"Tech Feature"

I'm sure you've all seen James Huang do a run down of some PRO's bike on cyclingnews before, well my boy Dan Gaz decided he was going to run his own "Tech Feature" on my new Felt. He's a funny dude, so go check it out. http://onehundredpercentslowtwitch.blogspot.com/

He'll also be running the website/blogging for the Nature Valley Grand Prix this summer. Respect.

Seriously

How much did watching/ following the Tour of Cali make you want to race your bike? If you've already been racing you're bike, good for you, shut up. Although it was a pretty forgone conclusion that Levi was going to own this race, it didn't ruin the bike racing at all for me. I got to see everything I wanted to see, except for Armstrong giving someone, anyone the look and then smashing their face. Seriously though, the cat and mouse in the break on stage 7 into Pasadena, Levi freaking out as the officials released him from the start house in the prologue, Fabian being sweet as usual. Mancebo being away solo for 100 miles and then smashing the 3 up sprint from the front, Gustav Larsson's 486 watts for 30 min in the Solvang TT. Maybe I'm just dying to race so badly that a cat. 5 women's road race would have seemed riveting, but I think not. On top of it all, it was extra sweet to read Phil's stage by stage updates as he was baptized by fire into the PRO ranks. Good stuff. I don't have to suffer too much longer though, I think my first race is just over 2 weeks down the road, so then I'll stop whining so much around here and hopefully be able to vent via the bike and not the Internet.

So since it seems that it's that time of year in the blogosphere where errbody shows off all their new bike related goodies and stuff, well I got some too.


Got the team bike built up


And finally got a TT bike. (yeah yeah, I know I need a disk...)


Obligatory "look how aero my time trial bike is" photo

After watching the Oscars last night (I know, lame.) I'm bout to see what all this Heath Ledger nonsense is about and check out The Dark Knight this evening. Aaaannnndddd...I went to the grocery store this weekend and got ice cream and kit kats to mix together and feed my fat face with while I watch. Sounds "epic" if I do say so myself.

Also, look for an in depth review of my whips on Dan Gaz's Blog in the next few days.

Thank You A-Rod and Michael Phelps

I'd like to send out a very public "Thank You" to two of America's media darlings for making cycling's perpetual black eye a little less black. Now if all the other pro athletes in all these damn ball sports would come out of the closet, us cyclist may just be participating is the cleanest sport around by the time the Tour hits in July.

Now, I know most bike racers are pretty one dimensional and the only sport they care about is their own. Well, I'm an connoisseur of all sports, therefore I get my news from ESPN. I remember last year during the Tour, two of my favorite sports personalities (Michale Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser of PTI) were discussing The Tour, one of them said it wasn't worth watching because everyone was cheating and you can't believe anything you're seeing is actually real. That really pissed me off.(They don't know shit about cycling anyway and shouldn't even be allowed to comment about it, but...) Any moron can see that these refrigerator sized football players are as dirty as any athlete out there, but they refuse to hate on American ball sports like they will with cycling. Like I said, it really pisses me off. So hopefully these recent developments in mainstream American sports will make cycling look a little less terrible in the public's eyes. Maybe I'll send them some fan mail asking if now the World Series isn't worth watching because it's fake. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Sorry, I've had that brewing for a while and it feels nice to get it off my chest. So yeah, training is going well yada yada yada. Don't know when I'm actually gonna race though. It seems like nothing is popping up on the schedule for a while and anything I did have my eye on is probably about to get cancelled because the sponsor pulled out. I wish I was in AZ so I could be doing Valley of the Sun this weekend or something. I'm really starting to get the itch to test the legs. I really feel like I've been complaining quite a bit during this post, but I really am pleased with the way everything is going. I even have a nice little weekend planned with the lady and some friends I haven't seen in a while.

Sorry for the media-less update. I've been watching a lot of SNL Digital Shorts on Hulu.com, but I don't know if those are really appropriate for everyone who may stumble onto this thing.

Stay with me guys, things will turn the corner soon!

Is this thing on?

Hello again, thanks for stopping by this sparsely updated blog of mine. Although the updates have been few and far between, January had the highest traffic on the blog in its short year and a half existence. I'm not really sure why that was the case, but in any event, thanks for continuing to check up on me during the slow months.

So what has been going on in the life of Ryan? Well not much since I got back from California. The weather has been snowy, but I guess it could have come at a worse time. After Cali, Training Peaks was telling me it was time for some good rest. My Training Stress Balance was as far in the red as it has been in the last year or so. Power Dork Power Dork Power Dork. Things with the new squad (Official name: Panther/RGF pb Felt Bicycles) have started to speed up quickly now. We had our first team meeting this weekend in Columbus, OH. We got together with the full squad, director, Sponsoring CEO's and our Felt Rep. We went over a few things during a quick lunch, talked schedules, distributed some equipment and went out for a few hours as a group. Of course, Paul Martin was the first one to break the status quo in favor of a sign sprint. All in all, we've got a great group of guys and an awesome team of people in charge of the whole operation.





Still waiting on the shoes and gruppos from Shimano, as well as a few other things to turn that thing into my race machine for the season.

Since I'm writing this as I ride the trainer, I think this is where I'll wrap it up. Then I'm off to watch the Hoosiers attempt to pick up their first Big Ten win of the season and watch some Lost after that. Sounds like a rough evening.

Did you know Fabian Cancellara has a poster of Paul Martin above his bed?

Back to the Tundra

We'll I've got some time to kill here before I head off to the airport, but not enough to go back to sleep. I had yo get up early and take Dan to the airport, but since I don't fly out until 10 Cali time, I've got some moments to burn. Just spoke to some residents of the mid-west on the phone and it seems I'll be receiving a nice slap in the face when I step off the plane in Indy tonight. Word is they got 4-5in of snow in Bloomington last night, and there could be at least that much coming again tonight. Hopefully not.

My trip out here served its purpose nicely, allowing me to get a nice block of training in with no distractions and decent weather. I wasn't able to work on my tan at all because it was just cold enough to need legwarmers, armwarmers, a vest and cycling cap. Just the right temperature to faux pro it up and show off how much matching kit you have. Yesterday Dan and I headed down to Oceanside to ride the PCH (or Pacific Coast Highway for you non-Cali bra's) in search of some of those famous California sun rays and some slightly more level roads. Also with the hopes of a Phil The Pro sighting.



Well, no Phil "Gainon" or Phil Gaimon sightings, but the ride was pretty excellent anyway. I was however left with a slightly sour taste in my mouth because of the number of "Race Faces" I got from the 38 year old triathletes in their aero bars slaughtering it at 17 mph. Why is it so hard to respond to another cyclist when he waves at you? Anyway, I could go on about that issue for a while, especially in Bloomington... We'll my minutes here are growing few, so I gotta get going. Racin' starts soon.

Training Trip

I've been out here in California since late Thursday afternoon. The riding has been awesome so far, but the weather has been sub-par for California. After a few hour lay over in Vegas we got into Redlands with only a bit of daylight left, so Dan and I quickly put the bikes together and did a quick hour around Redlands, and I showed him the damn TT course from the Redlands Cycling Classic. It's still a bitch even after being away for almost a year. I'm still on Eastern time, so I've been fighting to stay up until 9 out here and waking up at like 7 every morning. Yesterday Dan and I were feeling ambitious so we headed up the mountain towards Big Bear Lake, with the plan being a loop of the lake, then coming back the way we came. Google Earth didn't do the extremeness of this route justice. Redlands sits at about 1000ft above sea level and we managed to see this sign along the way up.



It was raining too hard once we got to Onyx Summit (just under 9k) to take a picture. I'm guessing we did between 11 and 12 thousand ft of climbing on the day. And literally climbed for all of the first 3 hours of the ride. This was the first time I've ever been exposed to exercise at elevation, and around 7k ft it got noticably harder to get decent breaths of air, it was actually kinda cool. We turned around after 3.5 hours and started the plunge back down. It poured on us the whole time. There were points where we couldn't see more than 50ft up the road. It was in the 30's at that elevation, so our bare and wet hands could barely pull the brake levers. We got back to Redlands with a ride time of 5:15 and the temp were back in the 60's. I know people in the cycling community use the word epic a lot, but this ride was seriously epic.



Today we did another long one and my legs were feeling yesterdays efforts for sure. I don't want to power dork out on you guys too hard, but at 142 lbs, I rarely see these kind of Kilojoules. 8500kj's in the last two days, so I think we're gonna take it a bit easier tomorrow.



My teammate Dan Campbell has been smashing me on the climbs out here. He's on some pretty solid form right now. Things are looking good for the team this year. I've got the compression socks on and it's time for me to go eat some recovery Oreo's. I'll try to get some mo' photos once the weather gets decent enough to get the camera out of the plastic bag.

New Kit

So those are the threads we'll be rockin' this season.

Here is a bit more info on the team page