So I have negated this blog for a long time. Almost a year. After my teammates reminded me I have one, I figured I should start using it again. So I'm going to quickly sum up all the time since my last blog post.
I spent a short stint on the GW Varsity Soccer team until I eventually had to leave due to financial reasons. Unfortunately being a walk-on doesnt pay for school. Still, I was glad to have done that and accomplish one of my dreams I've had since I was 5 years old and first knew anything about collegiate sports.
As far as working goes, I've pretty much stopped on refereeing soccer games (for the moment), and now work at City Sports in Georgetown, FoBoGro in Foggy Bottom, and Hudson Trail Outfitters in Pentagon City.
So yes, my life is quite busy, but its still manageable. And frankly, I love my jobs. City Sports I get to tell people about sports equipment, which basically means I get to shop for myself while learning about product to help people (and get awesome discounts on gear). FoBoGro I deliver food on my bike (which also means discounted food!). And HTO I get to work on bikes all day (and get sick discounts on almost any outdoor stuff I can think of!). So in the end, you may say it sucks to have 3 jobs, but I absolutely love it.
This spring I have once again been racing bikes for GW. Its been a pretty awesome season. I upgraded to C's with some of my other teammates and we've hammered the ACCC pretty hard. Had a bunch of top 10 finishes and even won a preme at a USAC crit that I doubled up on after doing a collegiate crit earlier that day (and won $20 worth of food. $12 to wings for the team and $8 to a hoagie for me).
Its also just been a great season overall with the people I've become friends with. Theres so many really awesome people that I cant fit you all on here, so I'm just going to say that people from American, WVU, Loyola, Georgetown, and UMD are all pretty awesome. And if you're wondering why theres a picture of a bunch of topless guys above, well, it was the first 80 degree day of the season and we were all running next to cyclists racing up a hill. Honestly, that was probably the most fun I've ever had at a cycling race.
So now looking forward. Conference championships at Virginia Tech this weekend. Remember what happened here last year? Forget? Ok, here's a picture to remind you.
My first ever bike crash in my first ever crit. That was fun. I'm just hoping to not repeat last year. So lets look ahead to the races.
Road Race (36 miles) - Lots of climbing. Gravity is my friend going down, but not going up, so that should make the race interesting.
Team Time Trial (12 miles) - While I have a lot of experience TTTing, not many of my fellow TTTers do, but they have the advantage on me since they are better in the hills than I am. The TTT course is exactly the same as the road race, except in the other direction. Climbs are now descents and descents are now climbs. Should be a good time.
Crit (30 minutes) - Probably my least favorite crit course ever. It has a hill right before the finish line which helps the little guys, not me. Hopefully power will be able to overcome it and I will be able to smash the hill into submission. We will soon see.
Until then....
J-Mac
