A weekend with no racing

Well it sucks, this past weekend there wasn't a race within a 14 hour drive of Austin. This time of year I hate having to train through a weekend. We've been training hard for months now, and all week long all I look forward to is the next race. Having to wait another week is a bit un-motivating. So what did we do instead you may ask? Well, we sat around, bought a keg and ate pizza. Just kidding, that's what I would have liked to have done, but we didn't. I took the boys out to Vanderpool.

The Vanderpool area is in the hill country of Texas, north west of San Antonio, and it's wicked riding out there. Andrew, Josh, Matty, and Joe are all familiar with this area, as is Lance and many of the old US Pro riders that have trained out of Austin. The USA National team has held many training camps in this area. What I love about it is the climbs, there are so many. After 75km of riding we had done over 4000 feet of climbing, that's hard to come by if your not in one of the mountainous regions of the States.



Along for the ride was Mark "I'm hungry" Pozniak, Zach "do my ankles look swollen?" Bell, Jason " www.jasonsager.com " Sager and myself. Sager and I have trained in this area many times before, but Mark and Zach hadn't. We did around 5 hours, with Sager giving us the business up every single climb. I really wanted to push it on the climbs on the way home, so I did; just trying to hold Jay's wheel was a task. Jay is a pro mountain biker, and has pulled off some top 5's, maybe even 3's, at NORBA events. His season is totally under way, and he's hoping to really be flying for Sea Otter. The Jet Fuel boys on the other hand, well, we can be a bit out of tune as May is our month.

At the end of the day we had seen more than enough hills and headwinds to last a lifetime, so we headed into the closest "city" to an awesome Mexican restauraunt for some calorie replacing burritos. It felt so rewarding.

Next up, the Cold Spring Road Race. Word on the street is "it's one of the hardest courses in Texas", so we're going to try and get Pozzy his first win of the season. On Friday night Zach is going to test his track legs out for the first time in a while on the track in Houston. We'll tell you how it all goes.