Blake Harlan: April 2007

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K$ took the overall for conference way to go buddy! I had a good day today as well. Updates to come.

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Papa smurf took the w today. I got a flat and ended up as the only neutral support since the officials said it was ok to rejoin the group without my number. The ttt is next. Updates to come.

Fort Leisure Race.

Well last time i updated, Cu was wreaking havoc on Durango and the Ft. Lewis kids. The weekend was a roller coaster of good and bad fortune. I personally had good races minus a couple of mishaps.

The first day was the TT, the boys took 3rd on what was a disappointing ride for them. However this got them pretty damn angry and those who beat them in the TT probably wish they hadn't when it was time to get our crit action on. The went well. I had really good legs and was basically at the front covering attacks from FLC. That is until 35 min in when i had cramps in my calf/beind my knee. I don't really know what caused it but its still hurting today. I was able to sit ack and recover for a few laps then move back up towards the front with 3 to go. it wasn't enough time but Brad gave Kiel and excellent lead out for the W. Everything about it was perfect.

The next day was the RR. It was only about 5.5 miles long with a about a 300m dirt section, and about a 1k short hard steep climb back up the plateau. I again had great legs but on lap 2 as the field was starting to shatter, i dropped my chain on the climb. I got it right back on, sprinted to bridge back up quickly as the pace was pretty high and right as i bridged, Tyler Sheldon and Troy Wells through down huge attacks. I followed wheels hoping we would slow down for just a bit. With my head down i realized we had slowed suddenly. thinking we had stayed with the group during the attack i looked up only to realize the guy in front of me had blown up! i tried really hard chasing for about a 1/2 lap but once the group was down the road there was nothing i could do. I got caught by the follow group/peleton but broke away from them on the climb the next lap. I caught teammates Nate and Kurt who had dropped from the lead group. Kurt then got a flat and me and Nate pushed on. We caught Brad who had flatted out of the lead group and rode in with him. We had a fun sprint at the end and i got 13th, the lead group had only finished with 12. I had a good ride and was happy with it but wished my chain incident hadn't occurred. Unfortunately, dropped chains and flat tires were not the worst things that happened. Kiel crashed 1st lap due to some guy riding carelessly. He rode strong and finished the race with what we all thought was a broken elbow.

Our hotel rooms were less than ideal this weekend. $29 night doesn't get you far in the states. I thought someone would have figured that out by now. A quote to describe the living conditions this weekend, "I wouldn't take a girl here even to rape".

Did i mention that hot water was scarce?

On the way back the other van had a bet, which was taken up. "i bet you wouldn't go jump naked into that creek over there".

Unfortunately after i got home/back to my room, i didn't realize someone had left a bomb in it. Yea......about that.....i swear i was going to clean it! Oh, mom would be soooo disappointed right now.

Well, yesterday i got a massage. My right leg, right behind my knee is still giving me some grief. The lady said she thinks i strained a tendon. Is that bad? anyway, it seems to be healing but slowly. Today is a big ride day, especially since i didn't ride yesterday as it rained for 24 hr straight! Hope everyone is well. Good luck to all those going out to the NORBAS.

OH, one last laugh. Check this out. Apparently when i went to Puerto Rico for the Ultimate Dirt Challenge and won the U23, i got 16 UCI points. well happens to be that's better than Trebon, wicks and Decker! So that puts me as 9th ranked American in the world! is that not one of the funniest things you have ever heard!

http://usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=2895

2007 UCI Mountain Bike Rankings
April 17, 2007

Individual Men’s Rankings
1. Chris Jongewaard (AUS) 330
2. Geoff Kabush (CAN) 290
3. Jader Zoli (USA) 280
4. Todd Wells (Durango, Colo.) 235
15. Adam Craig (Bend, Ore.) 151
19. Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Boulder, Colo.) 149
29. Sam Schultz (Missoula, Mont.) 112
33. Michael Broderick (Chilmark, Mass.) 108
43. Sam Jurekovic (Colorado Springs, Colo.) 91
57. Jeremiah Bishop (Harrisonburg, Va.) 76
85. Colin Cares (Boulder, Colo.) 60
218. Blake Harlan (Austin, Texas) 16
229. Ryan Trebon (Ventura, Calif.) 15
284. Barry Wicks (Corvallis, Ore.) 10
321. Carl Decker (Bend, Ore.) 8

Anyway have fun laughing at that.

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Terrorizing durango

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On the way to durango.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

Well in light of sucking it up these past three weeks of racing i can say that i have had fun and learned a lot. Its times like these when you train hard and continuously make mistakes that you really find out if you enjoy it or not. Hopefully Andrew Carnegie was right when he said I would only succeed if i enjoyed cycling. I have been pretty hard on myself lately. Racing in Colorado Springs this past weekend was a bust, but in reflection i realized it wasnt that bad; in fact I probably learn more about myself and racing when i do bad then when i do good. Whether it be from myself or all those who i look up to and give me their advice. This weekend was kind of a realization for me. I came out of a bad crit with 150% mental preparedness for the RR the following day. Well the RR came and i got dropped again. At the time i was givin'er all she had and still got popped. After the race i had my 20 minutes of self hatred but then started to piece together everything that went wrong and what i could have done better. In that regard, i think i learned a lot more than if i had just straight up won the race. Well, that was just turned out to be the theme of my week. I realized that no matter how hard you try at something, you can still hit that wall and its how you deal with that adversity that allows you progress and move forward or fight it and eventually hit it again. Needless to say I am ready to ride next weekend in Durango. I wont be making the same mistakes again this time and hope i can have a good result. In other news other than Blake's life relizations, I've been spending this week putting in some good training. 3.5 hrs yesterday and 4.5 hrs today. Today was spent solo. I did one of my favorite loops here. Boulder to Lyons, to Peak to Peak Hwy, to Ward and back down to Boulder. S. Saint Vrain Rd. is one of the most beautiful rides ever. You start in the canyon with the tall rocks all around you and climb up to the top where you look over the cliffs and 14ers still up above you. The ride was really nice especially for about 3hrs of it i think only 5 or 6 cars passed me.

Then of course i got to stop at one of my favorite stores, the Ward General Store.

And of course i got to see Roscoe.

Well thats about it for me right now. Cya!

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Welcome to class as a geography major

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Todays ride was cold but awesome in its own way. Twas like riding in a winter wonderland.

One Way Ticket to Reality

Well this past weekend in Phoenix was quite a wakeup call into reality in several aspects. I finished top 20 in the time trial, top 20 in the super D, 25th in the STXC after getting pulled and DNF'ed the cross country after my seat breaking and crashing into cactus. While I have already started this year by hitting last year's goal of top 20 I found myself pretty bummed about my performance. When you put a lot of time and energy to train and do things right, to go out on those days when you don’t even want to get out of bed, well...sometimes you just expect you will get more out of it. That’s what I was thinking this weekend. The Time Trial went ok and the Super D was just a suffer fest/ Time Trial #2. But I still found myself discouraged. The Short track was a disaster. I felt good was 110% there mentally, had a great call up, got the hole shot and then blew it from there. I had entirely too much pressure in my tires but besides that it was entirely operator error. I just straight up sucked. I read the course wrong and raced it wrong, kept crashing, losing wheels along with my motivation and ended up being one of the first ones pulled. Purely pathetic. With some anger to throw into the pot of emotions I was even more driven to do well in the XC. Yea, well that didn’t happen. I had absolutely horrible legs, and was falling of train after train. Discouraging to say the least. Well then to add insult to injury my seat broke and I slammed my foot into a cholla cactus which is a creation of the devil himself. I had enough and called it a race, not like I could have changed that but oh well. So to some up my racing experience this weekend it would correct to say that it was simply a motivation deflator.

However, its times like these when you have to keep your chin up and enjoy everything else around you including other people’s achievements. Bryan had great races this past weekend. Making his debut in the pro field was no joking matter. Bryan had his game face on all weekend and while at times it got demoralizing racing against JHK and Todd Bryan held his own and finished in very respectable positions in both the STXC and the XC. Congrats DAWG! Shep got the "I don’t give a damn I don’t give a fuck" award. Shep mentally flogged himself after every one of his races. And shep all I have to say is that even though you didn’t win or podie or whatever, you might have forgotten that YOU ON ANTIBIOTICS IN THE FUCKING DESERT! So through perseverance shep in my opinion had a better weekend than I did. Martini during the weekend got the WORLD WORST GAS AWARD. Martini routinely reminded Bryan Shep and I that he doesn’t like to go #2 while on the road. Needless to say it was a smelly ride home.

Yesterday and today I have just been dragging. Forcing myself to get out and ride. Today I had a hard training day that I called short. I just didn’t have any legs or motivation to keep going. All I could think about was sleeping. I hate not doing my workouts. Every time I feel like im falling behind in the overall game. But I have learned one thing this year and that’s to listen to my body. With that said I don’t think im going to sea otter. Too much travel, too much money and not enough fun. I think I need to chill out for a day or two and catch my breath. The last thing I need is to get sick.

Here are some pics and videos of this weeks adventures. Enjoy!

Troy rocking the Free Sager and Dopers Suck (Ying and Yang?)