An Epic Wrap up PART ONE...

SO, for the last 2 weeks I've been racking up the miles in my van, and on my road, mountain, and track bikes while on a journey of truly epic proportions. The planning of said epicness never actually took shape, and the trip just sort of kept evolving, hahah...TOTALLY not the way I usally roll! Anyways, I was talking to my friend Talayna one night and decided that she needed some company...but she lives in NAPLES FREAKIN FLORIDA!!! Ha! oh well, I hadn't seen her in more than 10 years, and this was likely going to be the only chance I was going to have to make the trip. She was right in the middle of tapering for the Crossfit Games that will be held July 13-15th in Los Angeles, and I figured having a distraction around would be exactly what she needed to fine tune things...well, maybe not really... But, the trip just wouldn't be nearly crazy enough if there wasn't a fair amount of bike racing and shenanigans thrown in there...so heres how things ended up going down...

Started things off in Chattanooga, packed the car with 3 bikes, a couple sets of wheels, tools, a wheelie cooler, cycling kits galore, some clean clothes, and a whole lotta whoop ass =) Cruised to Nashville to visit some friends Thursday the 21st of June and had a great time...

This may, or may not have happened, bahaha!!!

Friday arrives and I meet my parents for lunch in Nashville as well as some old family friends that I hadn't seen in too many years. It was really nice to catch up and eat some great food with super folks. After lunch, my parents rolled with me to Memphis for the remainder of the weekend. The plan for Memphis was to meet my friend Joe Swanson at the Stanky Creek mtb trails for a pre-ride of the race courses on friday afternoon. Joe was THE MAN! He has the trails completely dialed in, and we cruised the loops at about 10mph while catching up and chatting the whole way. What an awesome little trail system Stanky Creek is!!! After the ride I met up with my parents at my brother Andy's house and we all went out to dinner before meeting up with Andy's wife Gillian later on. Somehow as the evening progressed, we decided that a 6am 40 mile road ride would be a brilliant idea, hahaha! Well, I wasn't scheduled to race until 3pm, so that wouldnt be a problem =)

Saturday we rode in the AM, visited all morning, and then I saddled up to race in the afternoon. The TT was a lot of fun, and I was able to take the win just ahead of my Cysco Cycles team mate Aaron Smith who finished 2nd. GO TEAM CYSCO! Saturday night was already planned out, and we went down to Beale St for dinner and drinks with more of our Memphis friends. Somewhere in all that, we wound up taking a $40 cab ride home and the cabbie had to wake my brother and I up once we arrived at his place, LOL! awesome! and I'd be racing the XC event in about 8 hours =)



Coming out of the gully during the TT

Sunday's XC race unfolded just like all the others. Kill the start, get the holeshot, and set a pace that no one is going to be able to hold for very long...well...this time, the guy in second made me suffer on the front for 30 freakin minutes before he cracked. Damn, that hurt. The power meter says that first 30 minutes was at 340 watts...on a mountain bike, in the woods, that is some pain...but, thankfully he did finally crack, and I was able to set a steady pace for the rest of the race to secure another win for the Cysco Cycles Team =) I think these were wins #4 and #5 for the year...

Took this Log Fly-over WAAAYY too hot on Lap #1 and overshot the landing, hahah! Whoopsy ;)

Stay tuned for the updates from the MIDDLE section of the Epic Journey of Epicness...