2006 National Series/My 1st Pro Year is Over

The National Series is over, it was a crazy summer. We sold our house and bought a 40-foot Class A motor home.

The whole house sale/moving while working process took much more time and energy than I anticipated. Anyone who has seen our van can guess how full our house was! Of course training went out the window for a little while.

July 1st I took leave from Motorola in order to travel the second half of the series. Some races were good, others were really painful. I learned a lot my first year as a Pro and I really think next year will be great.

Support is crucial, Scott at Addictive made sure my bike was in perfect working order before I left. While on the road I blew two SID forks, one FOX RP3 rear shock and cracked a Titus frame. SRAM took care of me in Vermont, they let me demo a Reba for the Short Track. In Deer Valley, Anthony at FOX re-built my shock and contacted Titus for me. Titus was great, they two-day'd a new frame to Roaring Mouse Cycles in San Francisco for the Sonoma race. Sarah at Roaring Mouse Cycles did the frame swap free, even though they were backed up for the next two weeks, and they gave me a demo Titus racer-X to ride while they worked on my bike (thanks Chris!). Thank you to everyone for all of the help!

And of course thanks to Todd! He hauled all of my gear to both tech zones at every race and was ready to provide mechanical support as well as feed me. In Brian Head I was having a great race when I realized I had a flat. I had Stans in so I stopped, spun the wheel and added CO2 (BigAir), was able to ride ~5-minutes then was on a completely flat tire again (like riding on ice). I added air again knowing I just had to make it to the tech zone (another 5-minutes). In the tech zone Todd put on my spare wheel and I was able to finish 25th. I only lost three spots, I was pretty happy with that finish.

I took a week off and ate whatever I wanted, now back to training! Monday October 23, 2006 - 08:33pm