My current weight, 173.  The lightest I have been in January since my Senior year of high school. 

What does that mean?  I don't know really.  Last year I was 185 at this time and thought that was light for january.  I would like to see 165 by March 28th(first race of the year).

My bike will be lightened up quite a bit this year as well!!  I started building up a Specialized Tarmac Pro SL on Saturday down at the the shop.  I'm guessing it will drop my bike weight by at least 4lbs.  I weighed the old bitch before we started tearing her down and she was a beefy 20lb 8oz.  I'm guessing the new girl will come in around 16.5lbs with my new reynolds deep V ultralights.  We shall see.

October  -  Took off after the last race of the season.  Let body and mind heal.

November - had a good start of the month with a FTP test that I thought was great considering I took october off.  Rocked the rest of the month.  It ended up being the 2nd biggest month of the year in terms of hours ridden.

 December - motivation wanned, I pussed out for a while, lost focus.

January - back on the horse...

My first race back after letting my ribs heal was the State RR champ in Oak Brook.  On our way up to the race Mr. McCombs was screwing with his new GPS that wasn't working and didn't notice the construction zone we were heading into at 70mph.  Hi Mr. State Trooper...  Whoops.  Better get some primes to cover that ticket.

The race started pretty hecticly  after the registration process was screwed up by some pissy computers.  No warmup for anyone.  

 Aaron and I helped push the pace the whole time.  Being very vocal and spending ALOT of time at the front.  Aparently that was a good thing.  

The final stretch was a wide open 2 lane road about 600m long that you could see the finish line from the whole time.  When we turned onto it on the last lap I was 3 wheels back.  Well aparently none of those guys wanted to lead out the sprint.  The pulled off quickly and I found my nose in the wind with 500 meters to go.  I guess I better go.  That was the most painful 500m I've ever done.   Somehow, I managed to hold off everyone including Aaron who I barely nipped at the line.  We went 1, 2. AWESOME!!!  

  Me on the left, Aaron on the far right.

Me after realizing Aaron and I had gone 1,2.  

Stats for the race :

Time:  58:12

Avg mph: 26.2

Avg Pwr: 274

Norm Pwr: 327

Avg HR:  179

I was in great shape after proctor, and wanted to get some more points so I could upgrade by the end of the season.  So I went and did a Cat 4 superweek race in Olympia Fields.  I went up there only because it was supposed to be a 25 mile crit.  They were running behind and shortened it to 12 miles.  BS.  I ended up winning, which made the shortening of the race a little easier to take.

About a week later R. Michels and I drove 4 hrs during the midde of the week up to a Super Week Road Race.  Bad decision.  When you find yourself debating about doing a superweek race, DON'T DO IT!!  The races are horribly organized.  It ran about 1.5 hrs behind schedule.  On the second of 8 laps, we turned up the steepest of the hills on the course and I looked up to see some dbag COMPLETELY STOPPED right in front of me.  I played a game of human pin ball then and found myself laying on my side in the ditch. F*** that hurt.  I chased for a lap to try and catch the group but I was over a minute down and didn't close the gap any.  I pulled the plug, DNF.  Ryan ended up 7th.

I was out for 3 weeks after that with no riding.