The pressure is on

Things are getting down to the wire, I will be at the team training camp in a few weeks and have a crit to race the same weekend then will be looking at the Nevada and Oregon RAAM challenges for april and may. Been hitting the manufacturers pretty hard for a wheel sponsorship that is within my price range and have been getting the bikes dialed in for the endurance factor. I have been accepted to the wounded warrior projects national campaign team and am also going to be in the after action review magazine. The media machines are starting to roll and it seems I am not escaping any of it.

The Garmin 800 is probably the best training tool I have in my arsenal and am very glad I picked one up. It has been my sole mode of motivation and self regulation at this point since I have no other riders/team members out here on the west to ride or train with. My climbing pace has doubled since the start of training (still not happy with it) and my distances have more than doubled. My descents have reached speeds up to 56 mph and my cornering has resemblance of a train on rails.

My gym workouts are starting to feel simple and my nutrition has found a happy place in taste and seems like a shopping spree every week with the amount of food I am eating.
Just one problem

I can’t seem to build a long enough playlist for my rides.

Travis Pastrana is racing RAAM?

I think this may be my only chance to be able to beat him at something!, lol

Probably not, the guy is an animal. For those who don't know who Travis Pastrana is just go on to youtube and do a search with his name. His accolades are more than human.

According to his Facebook on Feb 2nd he posted this.

"We signed up for the RAAM (a bicycle race from CA to MD) this year in the 8 man pro division, so today I went on a 50 mile ride with teammates, CowboyKenny690 and Todd Jacobs. To win, we will have to average 23 mph for 5 straight days. Today we averaged 19mph for just under 3 hours... It's going to be a grueling couple of months!"




I am super stoked to see a person of this caliber jump into something like an event the size of RAAM. I am actually very excited to see how he does even though the brute force will be carried as a team overall. it will still be interesting to be able to watch it all unfold behind me.....Far behind.......mua ah ha ha

I doubt he will be smiling and doing double backflips but I can bet the bus antics will be something to be filmed on nitro circus.

although I haven't seen his name on the official race roster, it will be a definite media frenzy if he actually registers and follows through with the claim.

And hey Travis! if by chance you or one of yours read this, hit me up on twitter @gonefirefightin

otherwise I will see you at the start line!

Poking fun at myself

Stairway to heaven

Since I have the hills nearby and the need to stay on the bike for several hours a day in training for the race I decided to put my new Garmin 800 to use and joined the Classic climbing challenge. This will be climbing 105,312 vertical feet on the bike from March 15 to April 30. Considering I am doing close to 5,000 feet a day I don’t think it will be much of a problem.

There is no real reason in itself for joining the challenge but simply gives me a benchmark and some much needed motivation to gauge my fitness amongst others in the same challenge. I am not sure of the total amount of riders across the world that will be doing the challenge starting this Thursday but it will be interesting to see how I will rank amongst the pros and full timers of the sport. But I am mostly excited about getting to break in my new Garmin.

The spot I am riding is a huge chunk of hill that tops a tad over 5,000 feet in less than 15 miles. The ascents are constant with no flats for rest and the descents are very fast and riddled with tons of 15 mph hairpin turns. I am planning on mounting a couple go pro cams to the bike in order to capture the madness and give you a taste of some of the speeds and cornering. I am looking forward to this little mental carrot of motivation and being able to check myself in this dry time of training.

My legs are already screaming! I like it!