog post is long overdue. I owe my fans more than one post every few weeks. HAHAHA!!! I couldn’t resist. I am sitting at the Miami airport with some time to kill so I thought I would get this done. I have been quite busy with working, training, racing and not spending enough time with the family. I knew this was going to be a busy time of the year but I don’t think you can ever really be prepared for how much it wears you down.


For my second cross race I headed to Wisconsin for the Planet Bike USGP. I had never raced a USGP event and let me tell you it was first class. All of the big teams and names of cyclocross were there. I got in on Friday night just in time to get a few laps in before the rains came. It pretty much rained all night so I rode on the mud tires Saturday. I started near the back due to the timeframe that I registered for the race and finished about the same spot. I am not a very good technical rider and with the wet conditions it became a very technical race. The next day was drier but I crashed on the barriers on lap 2 and dropped my chain so by the time I reconnected I could not pull back. After 2 more laps I was passed and the day was over for me.

I headed from there to Wisconsin Dells for another trade show. Sunday afternoon we set the show up and worked the show Sun night, Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday I started having some pain in my lower back and by the afternoon I could not walk. Luckily my roommate was helpful and carried my luggage! I was not feeling good at all. Wednesday I drove back to Indiana. By Friday the back felt pretty good but I decided to take the weekend off and make sure the back was ok. I had a doctors visit the following Tuesday and he did x-rays and everything was negative so that was good news. The pain in my back was gone and remains gone today but I am having a pain that goes down my left leg so I am seeing a nerve specialist to hopefully get the problem solved.

Fast forward to last weekend and I headed to Covington, KY for the OVCX UCI 2 day event. I headed to KY on Thursday and by 3pm it was raining and it rained pretty steady all afternoon and night. They were calling for 4-5 inches of rain before the system moved out. The first day of racing was set on a hillside adjacent to a golf course and it actually used several of the cart paths for the race. The race was probably held in the worst conditions I have raced in since I started cross. I would bet that you had to run or have your foot down for more than a quarter of the course. YUCK! My field had about 80 racers and I finished 37th so I was not too upset. Congrats go out to my roommate Josh Johnson who finished 3rd in the cat 2-3 and teammate Tony Marut who finished 5th. These guys are incredible racers and have many years of racing ahead of them. (Both are still in high school) Congrats also goes out to Nicole Borem, team DRT for finishing top 10 in the women’s pro race. Thanks for the accommodations Nicole and great racing! Saturday’s race was held in Middletown Ohio in much better conditions. I was again about 5 rows from the back and off the start I did not feel the legs were kicking on all cylinders. The race was in a residential park with a lot of twists and turns and a double sand pit. You went into the pit came out did a 180 and went back through. On the third lap I dropped my chain and that was it. The chain got stuck down between the chain keeper and I could not get it back on. My day was over. I packed it up and headed back to Fort Wayne to change out the clothes and see the family and then head to Miami for a business trip.

 My plans were first to head back to Ohio this weekend to race the Spin race in Willoughby but I bagged it and instead we went shopping for the kids some new clothes and Halloween costumes. We had a great afternoon. That’s it for now. I will try and update this more often so these are not so long in the future. Next weekend we are heading out on Friday for Louisville, KY for the USGP of Cyclocross.