I Live For This

Well, I feel an appropriate amount of time and enough exciting things have passed since my last entry to warrant another blog post. In chronological order, the notable happenings of the past 2 months were as follows:

1. I started working at Mellow Mushroom, a pizza place in downtown Winston-Salem. It has given me a new persepctive/outlook on the food industry and I really wish everyone, had to work in food service at least for a short while at some point in their life.

2. I got engaged to the love of my life, Briana Paxton.

3. My fiance graduated with her Master's degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania

4. I graduated with my Master's degree in Health and Exercise Science.

5. I signed up for The Winston Salem Cycling Classic, an 18k pro criterium held in downtown Winston-Salem at 8pm tonight, Saturday June 15th.

6. I signed up for my first Half-Ironman. Muncie 70.3 on Saturday, July 13th.

As you can tell, life has been pretty exciting for me over the past couple of months. A lot of really cool and exciting things have happened, all of which I am incredibly thankful for. It is hard to believe that I have been living in Winston-Salem for nearly two years now. It seems like just a couple of weeks ago that I loaded up my car in Northern Virginia and headed south to start my life in North Carolina. In just a month and a half I will again load up my car again to embark for the Midwest, but first and foremost, I have a couple of races to attend to.

When I moved to Winston-Salem I was a very mediocre Cat 3 bike racer. Thankfully during my time here I have gotten to ride with and learn from some very knowledgeable and extremely fast riders. I attribute a lot of my success in the cycling world to Jon Hamblen, my coach for the past two years, and Nathaniel Ward, who believed in me enough to take me under his wing last year and mentor me as I began competing with the big boys. A huge shout-out also goes out to Stephen Vogel my riding buddy, and Ken's bike shop for keeping my bike in working order, because lord knows if there is one thing I havent gotten much better at it's fixing bikes. 

Tonight I will get to race some of the fastest professional bike racers on the east coast. With 18k of prize money at stake, I imagine the pack will be out for blood. While my training as of late has been alot more 3-sport oriented, I still look forward to seeing what I can do. The past couple of weeks have been wet ones, which has forced my bike and I to the trainer. I have made sure to incorporate alot of quality into my 2-3 rides a week, and although my power isn't where it was last season, neither is my weight (amazing what a couple of runs a week can do). The field tonight will be full of familiar faces, and some not so familiar, hailing from the west coast and further south. Even though there is nearly 12 hours before the gun goes off, I am already jittery with excitement; I live for this shit.