Team USA

Quick Sound-Off: I think there's a difference between playing to win and playing not to loose. It seems like I'm seeing more examples of the latter in Team USA this year. It's a subtle but important difference. Speed Skating, Figure Skating, Half-Pipe, Hockey, the list goes on. Now I love the Olympics just as much as anyone else, some may say I'm a little fanatical every two years. I think Team USA is the strongest out there physically but mentally I think we are used to winning and think it's some sort of entitlement. Just the two cents of the Arm-Chair Olympian. How do we overcome???

New Uni's

Check out the new Summit Freewheeler's race kit! Freshened up quite a bit this year vs. the past 8 years of blue and white. The ladies and guys didn't like so much white on the uniform. Very hard to clean and very revealing once wet! Check these babies out:

Super excited to be riding through NE Ohio with these!

**Sigh** Riding a bike in my basement is not fun.

I live in NE Ohio, we have 10-12" of snow on the ground. It's currently 14 degrees outside but feels like 4 as the temperature slides down to a high, yes I said high, on Tuesday of -4 degrees. That means the warmest it will be all day is below zero. I don't mind riding in cold but this is ludicrous.

Soo...I rode inside last night. My workout consisted of a quick warm up, three 8-10 minute steady state intervals with 3 minutes rest in between and an every so brief cool down and stretch. Boring.

Here's a picture to explain how exciting this was:

Sponsors

Like I mentioned in my previous posts that I will be leading the mens team for Summit Freewheelers, here are our sponsors for 2014:

You should support these folks because they support biking and bike racing!

Summit Freewheelers

Hi Everyone,

As I may have mentioned, I've been riding with a local group of bike racers named Summit Freewheelers! For 2014 I will be the Men's Team Captain which totally kicks ass!

The Summit Freewheelers is a bicycle road racing club dedicated to developing members' road racing skills by providing training and racing opportunities, training rides, and merchandise discounts.

We sponsor the region-wide Races at the Lake (RATL) series in the spring.

• The Summit Freewheelers is located in Summit County (Akron), Ohio
• We are the area's leading bicycle racing club—the largest promoter and sponsor of bicycle racing in the area! We sponsor USAC sanctioned races.
• We have over 80 members including men and women ages 15 to 70, beginners to experts, and cyclists who just like to ride fast.
• Our club provides members with an opportunity to race, train, and just ride and shmooze with lots of other cyclists 

If your interested, drop me a line at mmc003@yahoo.com! 

Resolve

Life has been complicated over the past year, search for understanding and purpose can be time consuming. I've done a lot over the past year and I've let some things slip over the past year. In my search for meaning I've become a bit complacent at work and with my riding, not striving as much as I could or should. I've taken steps to remedy these things and my 2014 blogs will be about my journey to resolve. I'll talk about many things, mainly biking though. I hope not to bore you too much!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Getting back to it!

Well, it really has been awhile, almost a year to this day!

I've been doing a lot of riding, working and living over the past 12 months.

I joined a race development team here in Ohio called Summit Freewheelers and participated in my first road races ever! I did okay finishing mid-pack which was okay with me, especially without any sort of formal training plan! Here are some pics from the season:

Lot's of fun things this year with plenty more to come! I forgot how much I loved posting here vs. twitter or FB! More posts to come, I plan to layout my training program to help put me in the top 10 of the Cat 5 racers in NE Ohio!