shannon koch

2011-03-14T19:42:00.001-04:00

shannonlkoch.com is currently down. stay tuned!!

i heart lightweight wheels.

2011-03-02T19:29:00.002-05:00

looky looky....

http://www.lightweight.info/index.php?id=126&L=1%2F

2011-03-02T17:18:00.002-05:00

thanks to Albabici for sponsoring me in 2011 with Nalini clothing/shoes, Limar helmets, Hibros sport cremes, and SMP saddles!!

grazie! :)

gluten-free

2011-02-23T06:26:00.003-05:00

so i'm doing an experiment. my tummy rumbles alot. not sure if it has something to do with gluten....it is highly suspect. many people have an inkling that i might be intolerant....soooooo to find out for sure i'm going gluten free for a month and logging how i feel each day. i've been going for 6 days now. so far i seem to feel less lethargic during the day and i'm way more awake in the evenings (which may or may not be a good thing).

lethargic shannon=grumpy shannon

energetic shannon= as paula says "the funniest person you've ever met"

currently listening to boys die in trainer class through the office wall. fun times.

this time last year.

fast forward

2011-02-19T15:11:00.005-05:00

21-29

2011-01-31T15:49:00.003-05:00

readddddyyyyyy.....go. ^^^^^^^^^^

all caught up.

2011-01-22T21:59:00.002-05:00

tomorrow is our last winter training crit, supposed to be uhhh......not warm and cloudy. sounds beautiful. we'll see if the crazy asian lady tries to rip onto the course and manslaughter some cyclists again. newsflash lady, you'll have alot more than an event permit to be worried about when you plow someone down, just sayin' think about your options.

2011-01-19T14:42:00.002-05:00

It is a sad day for cycling. Carla Swart, 23, riding for HTC-Columbia this year was killed on a training ride today when she was hit by a truck. Please send out your prayers to her and her family. She was an amazing athlete and an even more amazing person. RIP Carla!

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/carla-swart-killed-in-south-africa

2011-01-16T18:27:00.002-05:00

today i dressed in all white. it's after labor day. shoot me.

12/365

2011-01-13T13:47:00.002-05:00

a short run followed by some grapevines.

Grapevine Running Drill

The grapevine (karaoke) running drill works ancillary muscles not directly used in running and helps loosen the hip flexor and increases mobility in the region. Important things to keep in mind when performing this drill:

-Arms should rotate the opposite direction from the legs.

-Shoulders and trunk should face forward.

-Stand up straight.

-Stay on the ball or forefoot.

Yes I'm easily amused.

catching up on my 365

2011-01-12T21:06:00.001-05:00

coming along nicely.

365 project begins.

2011-01-05T16:50:00.002-05:00

new year.

2011-01-03T16:00:00.002-05:00

its. 2011 and i've decided a few things.....

1. i'm doing a 365 project consisting of a photo a day of the world through my eyes.....i'm calling it "walk a mile, skip a mile"

2. i'm going to try to be less cynical.....we'll see how that goes. but don't get me wrong i firmly believe there's a difference between cynicism and sarcasm. the sarcasm will never cease. ;)

3. i need to read more. i intend to finish a whole 3 books. anyone that knows me knows this is a serious stretch for me......real serious.

**my website is undergoing renovations. i'll post up when it's finished. should be an exciting year. the first 3 days have presented many surprises already. momentum. only 362 to go.

is this thing on?

2010-11-05T16:48:00.002-04:00

way too many internet portals of communication.....obviously this one has slipped for me a bit. what can i say.....facebook has taken over the universe. and what a wonderful thing it is :)))

i'll try and start updating this more for those that would like to know what's going on with me but are part of the 2% that are sticking it to the man and not getting a facebook....

at the moment getting ready for clinics this weekend. started to train again this week. lots of decisions for an indecisive person to make. ideas?

cold rainy and dirty. aka. diessenhoffen

2010-05-22T14:19:00.002-04:00

the thursday following bern/lyss we had a kriterium not to far from my house in steinmaur. it was a holiday in switzerland.

when i woke up and looked outside, all i thought was, great.

it was pouring rain and there was no indication of letting up.

our race was not until the afternoon so i had a lazy slow morning. breakfast, some internet, some packing. then trudi, sepp and i got in the car and headed to embrach to meet ernst for the race.

we arrived to the race and i walked around in the rain for who knows how long looking for the "garderobe"

i then proceeded to pin my number sitting in the van freezing. you really have to reach within to pull out the motivation for a cold and wet kriterium. everyone was on the trainers and for some stupid reason i said that i wanted to go on the road to warm up. i sat in my chair thinking, shannon.......are you nuts? why did you say no to the trainer??

ernst came and put the hot creme on our legs. which, thanks to hibros, SAVED me during the race. after that there was a free trainer and i hopped on for 15 minutes. then it was time to go. i grabbed my bike and my helmet and headed to the start, sans leg warmers. very hard decision for me. on the start i realized i didn't have my gel. the race was about 75min long. oh well.

the first points sprint i tried to counter, we got a small gap and then i looked back to see one of the team's chasing their teammate again. oh joy, thank you very much. after the 2nd points sprint i countered again and this time taking only andrea with me. we had a good pace going for awhile and were making alot of group on the group. every 5 laps we had a points sprint. for awhile we alternated. then we got extremely close to lapping the group when i was told we need to slow down because if you catch the group then you have to start to sprint for points again. it's a mix between a points race and a scratch race on the road. interesting.

in the end i ended up 2nd and andrea first. it was a good race and i was glad to be off the front and not sitting in the field. i really hate kriteriums with constant sprinting. NOT my fav.

thanks to andrea who had some baby wipes after the race and actually cleaned my face for me before the podium :) this is when i started to get extremely cold. this is where my current sickness originated i am sure. dirt and water soaked we had the flower ceremony and then headed off to the showers.

yes europe, i will miss your after race showers. the US is so behind in that evolution.

bern/lyss

2010-05-22T13:52:00.003-04:00

if i've ever felt like a fat tub of lard,

it was at our race in bern/lyss.

coming off a rather disappointing weekend prior, i was determined to do better.

it was a really early morning for the race. i stayed in a hotel close to the course to avoid getting up at 4am. from my experience shannon at 4am is not something anyone should encounter.

we pre-rode the course the afternoon before. it is a pretty difficult course. different now than when i raced the world cup back in 06' in the same city. i would never have thought i'd be back there at any point in my life. there was a pretty tough climb every lap, of which we had to do 3. was long and steady then the last half pitched up to a relatively steep grade. was going to hurt i could tell.

we woke up and had some breakfast, egg, bread, jelly, honey, and yogurt. then i quickly dashed off to go ride to the course and meet the team. to my delight it was not so cold that morning and all i needed were arm warmers on the start. wow ONLY arm warmers in May. i've become so swiss with the weather never peaking over 70 degrees. florida will be a HUGE shock to the system when i go home.

i had a good number for the race. eins, eins, eins. the first time up the climb hurt, andrea, stephanie, myself and some others made a rotation to catch the couple riders who had gone off the front on the mountain. once we caught them we started to rotate and try to make the group stick off the front. we came through the start/finish and i won the first points sprint. yay me. shortly after the group from behind caught us, which surprised me because we weren't exactly dragging. the next time up the mountain hurt ALOT. there was an attack by my mirjam and 1 cervelo girl and the slovenian girl went with her. i saw the two climbers start to pull away. i went, on the sidewalk i might add, as hard as i possible. when we hit the steep section i just could not keep pace with the other 2. granted we are talking about exceptional climbers here, but it was still hard for me to know this was the right move and no be able follow on the steep part. over the top i was again with a small group and we worked to try and chase. after chasing pretty hard and putting everything i had into making that break (which ended up being the winning break of course) i was completely toast for the sprint. i still managed a top 10 and 3rd in the sprint competition and mirjam was up there in the sprint as well.

not such a bad race but i vowed to only eat vegetables for two weeks after that, which would be difficult because i have an insatiable love for meat and carbs.

p.s. i am definitely not built like a swiss.

gp suisse und luxembourg.

2010-05-17T08:40:00.003-04:00

team before elsy jacobs.

came back from the race to davis tucked safely away in my bed.

pascale and i at the gp suisse.

that's me.

this might seem a bit brief based on how excited i was leading up to these races.

bottom line is, the whole weekend didn't go very well for me. i felt extremely bad for some still unknown reason. i'd been training to go well for these particular races and when it came down too it i had no gas, no umphf, no nothing. i might have had a bit of a bug lingering, i might have put too much pressure and stress on it the week before. i'm not totally sure. while i was glad to participate, i wasn't so glad with the outcome. but you "can't win em' all" as they say. by the way, who is "they"???

pascale, ernst, and i left from bike import thursday afternoon and drove to moudon for the time trial the next morning. we stopped for some 30 minutes at a road block waiting for the guys doing romandie to come by. at that point there was a 4 person break, clearly it got caught because that was the day Cav won with his infamous salute.

we went for a ride on the course, which let's just say, was a pretty hard course (granted it was designed for the men of course). we settled into the hotel, i had my own room, and waited around for dinner. to my surprise we had internet. yessss. had dinner with pascale and andrea and then headed to sleep. pascale and i got up before breakfast to go for a little spin on the road, which turned out to actually be a decent to lausanne and back up again, not exactly what we were looking for but it was "easy" nonetheless. breakfast and headed to the race. i have to admit i was a bit nervous, this was my first big time trial and i was surrounded by olympic and world medalists in this very discipline. it was a bit hard not to be. i was super happy to even be able to start. of course i was first to go off as i chased the motorcycle in front of me with dead legs. when i was finished i was happy i did not get caught by anyone.

after we showered and as quickly as possible hopped in the car and drove straight to luxembourg, not really a short drive, and we were both pretty tired. we stopped for some really not so nice spaghetti, that gave me a stomach ache, on the way. we got into the hotel around 10 or so if im remembering correctly, did some laundry in the sink and went to sleep.

we awoke saturday, went to breakfast, met the infamous Roland, who i'd seen around Facebook :) one thing i learned at this race, actually something i already knew but reaffirmed, was eating pasta for lunch 2-3 hours before a race isn't exactly the best thing for me. it was not so warm out and it looks as if it was going to rain. 150 girls on the start, all wanting to be at the front. way to many needless crashes, of which i was not involved, thank god. i went until my legs wouldn't do anything anymore. it was incredibly frustrating just to push and have nothing respond. eventually ended up in a group with pascale and mirjam and just tried to hang on until i couldn't anymore. went back to the hotel extremely frustrated and down on myself. we had dinner later, felt a bit better, watched some or all of Hitch. I can't remember if we actually finished the movie or fell asleep in the middle of it.

the next day we woke up, went to breakfast again. It was incredibly hard to wake up, and after breakfast I felt like I needed a nap already. Not a good sign. We watched a Stevie Knicks marathon on TV while we waited to leave for the race. While I was hoping for a better outcome this day I had an underlying feeling that something weird was going on with my body. We were lined up at the start. Not literally more than 5 minutes to go and it starts pouring freezing rain. I started to laugh to myself, not one of these joyous laughs, but the are you freaking kidding me laughs. We started. Not more than 20k later I couldn't go anymore. I was pushing as hard as I possibly could and it was like the harder I pushed the more backwards I went. I got stuck in the cars, tried to chase back with girls, couldn't go with them. After awhile I nearly wanted to cry right there on the bike. I was so frustrated. I came through the feedzone, got in the car and just sat there wondering what in the hell was wrong with me. And that's essentially how the weekend ended for me. Thanks to the girls and Ernst for trying to make me feel better though. I really did appreciate that. I decided that after the weekend was over I was going to pretend like it never happened. So this is the last I will speak of it. Heehee.

Lancy und Uzwil.

2010-05-15T05:01:00.004-04:00

Both of which I can actually pronounce the correct way.

Let's see,

Lancy- We got to stay at the same hotel that we stayed in for Chambery. Which we were all stoked about because of their insanely good pasta, and huge portions of it. It's the little things. It was Pascale's first race back with the team. The course was hard and windy but super cool. Pascale got in a break the first lap on the first climb and I hovered around the front trying to make sure if anyone decided to try and make a second break that I was in there. Eventually some of the italians got antsy and attacked just before the mountain. I hopped on and we made a 2nd 4 person group. We were really close to the front group when I realized that the riders I was with were two of the best sprinters in the race, so I figured bringing them across was not the best move. I started to take it easy, I think they noticed, and they stopped working also. We came into the finish and I nearly beat both of them in the sprint. I was starting to think maybe it would have been a good move to make it across and help Pascale in the sprint. Either way, that's how the race played out. Not too bad, not too amazing. I drug all my belongings over to the Hermann van since I was going back to Liechtenstein with Marco, a friend of Stephanie.

Uzwil- So I wasn't supposed to be feeling good this weekend. Theoretically I was supposed to try and take it as easy as possible and not expend unnecessary energy. Low and behold, there I was leading out every sprint to try and make sure the team had the best position every 3 laps (which was when the sprints were). You see in European criteriums it's not about the finish sprint; it's essentially a points race on the road. So about 6 or so laps in, my cleats both came loose. Talk about user error on my part. Just not being strong enough, I apparently didn't get them tight enough when I replaced my cleats a few days before. Lucky for me we had free laps. They quickly tightened them as much as possible and I hopped back in only to find out it was tightened crooked and my knee was sticking out all awkwardly. Spent the race trying to make sure I didn't hurt my knee by pushing too hard on it. Which I succeeded in. Jessica ended up keeping enough points for 2nd, and Fabienne 3rd. Despite my problem in the race, I was happy to help them out for the day since my legs weren't too happy to begin with. Fabienne made my day when she handed me one of the most giant, icing covered biberlis I'd ever seen and thanked me for helping out during the race. Hey if that's all I have to do for biberli, then I'm set ;) I hung around to watch the Men's race, which Marco won, had a bratwurst and then proceeded to watch a domestic fight in the parking lot between some guy and another guy and a girl. Not sure still what was going on but it was a bit entertaining and frightening at the same time. We packed up and headed for Liechtenstein with Marco's parents, me sleeping along the way.

my new race socks.

yum yum biberli

uzwil.

me, pascale and nicole at uzwil.

worten und bilder

2010-04-16T03:57:00.003-04:00

so philipp has me making a list of all the words i know in german. then after i'm too practice new ones to go along with what i already know in hopes of leaving liechtenstein knowing more german than when i left. i'm not yet finished with my list, but i'm up to 138 words. it seems like alot for not being able to speak but on the level of a 5 year old.

what's new? let's see. i got 2nd at my race in schoeniech. i have good luck in german races it seems. every time i've raced there i've ridden really well. i think i just want to race there all the time. this race was really short (not ideal but is okay), the course was had everything, windy, turns, and a mountain top finish with the top being at some 15%. i was only ousted by rosella, tiny little italian girl, that could just fly up the mountain faster than me. that's just all there was too it. we took turn pushing the pace on the climb trying to make a break but due to some not so smart team tactics by a few others teams we were always pulled back. came down to an attack up the climb the last round of the small group that was still left. i got flowers and gave them to and old woman who had been wandering around our van all day.

what then.....fully. the land of the insane wind. no joke, our training ride saturday made texas look like a walk in the park. not so bad sunday morning for the race, but still a tad bit of wind, not bad for me personally. i was in the lead group both times over the top of the mountain, with stephanie's teammate really pushing the pace. we descended and turned on the long straight windy stretch but the italians were not really interested in working together, only attacking us. so i resorted to covering their attacks and getting in a few breaks with them where they immediately quit working with me. words of wisdom from nathan after the race, "you aren't italian, and you aren't on their team, so no, they aren't going to work with you to make a break." got it. check. finito.

roughly the same thing happened the next lap as well and our little group got caught by the pack about 5K from the finish. the italians started attacking like crazy and i tried to cover all of them. wondering which one was finally going to stick. low and behold, it was the attack that stayed away when i finally decided, you know what someone else is going to do some work for a change. shot now from the last few kilometers, i was really in no position to try and win the sprint. lesson learned, sorry next time i'll be born italian and not hope for other teams or riders to go after them, no matter how tired i am.

this week is a hard week of training. i'm a bit tired and looking forward to my somewhat easier week next week. i've had a few rides on the new tt bike, of which i will post pictures soon. in the meantime i'm headed to saint gallen with stephanie and andrea for some shopping today and then on to Lancy this weekend to race. ciao.

Schöneich

u.s. biennial

2010-04-03T07:44:00.002-04:00

vote here for my artwork to be included in a satellite exhibition to the U.S. Biennial. :)

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/show/submission/detail/XJNRSJ

slacking on the daily posting.

2010-04-03T05:43:00.000-04:00

now that we're all back up to speed...

oh wait i missed one.

2010-04-02T11:44:00.002-04:00

KOLN. germany.

so, this should have been a great race for me, flat and windy, crap weather, all around what i prefer to have for a race....and don't get me wrong I was riding great, granted I completely wore myself out trying to force a break to happen when it wasn't going too. bunch sprints, don't like em', hate em' actually. i much prefer a race that's an actual race, and not a bunch of people sitting in a pack doing absolutely nothing until the last 2K. so i'd like to not talk further about how this played out....let's just say it wasn't what i was hoping for in the slightest. and i've moved on.

i was glad to be in the van driving back home. the stop for bolognese pasta and ice cream was a plus also. hit the spot and soon i was out cold and back in switzerland.

next up is Schoniach, Easter Monday, in Germany. Sounds like a fun race from what I've been told, similar suspects in attendance.

quiet evening at home. trying to figure out what to do with myself on Easter....rather weird spending it alone.

2010-04-01T14:03:00.002-04:00

todays' conversation:

"i got hailed/snowed/iced/i dont even know what it was, on....i thought id make it back to the house in time but it moved in quicker than it looked....so my last 30min were in ice"

"haha.."

"not funny"

"yes it is, your going to man up if it kills you, your learning by fire..."

2010-03-21T07:19:00.005-04:00

it's noon. it's raining. i'm feeling artsy. which means i've somehow crawled into my insecure emotional hole where i like to hang out. alone of course. this blog makes no sense. well to you anyway. i feel like a leper. don't judge a book by it's cover. it makes people angry. namely me. i'm going now.

this girl does some amazing illustration. i'm a fan.

march 20th

2010-03-20T12:11:00.003-04:00

okay i just have to document my ride today, if not for your entertainment then for the days when i'm old and want to reflect on my youth.

today i had 4 hrs with an hour of race pace with simulated efforts on the climbs. yes i knew this would be hard before i started but it's been awhile since i've done it so it was a bit of a shock.

-today my body couldn't decide whether it wanted to vomit or blackout first, like a mexican standoff.

-it was INSANELY windy, especially for switzerland, it felt like a bad day on the coast.

-riding out i saw umbrella overhangs being blown over.....uhhhh....awesome.

-a car buzzed me for no apparent reason, tons of road for him, so i angrily pointed at my head like "hey are you an idiot", and got flipped off in response. not necessary.

-stopped by fabienne's since i was in her local hood, wasn't home, oh well the thought that counts.

-the trek home. let's see there was mr. bmc man. that i came upon......twice.....2nd time after he had sort of attacked me and then died and/or quit pedaling, not sure which. then he decided to sit on my wheel for awhile since the terrible headwind we were going into wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

-there was a giant bulldozer in the middle of the bike path, good place for it. while brother operated the machinery the little brother waved me through a 12in space between a moving chunk of metal and a stone wall, yea no thanks. i closed my eyes and hope the thing didnt move as i snaked through.

-back in steinmaur i looked and still needed another hour so i headed toward bulach. there was a man i saw so i decided to follow him, at a distance and learn the shortcuts. said man then saw me and put on the gas and i couldn't see him anymore, i was then lost. jerk.

-made a few turns, recognized where i was and turned back towards home. the last 30min were like the gates of hell had opened or something.

-riding by the forest there were gunshots from people either practice shooting or hunting and it scared the living daylights out of me. and it continued the entire length of time i rode by.

-into a MASSIVE headwind, and now rain that had started, i came upon neerach and decided to take a different road back in hopes of avoiding the "wall" of a hill that i always have to go up returning home.

-in doing this i went on possibly the most straight, windy, flat road in all of switzerland, and felt like i wasn't moving, came up to my turn and realized not only had i just ridden down the windiest section of road but i hadn't missed the hill at all. goody.

-im now back. fed. and in bed.

2010-03-19T05:18:00.002-04:00

happy birthday to my mom today.

march 19th, the day will always be special for me.

presents via swiss post.

2010-03-18T22:23:00.002-04:00

thanks albabici. i love me some italian goodies :)

gp de chambery feminin

2010-03-18T09:34:00.005-04:00

so after the snow stopped i rode back to my home in steinmaur and then proceeded to drop my billion ton bag off and go back our for some climbing repeats on regensburg.when i got back trudi told me how sepp had picked up my bag and said it wasn't acceptable that i ride with this thing on my back, it is just too heavy. isn't that nice them looking out for my spine like that! :)

laundry, dinner, packing, the usual process that seems to occur every friday evening of my life. the following morning i was abruptly woken up due to my clock having reset itself to 12pm so my 730am alarm never went off. joyness. i think i set a record with how fast i got dressed and was out the door. we arrived to pick up sonja, marion, and fabienne and sonja had treats for everyone, their own individual spitzbueb, which is DELICIOUS to say the least. we continued to drive, without snow this time, and pick up my teammates along the way. once we were all complete we continued our trek, well not really a trek as far as american commutes are concerned. we arrived at our hotel in geneve, which was actually SUPER nice. the caramel on my pillow and the nice shower were both pluses.

(davis trying to eat my spitzbueb)

we went out for an extremely windy ride around nyon, which was quite funny because i'd ridden the exact same route myself while the swiss girls last year were racing their national championships in nyon. we stopped for a nice photo by lake geneve and then came back to the hotel where i ANXIOUSLY waited for dinner. I was absolutely starving and their was no shop in the vicinity and only 30CHF pasta dishes to "snack" on downstairs.

(riding around lake geneve)

dinner was amazing, the most tasty bolognese spaghetti and i inhaled it of course. went back to my room and watch cheaper by the dozen, in ENGLISH i might add. then tried to doze off to sleep which didn't happen for quite some time, i mean i tried everything, breathing, praying, reading, listening to music, just wasn't happening. then all of a sudden i woke up in the morning. cool.

breakfast of eggs, cheese, meat, muesli, bread and honey, and OF COURSE coffee, yummy yummy coffee. we packed up to leave, i showered to loosen up my back (i already feel like a cripple when i wake up and im 23, grrrrrreat), and we hit the road for chambery about an hour drive.

we arrived at the race and who is there but the italians. oh wonderful, this would be an interesting race. although it was not UCI and only a french national race there were quite a few good teams there. about 100 riders total and on roads that made you question whether it was actually a road. we were all in for a treat. we lined up to start, not quite as cold as italy this time, and low and behold who rolls up but jeannie longo. im not one that is easily starstruck but i mean come on! one of the, if not the most successful, women racers of all time. and yes of course i followed her around the first few laps like a little puppy. she never freaked out, always steady, perfect person for me to be around for sure. after seeing one girl smack right into a piece of road furniture i got a little nervous. pascale attacked one lap up the wall of a climb that we had every lap and got into a break which was a good position for us. however on the cross wind section following i had so much momentum i tried to go across to the break which i could still see. as i came up the side of the group an italian girl on the front saw me at the last second and completely side swiped to the other side of the road nearly throwing me in the ditch. i was NOT happy but what are you going to do really? yell and scream? was the perfect opportunity but that's just racing i guess. each lap got progressively more painful on the climb until my legs started cramping. sonja and i both finished in the group and pascale came out with 4th so it wasn't a terrible race to say the least. if anything it was a seriously killer workout. the course was very difficult and technical, reminded me alot of a super hard sunset loop at redlands but the climb being more steep.

we packed up and headed back to suisse arriving back home a bit earlier this time so i could say hello to trudi's grandson naoto before he went to sleep.

okay i think this post is long enough. if you've made it to the end to read this without falling asleep or going to a different site im really impressed.

tootles.

oh the weather outside is frightful..

2010-03-12T03:52:00.005-05:00

so i added a guestbook to my website because i'm curious as to if anyone actually looks at it or not. if you do shoot me a message!

this morning i am sipping on a nespresso coffee, pulling the final strings together for my portfolio application to school in the fall, and waiting for it to get about 32 degrees for me to ride back to my host house in steinmaur. i've spent the week visiting my friend in zurich where we hung out and went to this fabulous place where you get gummies with your drinks!

see below

but now it is time to head back and pack up my things for our race this weekend in chambery, france. projected weather forecast doesn't look to friendly but as long as it doesn't "snow" i think i'll be fine.

to give you an idea how cold it actually is, it snowed literally all day yesterday and here's proof.

2010-03-11T09:42:00.001-05:00

Getting ready to race. Photo by Ambrogio Rizzi

Sign-in.

Pre-race meeting.

Bruno's first race gift.

Leaving switzerland for a "warmer" place

grand prix di cornaredo

2010-03-11T05:48:00.002-05:00

which directly translated from italian to english means

"try not to crash and die"

okay maybe not exactly but that was the idea. for my first race of the year it actually didn't go to bad. being as it was a UCI race, my first one, hadn't really done to much speed work prior to the race and not knowing what to expect. the course was......interesting. with about 140 girls on streets the size of alleyways and about a bagillion+1 turns on a course that we did 10 times. so only about 60 girls actually finished the race, myself and 2 teammates included. i literally spent the first few laps afraid for my bike and my skin. so you'll be happy to know both are still intact and i only went "off roading" from either A the road ending randomly and having no room to squeeze into the group or B having someone run me off the road while i was drinking on they could move up. on a positive note i now have a "rodeo move" perfected to go home and teach at the clinics. so the group came back together and it was a big pack sprint which was won by Rasa from the Safi team.

immediately after i became so cold when my body calmed down and realized it wasn't much warmer than 32 outside, then we learned that the showers now had no hot water left because of all the girls that had been already, and disoriented and tired we proceeded to go "shower" in the sink where there was warm water.

after the parade of photographers and random italian fans with mimosa flowers subsided we piled in the van and proceeded to drive an hour where we would stop and feed our very hungry lethargic bodies.

overall i was happy with finishing with the leaders for my first UCI race this year. I don't think it years past I've been in that kind of shape in March so that's a good sign for the races to come.

this weekend we are off to chambery, france for a 100K race mit mountains. supposed to be cold but let's just hope there isn't snow along with that. granted I did my first 3hr ride in sub freezing temperatures yesterday, I am actually quite proud of myself, being the one who wears thermal jackets when it's in the 50s. there was snow covering both sides of the road while i was climbing which was actually pretty cool. Granted I still was happy to be back home when I was all finished but an accomplishment for my "mental toughness" for sure....or just a check mark towards becoming "euro pro"

well today i am doing some yoga and hanging out with my pal larssyn for the day watching the snow come down outside. pics of the fun-ness to come.

no need to set it to music..

2010-03-08T05:54:00.002-05:00

...the radio selection is entertaining enough.

driving to italy. this was just amazing to a current floridian and previous texan.

2010-03-05T07:23:00.002-05:00

so i can't figure out whether to incorporate my "journal" on my art website into my blog and bombard people with both aspects of my world. or to leave them separate and continue updating in two different places. thoughts?

"the swiss years"

2010-03-05T07:20:00.000-05:00

So in totally mimicking great artists and their “periods” I’ve decided while I’m here in Switzerland I’d try to do some drawing and possibly painting (if i can find the supplies and space). There’s such great material and inspiration in Europe how can I not? With all the alone time on my hands what better way to spend it than to capture what is just waiting all around me. Things are starting to slow down. The first weeks in Europe were very rough for me, it seemed like a bad sign with travel issues, sickness, and the racing season only a mere 2 weeks away. To my delight I am now well (for the moment) and things are looking up. There’s a faint smell of meat coming from downstairs which means it is time for dinner (nachtessen). For the moment I am......content. and I will take that.

2010-03-04T17:02:00.002-05:00

i don't know what davis is doing. he's either really depressed and trying to jump off the bed or he's in some sort of giraffe utopian high....not sure, but it's funny.

first training day back in switzerland

2010-03-03T07:46:00.002-05:00

so i attempted to make a video of my first ride back in switzerland, where i actually winded up in germany but obviously got home just fine because im now here blogging to you. yes it's a little wobbly but i was afraid for my camera's life a tad....

off for a stroll with trudi and sepp's grandson. he wants to go train.

2010-03-02T15:33:00.001-05:00

in case you didn't know. my new website is up and running. check er' out...

www.shannonlkoch.com

23rd birthday swiss-style

2010-03-02T06:13:00.003-05:00

so i spent the wee-hours of my birthday morning crawling out of a tour bus in the dark at a gas station on our way back from spain to switzerland. thanks valentine for quite literally being the first person to say happy birthday as i pried my eyes open to get out and go pee at like 3am.

aside from the crap sleep because i dont really fit laying down in 2 seats we arrived back in switzerland and then proceeded to sit in traffic trying to get back to my humble abode in steinmaur.

to my surprise the house smelled AMAZING......trudi had baked me a cake for my birthday, homemade yummy looking. definitely not the store bought buttercream icing cakes back home. it was DELICIOUS. she also made fondue for dinner and we watching the olympics. it was a nice end to a rather stressful day accompanied by a pounding headache from dehydration im sure.

im now 23. i dont feel different. besides all the people who are 25 telling me oh you are still young. last time i checked 2 years wasn't a big difference but okay i'll take it....

sunday consisted of me laying in bed recovering from the drive, doing laundry, doing some work on the website and other things to keep me busy. yesterday i got out for a nice 3 hr ride. the weather was great. sunny and warm, well warm for switzerland. did efforts up the regensburg, which was super cool at the top so im glad i did. legs felt a bit heavy, from the travel naturally. now i am currently staring out the window at the rain and contemplating making a sandwich. after 4 it's supposed to be sun, we shall see.

first race of the year this weekend near Milan, never been to Italy so should be pretty cool. and Milan being a huge fashion hub :)

ta for now..

monday's ride across the rhine into germany and back.

back in switzerland.

yum yum birthday cake.

so how was camp you ask..

2010-02-28T15:00:00.003-05:00

okay team camp. where in the world do i start.

first off. love spain. i mean LOVE spain. of course i knew that before i even got there, but it just proved me right in my assumption that i'd love it and want to live there one day. how many times did i say love in that paragraph?

so we arrived yada yada, went to dinner downstairs in our all inclusive buffet. and what did they have??? croquettes. i was in heaven no doubt.

so the next morning although i woke up feeling worst than the previous day we went out for an easy ride. at this moment im pulling up my photos from the camp because due to my horrible memory i can't remember what we did the first day. anywho, we all know pictures are what people really want to see anyway.

so moral of the story is first week, i was sick as a dog with a cold from traveling/weather im not used to/20hr bus ride/you get the idea. so i had to "sit out" one day and take the whole day to lay in bed and sleep with the shades drawn and literally no light coming into the room. there was the occasional knock on my door and it was usually the cleaning lady or bruno saying he had cough drops for me or something to ease my misery. and viola! in a couple days i felt tip top again. who knew that all i needed was rest and recovery? funny how that works.

so i got a few really good training days in with the girls, come good climbing and around this time pascale and jessica showed up to camp. pascale would stay in the room with marion and i and we'd become fast friends and end up going shopping after training one day where i bought a 4 euro shirt and a 3 euro hat, which i'll probably be sporting in some photos later on in this series. the scenery on the rides was spectacular and i wish i could have captured it better but seeing as we were there to train i didnt take my camera except on our easy days.

some cafe con leches, some serrano ham sandwiches, some riding and some rain and we fast forward to this past week where one of the girls came down with a stomach bug. and then naturally half the team came down with it. more like everyone but 3. myself included. totally bummed that i was sick YET AGAIN, after just having gotten better i stayed in bed another day due to my having upchucked everything from the night before. 24hrs later i was tiptop again. and resume play.

everyday thereafter i was feeling better. the legs were coming back, i was getting used to the climbing. felt the power coming back and then the last day of camp came. it was a sad sad day to have to leave spain. in fact spain cried when i left. and i felt the same. we all piled back into the tour bus and began our lengthy drive through france back to good ole' heidiland. much to our delight we were greeted with no more snow and 40s temperature. yay! time to do some riding outside!

i keep forgetting not everyone has facebook

2010-02-21T12:04:00.002-05:00

yes i'll admit i'm a bit of facebook-aholic and often times i forget that not everyone has it and can see my updates daily.

-current status is sitting in my hotel room watching the german music channel, sun is pouring in, so much i'm literally wearing my sunglasses, and eating a bar that isn't all that good and also meant for riding because i'm starved, don't have food, and dinner isn't for another hour.

so since london, i obviously arrived safely to steinmaur, which is my home away from home, for the next three months. i am staying with trudi and sepp karrer, great people, who actually visit florida quite frequently i found out. we sat down for a nice dinner and then i attempted to stay awake past 830pm but to no avail. i came down with a serious headache and sinus problems. thinking it was just allergies from the kats i took meds and went to sleep.

i slept in, got up and had a coffee and some "welcome back to switzerland food"

bread, honey, and jam

unfortunately i felt no better and would slowly deteriorate until earlier this week, but ill get into that a bit later. i packed my tiny bag (in comparison to some of the other girls), ernst and jeannine came to pick me up and we headed to the meeting spot. we arrived and to my surprise we actually were taking a tour bus to drive to spain. when they said bus i assumed a team van, so not the case.

-glasses are coming off, clouds are moving in. gotta love the beach.

we piled in the tour bus and proceeded to drive. we stopped occasionally where i could get some cough drops and something to snack on but i gradually felt worse and worse throughout the drive. i tried to sleep but wasn't really able to. we arrived in spain saturday afternoon, unloaded and thanks be to god, didn't have a ride that day. i hopped in bed and waited for dinner.

-icy hot is REALLY kicking in now.

more on team camp later. now im going to wallow in self pity about how hungry i am. adios!

beans on toast, beans on toast.

2010-02-17T09:26:00.005-05:00

okay so a quick wrap up of my short-lived stint in london to stop in and visit my aunt on the way to switzerland.

-No shortage of weirdos which are totally secure enough to wear superhero and pirate costumes in public.

-Mistaken for Canadian even in England, WTF?

-All time low concert, hopefully not mistaken for chaperones, avg age 12-13. No shortage of groupies. Shouldn’t you be in bed? Don’t you have school tomorrow?

-Jamon Jamon, Spanish restaurant was SUPERB especially when accompanied by our dear spanish speaking Cuban friend Hugo

-Plethra of selection for shopping since all the gaudy stuff is actually being bought by the people around me. Only in London will you find people wearing sparkly GOLD uggs with purple sequin dresses and rocking it. New winter coats! Thank you auntie for my early birthday present.

-girl trying to beat me up on the train for “pushing her” listen idiot, I didn’t even touch you. Lay off the booze for awhile, mkay?

-Got to go see a Van Gogh exhibit at the Royal Academy and of course you know how I feel about that :)

-Buzzy's birthday party at the Brittania, dog friendly pub.

-high in zurich on thurs. -5C which means 23F. whattttt?

-band of skulls was AMAZING. So was Indian food and the V&A Museum, where I got to see a boticelli, live and in person.

-traveling to the airport was the only bad thing, late trains, running through stations with tons of baggage and getting trampled on and dropping things and narrowly making it in time to catch the plane. once i was on all was okay until the deterioration of my health began but that's for the next installment.

what are you?

2010-01-02T14:53:00.001-05:00

i'm an INFP.

INFPs present a calm, pleasant face to the world. They appear to be tranquil and peaceful to others, with simple desires. In fact, the INFP internally feels his or her life intensely. In the relationship arena, this causes them to have a very deep capacity for love and caring which is not frequently found with such intensity in the other types. The INFP does not devote their intense feelings towards just anyone, and are relatively reserved about expressing their inner-most feelings. They reserve their deepest love and caring for a select few who are closest to them. INFPs are generally laid-back, supportive and nurturing in their close relationships. With Introverted Feeling dominating their personality, they're very sensitive and in-tune with people's feelings, and feel genuine concern and caring for others. Slow to trust others and cautious in the beginning of a relationship, an INFP will be fiercely loyal once they are committed. With their strong inner core of values, they are intense individuals who value depth and authenticity in their relationships, and hold those who understand and accept the INFP's perspectives in especially high regard. INFPs are usually adaptable and congenial, unless one of their ruling principles has been violated, in which case they stop adapting and become staunch defenders of their values. They will be uncharacteristically harsh and rigid in such a situation.

bring on the new year

2009-12-30T14:21:00.003-05:00

so yes it's been an eternity since i last posted. my apologies. life has gotten busy as can be. im like a busy bee, or something like that.

so i traveled home for christmas to see my family. got to stay for about a week. it was a white christmas which i haven't seen since....ever....

it was great to spend time with them. going to movies, playing games like catch phrase, which if you haven't played you really need to because it's one of the most awesome games EVER. on top of traveling home for christmas ive been busy with:

GG our jan cross race omnium which is coming up in a little over a week. our first cross race ever but it should be a good party. adam myerson has decided to come down and race also, as well as some guys from atlanta and the young prodigy, aka mean girl, payton thomas, from texas. she'll be my stand in sister for a weekend.

JOB trying to find a part time job. yes that still hasn't worked thus far but the painting is going well for the moment so that is where the majority of my focus has been the past month aside from riding.

MODELING also got called back to a modeling agency in orlando (www.modelscout.com) for representation and had my first shoot with eric sutton who is a very talented photographer. ill post some photos from that soon.

EUROLAND getting everything arranged for my departure back to europe for team camp and racing starting with camp mid feb and our first race in brissago, march 6th. between trying to find the right software to run rosetta stone on my MAC and not having anyone to practice with on a regular basis im slacking on the german language front. but now till march is crunch time. lots of skype convos with my sister in texas who conveniently decided to take german in high school.

well picture updates are way more fun for me so that will be next.

note to self: need to make black eyed peas and ham for tomorrow. too bad i didn't get my mothers' cooking gene or at least her recipe. i did however get her everything else.

2010 season

2009-11-29T14:13:00.004-05:00

so in case anyone hasn't read elsewhere.

i will be racing with bike-import for the 2010 season. i guess they took a liking to me when we were over there this summer and wanted me to come back for the whole season.

team training camp will be mid. february in benidorm, spain. two weeks long followed by our season opener Gran Premio Brissago,which happens to be a UCI race. not a bad way to start the year.

anywho. the link to the website is HERE check it out.

had a good thanksgiving. lots to be thankful for. including the awesome sale on canvas that michael's was having on friday where i loaded up.

more later.

it's okay to stuff your face

2009-11-26T09:21:00.002-05:00

happy thanksgiving everyone!

have a great turkey day and as i said above. it's okay to stuff your face and be thankful that we have food to stuff our faces with.

funny paula

2009-11-01T16:46:00.002-05:00

happy halloween :)

2009-10-31T14:27:00.002-04:00

boo. that was scary huh?

2009-10-30T16:38:00.002-04:00

time is tick tick ticking away. it hasn't gotten any colder here to my dismay.

i rather like it to feel like the season it actually is. and upper 80s just isn't fall weather.

ive resorted to seasonal smelling candles to make it at least "smell" like fall even if it doesn't look it outside.

what's happening at the moment:

well literally this moment nothing except writing this blog.

but the past week ive done a small impulse painting that paula said frightens her.

baked halloween brownies that actually turned out more like cake but that's paula's fault for telling me i couldn't make it from a box, that to do so it was a kitchen "sin"

been doing lots of riding by myself on the same roads. can't wait for some new routes to miraculously pop up.

been to boca di beppo. love that place.

ive boycotted all wine/beer and tasty treats for the sake of my girlish figure,

which is a problem considering i keep forgetting to take the brownies up to the bike shop and instead they sit on the counter tempting me all day.

i've got things just about done as far as next season is concerned. i'll have fun news coming soon.

im almost done with my new art website also. once it's up and running you'll be the first to know. well maybe not the first but pretty high up there. :)

tootles. have a nice safe halloween.

fun times in the rain.

2009-10-23T22:12:00.003-04:00

so bad choice of clothing for my 3 hour ride in the rain on wednesday. but cool that a few people came out to share the experience with me. ive had a 3 hour ride everyday this week. looking forward to my day off this weekend. went to my first yoga class today. legs feel more flexible already :)

am i that busy.

2009-10-08T17:28:00.003-04:00

well my last few weeks of time here in florida have gone so fast and I wonder how I've been here for a month already and only accomplished what I have. hehe.

training is kind of slow at this point. i start back to hard-core riding next week so for the past couple weeks i've really only been riding when i feel like it. ive started running every morning and it's actually really relaxing to wake up that way. yes wake up.....usually im half asleep as i stumble out the door. after running i usually come back do some yoga stretching with paula and then proceed to make breakfast and get down to work.

joe morgan graciously sent us our very own pink flamingo for our yard. i feel like a real down south floridian now.....oh dear.

our first event is set to happen next weekend. so far the response has been great. im sure it will go off great for our first one here in florida.

and a couple pics to keep you occupied.

our new company logo courtesy of me

paula hard at work.

time for a change

2009-09-02T18:12:00.003-04:00

so upon returning to the states i had one week to spend with my family in dallas and finish packing up things for my big move to florida. it was nice to see my family and close friends in texas before relocating. they were all very supportive and i will miss them all dearly.

having so much to do since getting back to america i haven't had time to sit down and blog until now. i am now moved in to my new dig in florida. haven't taken any pics yet but that will happen sometime this week. paula and i are busy working on our new company business plan and working on the plans for our first clinic here in daytona beach...

id like to say thank you to everyone in the texas community who has supported me through the years. dallas is where my roots in racing are and i couldn't be more thankful for having such a great group of people helping me grow in the sport.

for the remainder of the year i'll be racing for team bike-import. ch here in the states. that is if i race anymore this year :) been going since february, i might just be calling it a year soon and getting ready for some cross racing ;) my plans for racing next year are still in the works but im hoping ill be venturing back over to the motherland again. keep your fingers crossed.

photo update to come

last swiss races

2009-08-18T10:43:00.003-04:00

bern bern bern.
what better way to end the racing here than in the capital city of switzerland.
our last two races with the team were this past weekend.

saturday we had a circuit race of 4 laps. the field was pretty good size. with cervelo, bigla, and fassa bortolo all showing up to race. it made for a fun day. the very first lap just before the super steep climb 1K before the finish a fassa rider attacked and i went with it, we got caught about halfway up the climb when emma pooley attacked and while i was still at the front, i couldnt match her acceleration. her and 3 others, including jessie, had a small gap from me, and the pack was close behind me once we got over the top. the next 2 laps consisted of failed attempts to attack solo without bringing any riders with us. the 3rd lap up the same climb myself and a fassa rider attacked, and largely due to the rest of the team, we were able to get off the front. we traded pulls and tt'ed the entire last lap. the last time up the climb she attacked me. in hindsight i probably should have made her lead into the climb but that was my mistake. i ended up coming in 6th. with jessie just barely missing the podium and getting 4th. after the race we headed to the showers where there was literally a line to use the shower so fabienne and i ended up sneaking into the teachers bathroom and using the shower there. i inhaled my sandwich and we sat around waiting for prize money before departing to go have some pasta at manuel. thanks alot fo him for cooking!! while we were waiting for the bikes to be cleaned he showed me a photo book from his and his girlfriend's visit to america. it was really neat and nice to spend a relaxing afternoon sitting on his patio.

that evening whitney and i went to zollbruck for the night. we got to have one last dinner with our orignial hosts, bruno's family. it was the mother's birthday, complete with cake, fireworks, and ernst and franz putting on a show with the cowboy hats we gave to abigail. after dinner we said a very sad farewell before going to bed. i hate goodbyes but this one seemed particularly hard, in part to how gracious and generous of hosts they had been and taking care of us during our first weeks in switzerland. nevertheless we couldn't have asked for a better time :)

the following day was another race near bern. minus the fassa girls it was still a good race. we took turns attacking and mirjam got off the front and soloed the rest of the race!! each time up the climb jessica and i were hovering around emilie and jennifer and personally i was just praying she wouldn't attack because i was on the edge. apparently she was too because the attack never came. thank god! in the sprint they led out andrea and i and we came in 2nd and 3rd in the sprint. finishing the day with 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th. not too shabby at all :)

post race we said our farewells to the girls on the team. this was another sad goodbye. we graduated to hugs from many of the girls and i of course was a bit emotional but that is just me and goodbyes. all are such nice girls and im really hoping the few of them i talked with decide to come visit in america this winter!!

our last full week

2009-08-18T09:33:00.003-04:00

so this past week whitney and i hung out at ernst's house. it was a super light week considering we had two races the following weekend, i was racing tuesday at the track, and whitney was racing wednesday in brugg. so unfortunately i think ernst's plan to be able to train with us didn't happen since we had only recovery when we weren't racing.

the track went much better this week than last. whitney finally turned her good luck charm on. i got in a breakaway with a couple juniors in the points race. i had the annoucer yelling at me in english during the elimination when apparently i thought i got pulled but didnt and everyone was trying to tell me to keep going. that was humorous. i also got to meet the man who so generously gave me two tublar tires for my lightweights for FREE.....we ended up buying him a bratwurst and beer as a thank you. moral of the story is-track went well, came home with WAY more money than i was expecting, and all is well.

wednesday i rode to zurich to try and meet my aunt's friend who was playing middle man for some things from my aunt. THAT was an adventure. and not a good one. it was one of the single worst expereinces of my life riding my bike to zurich. or in zurich actually. i got lost. asked 5 different people for directions. rode my bike over a bridge that i later found out was illegal to ride a bike over and almost got hit head on by a tram when i turned the wrong way down a one way street. it was stressful. finally got there and then had to ride back with a giant bag in my hand all the way back to embrach. i was glad to be back to the house to say the least. that evening whitney and i rode over to benji's house for his welcome home party. after some amazing pizza and wine whitney, peter and i all went to sleep and woke up in the morning to ride back to embrach.

thursday we had an easy day just riding the hour back to embrach. later that evening our new friend daniel came to get us all to go see a movie in zurich. funny to watch a movie in english and have only whitney peter and i laughing. you could tell that the jokes just weren't translating the same for everyone else. dang american slang. hehe. then i attempted to learn how to drive manual shifting. i got to 1st and 2nd and then the road was too packed with parked cars to be able to go any faster so i stopped. but it wasn't so bad for my first time.

friday whitney and i rode to larssyns house and we spent the day doing some present shopping for the family and wandering around zurich. it was nice to see her again and whitney to get to spend some time with her also. later that evening we rode back to embrach and started to pack our things for the weekends races in BERN.

GP Oberbaselbiet 2009

2009-08-10T05:46:00.002-04:00

soooo

this race was alot bigger than the ones we'd done previously. and the course was pretty much killer. it reminded me of the sunset road race at redlands. so we started with about 50 girls i think. tons or cervelo girls and some bigla riders, some olympic mtb champions, and so on. people were already popping off on the first climb. the entire course was turns, mountains, super fast downhills, and more turns. it was crazy but a really fun course nonetheless.

so i felt great the first half of the race. i ended up making the lead group. i think about the 3rd lap a cervelo girl got off the front along with emma pooley and no one could stay with them on the climb. unfortuantely not being like 90lbs didn't help that cause. i seriously felt like an AMAZON WOMAN when stephanie was introducing me to her. she is such a little person. later on karen thurig was trying to put in some attacks on the flats to get away. i tried to go with her and was right on her wheel but she literally rode me off her wheel each time. it was insane how fast she was going. we were able to bring her back on the climbs but it was pretty intense trying to follow her on the flats. i wasn't in too much difficulty staying with them over the climbs until about 2 laps to go and my legs were starting to cramp. at that point i figured my sprint wouldnt be that great so i asked andrea if i lead her out if she could still get it. she thought so and i resorted to trying to organize everyone for a lead out. it hadn't really been practiced or talked about so it was a cluster trying to get it together. eventually i just went to the front and tried to drill it the last kilometer. Jessi and Andrea were able to come around and get 1st and 3rd in the sprint. I didn't come in far behind for 5th in the sprint. not too shabby and it felt really good to do a hard race.

we are nomads...

2009-08-10T05:08:00.002-04:00

so it's monday annnnnd it's raining. which is perfect for us because it's our easy/day off so we don't have to trek out into the glorious weather.

this last week was another busy one. here's the low down on our interesting shananigans.

monday: day off for me. hangin' at fabienne's house.
tuesday: got dropped off around lunch time to benji's house in weiach where I hung out until Ernst and Whitney came to pick up Peter and I for the track. I got to meet benji's sister who is an artist so we talked about artist things in artist language. twas cool. track race was not so stellar. actually the worst I'd done there compared to other weeks. Was just off and legs weren't feeling powerful. felt faster than before, maybe because andrea was racing also ;) nevertheless it was still a fun night, and we got to watch the swiss championships for steher racing....those guys are completely insane. 150 laps going some 70K per hour???? what are you guys smoking??
wednesday: we were getting picked up by stephanie to spend the rest of the week in liechtenstein again. we rode in the morning a nice 2 hrs to peter, then into germany and back. showered and left not too long after to meet stephie in st gallan.
thursday: whitney and i went for a ride with stephanie, phillip and their training buddies who are all about the same age as whitney and i. it was about 2hours and an interval or two. was a nice ride even though they were all afraid to talk to us because their english is "bad" which was so not the case.
friday: stephie had a power test in frieburg and was gone most of the day. whitney and i went into vaduz and checked out some of the local shops and stopped by the beach volleyball tournament that was going on in the center of town. just in time to watch france play the netherlands. it was pretty neat to watch. its definately an intense sport. we then went out for an easy ride just in time to meet phillip and a couple of the young boys to ride. after stephie got back and we headed to a nice traditional austrian/liechtenstein restaurant for dinner. it was yum yum. with something that is literally translated as cheese buttons.
saturday: we met up with quite a few people to ride actually. many from the days before and some new older riders but it turned into a nice group. we had a nice flat 2 hr ride and whitney, stephie and i did our couple intervals to get our legs ready for the race the next day. after that we went into to go shopping. every saturday they have what stephie calls a "tent sale" where all the designer clothes are 70% off or cheaper. i ended up finding a great pair of jeans, normally $300 for $20......no joke. i was stoked and they are too long for me which is possibly the hardest thing to find for me nowadays. back to watch a movie and pack all our belongings and move like gypsies again the next day. this time off to basel for a road race in the AM.....

fast forward real quick

2009-08-06T07:44:00.003-04:00

so following our epic ride last sunday,

monday-off, like usual. not a really eventful day.
tuesday- track racing again. not so great as the time before but still was a ton of fun. there was a motorcycle and car show going on during the races, and periodically the cars would get up on the track and speed around. the exhaust was killer, along with all the smokers so my lungs were rejecting me being there. ernst drove me to meet fabienne to go home after the race and phillip (fabienne's brother) drove us home since he was practicing to drive for his license test that will be coming soon :)
wednesday-sick, in bed all day, was miserable, fabienne's mom made some tea and I didn't leave the house all day. fun.
thursday-went out for an easy hour just to get my legs going and see how my lungs were feeling. much better but didn't want to push it and make myself more sick.
friday- nice 2 hr ride toward weiach, just went exploring on my own. was nice to just cruise alone for awhile
saturday- HAHA, swiss national day. family decided we should go hike up a mountain, sounded like a nice easy walk, 3 hour steep hike later, my legs felt like total CRAPOLA. all i was thinking was how this was going to feel great in the race tomorrow. was beautiful to see but not so smart the day before a race. went to a family BBQ that evening for some grub and firework watching and then treked home to pack for the following day.
sunday- off to germany bright and early in the morning for a circuit race ihn opfingen. were more girls that usual so that was nice. having not ridden the day before, hiking which killed my legs and little to no warm up before the race i was feeling ready......not. it was a rough race for me. i wasnt feeling well but was still trying to stay in the mix and in a last ditch effort to bridge across to the winner i was unsuccessful, largely due to my legs being like "are you nuts"
ended up getting 4th. it was a sprint finish, not my day all around. it was dissapointing but every day can't go perfectly i guess. plus it rained....sweeeeeet

so this week i learned that i wont hike ever again until im done racing a bike. that just wasn't good. i learned to be careful not to touch electric fences because it kinda feels weird. and i learned that if you win free hair removal gift certificates for places in germany you will never return to you can take them to the nearby fire station and trade them for money with the firefighters......

sonntag moutain pass ride

2009-07-31T06:04:00.005-04:00

so after the time trial in germany saturday we packed up and all headed to vaduz where we would stay and go on an "epic" training ride on sunday.....all the while driving down the autobahn listening to shakira.....yes....shakira.

whitney and i checked into our room at a hotel nearby stephanie and phillip's house, and then headed over to their house for some yum yum pasta and wine. i defintately hadn't seen that much pasta at once before. im pretty sure you could have fed a small army with as much pasta as we made.

the next morning we "rose from sleep", had a little breakfast and went to meet the others to start our glorious mountain pass ride. with my pockets full of fabienne's "riding cake", whitney's camera and loads and loads of sunscreen (might as well get a tan if we were going to be climbing all day), we set out on our long trek toward switzerland. seeing as switzerland is about 2K from their house.

we crossed the border and i thought oh that was a great ride, time to go home, we can brag about how we rode through two countries and how strenouous it was.

soon after we started up our first berg (mountain) and about halfway up were the cutest little baby cows ive ever seen. of course i slammed on the brakes and stopped to take a gander at them and take a few pictures. baby cows are always more important than training of course.

we continued on up and basically this was the idea for the day....go up....as much as possible, and when you get to the top, go down and then go back up again. we stopped once for a coffee, i guess they have ride intermissions here for that...and we set off again...4.5 hrs later we arrive back at stephanie's house. slam down some pasta, sit down to watch the last stage of the tour and in about 5 minutes shannon (that's me) was ouuuuttt. woke up in time to see the exciting part, the finish, and the podium ceremony complete with all the little sly tempur tantrums. oh how entertaining to watch the egos of bike racers.....it should be a science really.

upon completion of our tour watching ernst, fabienne and i left to head back to zurich. where i once again fell asleep in the car listening to shakira, or maybe it was the backstreet boys this time? im not sure, i was in a sleepy daze. ah willkommen remigen, with that comes food, sleep, and internet. yessssss

pictures to come, poached from whitney's camera, although it was combined with my glorious professional photography skills, ive been called the songbird of my generation by people who have heard me.......that good......do i sound like a professional cyclist yet??? hahahaha

okay this post is done before i go off on more of a rant about this topic.

ciao

lightweight uphill time trial

2009-07-30T07:21:00.003-04:00

so mein internet isnt working on my laptop so please excuse the typos while i type on fabienne's german keyboard which is backwards and literally impossible to navigate.

so this past weekend we had the Lightweight Uphill Time Trial. in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
This is where the Lightweight wheel company is based. So apparenltly this was some famous mountain complete with a self-service time trial for if you are out training on your own and feel the need to test your limits. self-service tt.....how cool is that? you pay a little money, get a ticket and it will time you as you train up this mountain.....pretty sweet.

anyway,
we headed up there Saturday morning....having to cross the Bodensee on a short ferry ride we arrived at the site to meet Stephanie and Phillip. We drove to the top where parking and the finish were located. so we got to see the whole course prior to the tt which was nice. it definately was going to be a tough time trial. it was a longer version of the redlands time trial with more uphill and less flat....but super windy and not rhythmic at all.

so we got our numbers and got dressed to go when it started dumping rain and freezing. so we sat in the car until it let up slightly and went out to warm up. i was stephanie döring again that day since i was wearing her long sleeve skinsuit. riding down to the start i had multiple people try and talk to me only to find out that i didnt know what they were saying. and when they found out i was from texas they started talking up lance...blah blah....oye. so since we signed up last minute since we werent sure were racing we all got split up among the men riders. somehow i ended up some 30min after the other girls so i was the last one to go.
i waited around for my start and before you know it I was off. I merely tried to focus on my power and keeping it above what i can normally hold for 20min. it seemed to work for the most part although my lungs werent cooperating and i felt like throwing up the last half course. halfway up phillip was there and was yelling like a crazy person. when it was finally over we rolled through the finish and immediately took a left turn into a tent where we were bombarded with people trying to hand us water and god knows what.....it was really annoying because i was too out of breath to say anything and i just wanted to get through all the people so i could cool down but they were like dodging in front of me trying to hand me crap. finally i made it out and went to the car where i met the others for a not so easy, what turned into an hr cool down.

got back and took a rapid fast shower in the nastiest shower ive pretty much ever seen. and then waited around for 2 hrs while they tried to sort out the massive mess of results. apparently they thought i was a man for some reason and sooner or later after taking the win away from a girl who was 3 minutes slower they declared me as winner. to top it all off i got a hug from Jörge Ludewig which was flattering at the very least :) soooo after them changing the results a 3rd time they finally got it sorted out and i got an email saying my new set of Lightweight wheels is being sent on Monday. :)))

okay im uber frustrated with this keyboard so sunday's training recap soon to come...

last week

2009-07-28T07:27:00.003-04:00

so this past week was a super eventful one.....after finishing the team time trial i headed back to fabienne's house for the week. i had monday off and then tuesday was my first day to hit the track in oerlikon for some track racing. i have to admit i was a tad bit nervous. not because of the racing itself but moreso the fact that i wouldn't be able to understand anything they were saying so i was worried id miss my start or something. so i used someone's (not sure if it was ernst's bike) schor track bike for the race. apparently they were really sweet bikes back in the day, maybe that's why so many old men were coming up looking at it.....i was "vintage"
so we had an elimination, a points race and a scratch race. scratch race being my fav of the three. we raced with the junior boys, but it's not like junior boys at home in slightest. it felt pretty hard to me....apparently they were getting their panties in a wad that i was attacking and stuff so they were chasing and going pretty hard. somehow i ended up making some cash even though i didn't win, the boys somehow always nudged me out of the top 5 but it was still a super fun night for me. it happened to be the same night Bruno Risi was having his farewell from cycling ceremony so it was cool that I got to be present for that. I met some nice people too, including benji's brother who came up and introduced himself. and apparently i "won the hearts" of the very critical swiss crowd, or so im told. i guess girls don't too often ride on the offensive when they are with the boys, but hey that's just me. so turns out they really want me back to race again so that is the plan for tonight......as long as i can find a way to get there....

wednesday i raced the historical kriterium in brugg, which is only 6K from fabienne's house. we rode down to the race a little early and were talking with the announcer and found out the race was in its 43rd season!!! that's a super long time to be having a weekly night crit. so i felt pretty terrible for the race but i still tried to make some moves....once i ended up in a break with myself and fabienne's brother.....having no idea it was him until after the race (id never seen him in cycling clothes before).....ended up getting 10, 11, and 12 so fabienne said the whole "family" was together.....hehe. we had a nice relaxing spin back to the house where her parents were waiting with dinner (my first swiss hamburger, and while it's not the same it was still special in it's own way :P)

thursday=rain.

friday=2 hr 45min ride with fabienne with openers for the time trial on saturday.

and pasta pasta pasta.....even for breakfast.....but not for me because i just couldn't do pasta in the morning....

swiss team TT nationals

2009-07-22T16:30:00.004-04:00

the swiss bike-import girls on the podium

me, stephanie and whitney making the last round to the finish

post race chill out

so sunday morning stephanie, whitney, phillip and i woke up.....well then woke up, then i got up shortly after. the night before whitney was explaining to phillip that im not a morning person and didn't really talk or interact with anyone in the morning. so coming out to breakfast there is phillip trying to mess with me by cowering and having this look of mommy don't beat me on his face. i couldn't help but burst out laughing.....dang.....ruined my attempt at grumpiness....we had a delicious breakfast of the usual, ei (egg), muesli, brot (bread), honig (honey), konfiture (jam) and butter.....yum....

we then piled in the car and set off to steinmaur, switzerland, about 30 min from fabienne's house for the swiss team time trial nationals. we met the rest of the team there and they started working magic on their tt bikes. we all got suited up, stephanie let whitney and i borrow her last year skinsuits so we could all match. with the name stephanie doring across whitney and i's backs the 3 stephanie's rolled up to the start for staging. after announcing us as the "out of competitioners" we were on our way for the 60K tt. we started with fast rotations first and then settles into 1 minute pulls. to our suprise we caught our first team at the beginning of lap 2. then another later with about 20K to go. the only team to go faster was our very own swiss bike import girls! we ended up getting the 2nd best time had we been placed. it was great having so many people cheering for us even though we weren't swiss. i remember fabienne's mom yelling up up up up shannon and going crazy, and looking over to whitney and saying that's fabienne's mom by the way and starting to giggle. it was a really cool feeling.

i was really happy with this considering we only had 3 people, no tt bikes, discs, or aerobars and having never ridden together besides a 5-minute interval the previous day...the rest of the team and staff were happy as well. it was a good day for bike-import.

after the race i went hom with fabienne for the week again. we arrived with her mom, dad, and brother to greet us, along with some meat, cheese, and brot to munch on.....gotta love switzerland :)

liechtenstein

2009-07-20T07:45:00.006-04:00

so the past week we spent in liechtenstein, a super small but weathly country next to austria and switzerland...

we spent the week with our teammate stephanie and her husband phillip. it was a great time. we got some good riding in together with stephanie, went to see an indie film in an open air theater, wandered around valduz and went to the art museum there where phillip's sisters works.
the highlight was probably having rosti (a special potato dish) on top of one of the mountains nearby. althought i just about had a full on panic attack going up in the dinky cable car, it was very nice at the top in the clouds....the ride down wasn't so bad since it was completely dark and you couldn't see anything....we got to ride with a few of stephanie's friends as well....and we watched the movie black sheep which is the dumbest movie i've ever seen but to be fair none of us had ever heard of it before, but i felt dumber after watching it that's for sure.

since it was raining, scratch that, snowing in valduz on saturday we loaded up the car and headed to the southern italian part of switzerland just near the border to italy. there it was a nice 30 degrees celcius and perfectly sunny. we had a good ride along the lake and then sat outside in the sun while we got a tan....haha....then driving back it dropped some 20 degrees and began raining....yay! we were sad to go the next morning because we had such a good time with them during the week. im really glad we took them up on their offer to come stay and see liechtenstein......such a cool little country with cool little people...haha

phillip, whitney and i on our way back from south switzerland

man painting the parliment building in valduz

whitney, stephanie, and i

ticino, switzerland

walking in the clouds

having a panic attack, whitney thinks it's funny

liechtenstein

my beer on top of the mountain....phillip said it would help me for the way down :)

the man who fixed my headset, finally.....a retired bike guru....wanted a photo with us for his wall of riders he's helped.....sweeeeeet

sweeeeeeet

2009-07-17T07:41:00.003-04:00

The most important European art event in 2009: Kunstmuseum Basel stages unique Van Gogh exhibition, April 26 – September 27.
The Kunstmuseum Basel is planning a major exhibition of paintings by Vincent Van Gogh in 2009. It will feature a thematically concentrated body of works from every creative period of the famous master. The venture is sponsored by UBS. The Kunstmuseum Basel is planning to assemble works along thematic lines of the landscapes from around the globe. The exhibition hence represents a rare opportunity to see such a broad cross-section of paintings by Van Gogh in one place. Helping place the master’s oeuvre in a broader context will be examples from Van Gogh’s contemporaries Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin.

Locality: Kunstmuseum Basel
Address: St. Alban-Graben 16

Website: http://www.vangogh.ch/

sierre-nax bergrennen

2009-07-16T11:41:00.004-04:00

so early saturday morning marco, peter, whitney and i drove to langnau to pick up sereina from the train station and the 5 of us headed to sierre, switzerland in wallis. the drive was a fun one. marco trying to learn english, us trying to learn german. i didnt sleep much actually besides the 15 minutes when we put the car on a train and we rode the train through a mountain. that was a weird feeling for sure. especially when the gps kept telling us is was time to get on the boat when there was no boat in sight....

we arrived in sierre and started the drive up to the hotel and where the girls would be staying. after 20k of switchbacks we got to the town we would be staying in only to find out we had to drive back down to meet ernst and the rest of the team to go for a spin. so we headed back down....all the while marco driving incredibly close to the edge trying to freak me out....well it worked of course..the race would be 70K, 35K in the valley and 35K up a climb of over 7000ft

we went for an hour ride around the valley, me wearing my warmers and them making fun of me. we got done, grabbed our stuff and headed to drop peter off at his team's hotel. then marco, whitney and i drove back up the mountain to stephanie's aunts' vacation house, about 10k from the finish of the race the next day. the whole team and staff had a delicious dinner of pasta and salad that was unbelievably good. they must put crack in their food because i havent had anything i didnt like. after a glass or two of wine the girls headed off to bed since we had a 545 wake up call in the morning. personally i slept terribly. i think whitney did also, but regardless 6am came way to soon. we stubbled out of bed and down to breakfast. stephanie told me later that she thought i was a different person when i came down for breakfast. i had forgotten that they'd never encountered me after waking up. im not a morning person, at all. i had an egg some bread with jam and ovalmaltine crunchy cream, yes that's the actual name. much like crunchy nutella. we got the 30 minutes bell and we all went to gather our stuff to go to the race. we drove down the mountain and arrived at the staging area. some had a coffee, i just relaxed and jammed to some kind of music on my ipod. we got suited up and i started spinning around with jessica.
we started with the juniors again. it was a staggered race so all the faster categories started behind. off the line the juniors didnt go slower than 50K/h. i was thinking are you serious we have to go up a climb for 35K and you are drilling it in the valley. awesome. anywho, about 20K in my headset was coming super loose and my handlebars were starting to go sideways. i had no choice but to stop and get ernst to fix it. not such a good thing when they are going over 30 but i couldn't keep riding it that way or i could have crashed. we fixed it and i got back on and was trying to tt back up to the group. some points going 50K by myself but never seeing them. i was pretty pissed at this point and suddenly turned and realized i had already started the climb. great, i thought, who knows how much time ive lost to them. peter came by and yelled at me to hop on.....hahaha cute peter....anyway i got in tt climbing mode for the next 1.5 hrs. i kept picking off people, eventually seeing whitney, but being so angry from what happened i didn't really say much to each other when i passed her. sorry whitney! i got to the point where i could almost catch stephanie when i came up to the finish. the last 5K were the absolute worst. i was just wishing it to be over. i got done and ernst pushed me to the car. i was so incredibly frustrated i didnt want to talk. after i calmed down a bit i asked seriena how it went and she said she won. who'd a thought? sereina is great in the mountains. i really wish i had been up there to be with her but that's how it goes sometimes. theres always the next weekend. just bummed because i was climbing really well.

we packed up, had a nice dessert thanks to stephie's aunt and were on our way. whitney and i would be spending the next week with stephanie and her husband phillip in liechtenstein...

racin'

stephanie and me grating cheese
sereina and i after the race

the finish driving back down

the car train

view on the way up the mountain. over 6000ft of climbing in 35K

a week in zöllbruck

2009-07-13T14:57:00.008-04:00

so since germany last week we've had a fun filled week. i got to experience my first train ride with bikes and luggage, boy was that fun.....not!
we got back about 11pm and gave our blumen from the podium to the mother, she was very excited.

that next week we got some good training in together, whitney and i. it was good to have a partner again to ride with. peter ventured to zollbruck on thursday where he spent the next few days visiting whitney and riding with us. we got to go visit the schloss spiez and wander around thun with peter on thursday....we even got to go buy some of the family's homemade honey up in the mountains. the bees pollenate in the woods rather than flowers so it has a very distinct taste but it so so delicious. marco rode with us thursday and friday also. he got to go join peter on his climbing intervals and came back saying how fast peter was. im sure it made him happy to ride with someone fast for a change and not just whitney and i ;) while they did that whitney and i did our easy ride to a sweet katholic church nearby which was absolutely beautiful inside. afterward we rode to the car wash to clean our bikes before leaving the following morning for the mountain race. after spending much time trying to figure out what word meant what function we finally got them clean and rode back for dinner. yum yum pasta, which was a rarity, to get ready for the weekend. we all finished and went to pack our things for the next couple weeks while peter fixed his shifters in our room.....

it was sort of sad the following morning to leave because I wasn't really sure if I'd see the family again since I may be based at Fabienne's to race the track races after this. So Abigail was sad we were leaving but she came by to say goodbye before she headed off to camp in Geneva for a week. We said farwell and everyone was on their way, Abigail to camp, family to see them off and us to Wallis for our first bergrennen (mountain race)

"the mother"
so cute baby duckies

sweet old painting supplies in the castle with the rembrant exhibit

abigail and i at the schloss spiez

view of lake thun from the tower of the castle

peter's really tall. abigail snuck in there..

the cutest little mountain boy ever..

ebringen, germany

2009-07-07T03:49:00.003-04:00

so we had a "rundstreckenrennen" this past sunday in germany. now im not sure exactly what you would call this. they don't call it a kriterium because there are no intermediate points like before, but it was only like a 2K or less course that we did 24 times so to whitney and i we saw it as a crit, so i guess the best way to describe it would be a really hard american crit course. half the course was up, the other half was down. there was a nice hard hill going up to the finish and continuing false flat all the way until the 3 to last corner. the course was very windy and narrow which was really cool to have some technical sections. the hard part was clearly the hill on the home stretch.....we started with the junior men and they went balls out for the first half of the race. immediately we were sprinting all out to try and stay on them as they killed it up the hill and then took it easy on the decent. i was able to stay with the boys for about 5 laps or so before popping off. that put me first for the girls. I tt'ed for quite some time when ernst yelled at me that sereina wasnt too far behind. i waited up for her so we could work together. at about 10 laps to go i hit a wall and a told sereina i wasn't feeling well and she continued on.....i slowed down slightly and kept going on my own, catching person after person until 2 laps to go when whitney came up to me with a couple juniors. ernst had told her i wasn't too far up the road so she attacked the girl she was with so as not to bring her across to me. this was such a relief to see whitney because i was so tired. she pulled around the lap and i sprinted for the finish with the two boys we were with......one i got easily and the other boy i barely missed at the line. if only there were 5 more meters.....he didn 't like this AT ALL.....anywho, it was our first european podium, flowers included :) apparently the race director was excited that he had americans at his race and we were told he would be boasting for the next couple weeks to all his buddies.....funny.
in addition to flowers we each got a bottle of german wine because the area we were racing in is well known for their vineyards.....sweeeeeet.
it was a fun race, but super super hot, even for being a texan...

the funniest part of the race, well not at the time but later, was when i grabbed a bottle from france and started pouring it on me only to realize that is was an esotonic drink and not water.....yuck.....

the trip home was interesting...it was my first time to experience taking luggage and bikes on the train, with 3 different trains changes, boy was that fun.....not. we arrived back at almost 11pm and we had a snack and went straight to bed

the urban scene

2009-07-04T07:50:00.004-04:00

so the last few days have gone by pretty slowly. i went out riding on my own both tuesday and wednesday for the first time since I've been here. it was squite nice actually. fabienne pointed me in a direction and was like go that way.....so i did.

thursday morning i got up and packed my things to ride to visit my friend larssyn. she was nice enough to motor pace me once I got over her way, which was about 40K one way. we motorpaced and then went back to her house and we spent the rest of the day checking out zurich. minus the couple hours she had to go to work at the primary school where she works. it is a very neat school where the children learn a half day in english, and the other half in german.....so they are going to be completely bilingual once they are older......i meanwhile checked out lake zurich and read a book (yea i know, weird) while watching all the people who apparently have no jobs run around swimming in the lake.

stadt zurich
the starbucks humored me

the next day we took her vespa into old town zurich and she showed me around the grossmunster and all the cool little shops and boutiques. it was really nice to see her again after not having hung out since 2006!

vessssspa

2006

2009

when it was about time for her to go to work I hoped on my bike and rode back to Remigen. Fabienne left Thursday evening for a triatholon she is doing this weekend. Mirjiam is coming here this evening and driving me to meet the team to head up to Ebringen, Germany for our circuit race tomorrow. wish us luck!!

For now I think I will go make myself a coffee and contemplate when to do my hour ride....maybe towards the evening when it's cooler, ive become such a wimp since leaving the texas heat :)

ive started writing poems.

2009-06-30T16:08:00.005-04:00

this one is called
"overseas spending"

in switzerland:
food is cheap.
electronics expensive.
clothing expensive.
replacement razor blades are $40 for a box of 6........
chocolate is abundant.
tortilla chips, not so much.

what do you think?

abigail doing my hair amazingly

andrea got 3rd in the swiss championship road race

weird jiggly milk grain things?

from geneva to northern switzerland is 3 hours. HA

2009-06-29T04:25:00.002-04:00

so shortly after posting on friday the weather turned really bad all of a sudden, pouring rain, strong winds and lighting. so since we didn't have trainers and didn't want to risk getting sick we opted for a rest day instead. im not one to particularly train in the rain anymore. i know what it feels like to race in the rain, so that whole needing to practice to know how to race in those conditions, to me, is a bunch of bull. so we ended up tagging along to abigail's physio-therapy appointment to check out the sweet gym there, and after to her ballet class.....yes we've done some interesting things since we've been here. never thought i'd say i attended a kids swiss ballet class.....who knew...

so early early saturday morning we got up and i went over to check my email, where suzanna had set out a complete buffet for breakfast included a farewell bar of chocolate each :P
i would be moving to fabienne's house that evening after the road race in Nyon.
we departed with sad goodbyes, really, because they are such a super nice family and made our transition to swiss life so painless....abigail made us promise to visit again before we leave :)

we got to the race in Nyon to find out that it didnt start until 1:30 and we were there at 10:30. so whitney and i decided to go get our ride out of the way so that we could ride in the car during the race. talk about sunflowers galore, sorry sollen blumen.....we managed to not get lost and find our way back to the car. we quickly showered and hoped in the very tight car to go to the feed zone....there i met a man who knows my friend larssyn, and he was talking to us about how kristen lasasso had stayed with him last year for the season while she was racing.....small world i know...
in the feed zone to pass the time we had these weird jiggly, milk things.....no idea what they were, and the texture was so strange but they tasted suprisingly good. im determined to find out what they are before leaving...

the girls ended up doing well despite some unsportsmanlike behavior from some of the other teams in the race. andrea got 3rd, fabienne 4th, and jessica 5th....congrats to all..

after the race we packed my billion tons of luggage into ernst's car and headed towards basel where we dropped over mr. german man and then headed to Bruegg. Fabienne's mother came to pick us up just off the highway and we drove back to my current location, Remigen. The riding here is supurb. there are mountains galore and flats so that is good also :)

sunday we woke up and decided to go ride towards ernst's house because fabienne forgot her wallet in the car the day before and wanted to pick it up. we ended up doing a good solid ride, a little over 3 hours. got a little climbing in also. it was decently paced so i was pretty tired afterwards not having gotten do much intensity in my legs since the week before.

last night we went to a reception thing for the club that Fabienne is a part of. one of the girls had won her category in the juniors at nationals so they were throwing a congratulatory party. of course i couldn't talk to anyone so it was a little weird for me but fabienne was nice and introduced me to some of her friends....
after we came back and made dinner, wurst, potatoes, and salate....we sat out in the garden to eat, they tend to do that alot here, and fabienne's brother showed me pictures of where they are going on holiday next week and what i would be missing :P

early evening since fabienne had to be up at the crack of dawn for school......just an easy day today. might head into brugg to check it out. it is much more of an urban setting here but both places are super nice in their own way. can't wait to go visit whitney down at jessica's and see what bern is like in the daytime. i will visit my friend larssyn on thursday. it is a 30K ride to her house from where i am and she generously offered to motor pace me thursday so i will go do that and spend the day checking out zurich with her....

that's all from here for now.

stockhorn and swiss elementary schools

2009-06-26T04:26:00.003-04:00

so we got fairly late from nyon, where the swiss TT championships were being held. the junior nicole on the team won the U19 category......congratulations to her. Andrea ended up getting 5th in the elite women, and jessica 7th I believe. Fabienne coming in just behind Jessi. It was fun to be there and check out how things worked in switzerland for nationals but I was kind of wishing I was racing with them also. It was a really sweet course, super technical, sometimes dangerous even. It felt like a roller coaster ride. We rode in the car behind Serena and got our first look at caravan driving in europe.......not for those that get car sick for sure.....
was pretty fun but we were tired from just standing around all day and passed out in the car on the "long" drive home (2 hours)....

thursday we got up early because the parents of the family wanted to take us to stockhorn, a giant mountain, from which the top you can see all the surroundings mountains and big cities....
only catch was we had to ride a gondola up to the top of the mountain...
gondola=small metal box of DEATH!! i do not like heights at all so it was a bit nervewracking for whitney and i...it was spectacular at the top though. high above the clouds we had a coffee before going back down to hike around the lake...

this body isn't made for hiking....muscles hurt after that i didn't even know i had. so we just spun around easy after getting back over to the post office to send out some things and then back for dinner.

this morning we joined abigail at her school for a safari breakfast with her class. they spent the night in a teepee outside of the school and had a breakfast with guests of their choice this morning. she really wanted us to come so we of course accepted :)
we have a ride later this afternoon with some climbing so we may head over to Moosegg or back up the climb to the cheese factory we went to.....either way, the weather is nice today.....perhaps the cold of the sheep is over now!

cold of sheep=a period of time, about a week, during the summertime where it is very cold, abnormally cold for the time of year.

anyways, ciao!

we are show and tell..

2009-06-24T05:41:00.002-04:00

so since monday we ventured off in a different direction to train....
we headed out toward burgdorf and finally got on some less trafficked roads that were one word.....freakin amazing! okay that's two but whatever...
through the thick of the forest and rolling hills towards the base of the alps, it's absolutely beautiful.

yesterday we got back from riding about the time that all the kids were out playing after school. we were curious as to why the kids when they saw us come home, started riding up and down our street past the house a billion times.....like they were saying "hey! let's go ride by the americans....!"
last night we went over to bruno's sister's house and found out that abigail had gone to school and told all the kids that she had americans at her house and so all the little kiddies decided to come for a looksy....hahaha

we got up early this morning and ate breakfast with abigail before she headed to school and we went out for our 2 hr ride....we had to be done early because here in about an hour we are heading with the team towards geneva to go cheer them on during the swiss national tt championships....we can't participate but figured it'd be cool to go watch anyway...

oh yes, and it's baby birthing time here i think because everywhere we ride there are babies, baby horses, baby sheep, baby pigs, baby whatevers.....EVERYWHERE.....even slug but those are just freakin gross...

anywho, lunch time now before we depart to Nyon.
bis bald! (see you later)

in memory of mi mamá

2009-06-23T05:45:00.001-04:00

3/19/62 - 6/23/05

i hit my first swiss child today..

2009-06-22T07:22:00.004-04:00

yesterday we had our first team race in Wetzikon, just outside of Zurich. it was a kriterium, swiss style.....and let me tell you, euro crits are very different from american ones.

first off, it is like a points race but on the road. if you've ever done a track race you know what i mean. every 5 laps there is a points sprint, with points going to the top 5 places....

the objective was to get the most points in order to win. there is also a 30-second rule. if you are 30 sec up on the field at the end of the race, regardless of how many points you have, you win the race. so it's a bit different but we got the general jist of the race.
unfortuantely due to either, weather, us having so many riders or something else, we were 95% of the race. so as far as tactics the ds said for us just to make it interesting. so it was basically a free for all, chasing down each other, attacking each other, etc.....

secondly, curbs and medians.....inside the course, it was the weirdest sketchiest thing ive ever ridden on, especially when it started raining halfway through and my tires were slipping all over the place. it was like a cyclocross race, too narrow for more than two people wide if you were lucky...

i attacked the first lap and stayed away through the first points lap. when i got caught whitney countered and we continued to do this throughout the race until serena, andrea, and jessica got off the front after a points sprint. i attacked and was bridging up with fabienne when we came around a corner and a little boy ran out into the street and i clipped him with my bars. i somehow caught myself but fabienne smacked right into him and went down. i wasn't sure what to do because id never hit a little boy in a race before and wasn't sure what the swiss did in this kind of situation so i slowed up and the group caught me.....ernst motioned for me to keep going so i just went ahead and kept racing. bummer because i was about to catch on to the girls up the road but that's how it goes....

i ended up getting the last couple point sprints out of the field and the last one which counted for double...

we were told to go off to the showers immediately after the race so we didn't get to see results or anything, neither did the other girls and the ds didn't say much after the race about how it went so i was a little confused as to whether we did what we were supposed to or not. but we will talk with bruno tonight and find out where we finished in the results because whitney and i definately got some points.

all in all it was an eventful first race, i would label it as an obstacle course....however the cornering practice in american crits came in handy when we slowed down alot in the corners we were able to stay away easier because of that....

anywho, will update when we have pictures and exact results. the girls were all very friendly and helped explain what exactly was going on since we cant exactly understand announcers. all i know after that race is that red flags means points, green means money....and i saw no green...

here's a photo from the TT we did wednesday evening:

ba ba baby black sheep

2009-06-20T09:54:00.004-04:00

so yesterday we had some light intervals to get our legs going since we hadn't ridden hard in quite some time. so we headed out towards Thun for a two hour ride with efforts. now trying to explain efforts/intervals to the swiss was pretty difficult. finally after saying that we had to go hard then ride slow then go hard then ride slow we headed out hoping it wouldn't rain on us in the process.

so about the black sheep......possibly the cutest animal i have ever seen in my entire life. i know i have said that before but i doubt anything could trump a baby black sheep. seriously WAY cuter than any puppy you will ever find. i let whitney in on my plan to come and steal one during the night and bring it back to our room and feed it party crackers in the bathroom. they were the most adorable things ever, and aren't we lucky enough to see them each time we head out to ride. unfortuantely they were scared when i came up to take a picture so i will work on that :)

we got drizzled on only towards the end of our ride but made it back in before it started pouring rain. we were pretty tired afterwards and had a nice lunch of some sort of swiss cassarole/pizza before we passed out for an hour.

today we had 2 hours with motor pacing....instead since we didnt have a motor we acted as the motor instead. we had a nice ride and are feeling better and better each day. following our ride we had lunch with the family of chicken, pasta and fresh made salad.....yum :) followed by coffee as usual and every possible dessert and chocolate they could find for us to try.....it's a good thing we are walking everywhere and have a billion stairs to go up everyday or we'd be coming back home seriously fat..

we are learning more and more each day....picking up on words now so we have the general jist of what they are talking about....now if we can just get some pronunciation down....that's the hard part...

ciao as they say..

our first race

2009-06-19T04:39:00.000-04:00

So on Wednesday we had our first race, an over 20K TT. Functioning on hardly any sleep in a few days, not riding AT ALL before except an hour easy warm up prior, and riding our road bikes with training wheels and tires, made it pretty hard. And that was apparent when I passed out in the car immediately after my cheese and proscuitto sandwich made by bruno’s mother. We got to meet three of our teammates, Andrea, Jessica, and Nicole. All very nice girls.

So all in all I guess we weren’t too far off considering the conditions, so we will see this weekend how our legs are going when we have our first team race, go figure, a kriterium.

Prior to racing that evening Bruno’s sister and her daughter, along with Bruno’s mother decided to take us on a little drive up to where we could view the snowy alps, where we also got to feed our very first billy goat…..yes!
It was absolutely beautiful.

Yesterday we finally got to get a longer ride in, close to three hours. We rode to the Bern Centrum and back. It was a nice ride with some rolling hills. It was rather hot so we stopped at one of the fountains in a small village to get some more water before finishing the venture home. Thank god someone told us we could drink that water because those fountains are everywhere and the water is crystal clear and ice cold…

We got back, took showers and had a nice dinner of fisch, rice and vegetables…..with of course apfelsaft, my personal fav :) and yes benji was right about the swiss having amazing apple juice, and I would know ;) Followed by a traditional swiss dessert of vanilla ice cream, fresh strawberries picked by the mother, and whipped cream. Very tasty…

the kids wear reflector vests

2009-06-16T08:44:00.004-04:00

so we made is to switzerland safe and sound. only a couple mishaps along the way, one being our WAY overcharged fee for checking our bike on an airline that I will never again fly with, Delta, and peter's bike gone missing when we arrived in zurich.

overall it wasnt that terrible of a flight despite the fact of only really sleeping an hour combined broken up into 15min segments. i also made a friend on the flight, an 11 grade girl from Prague who told me she was stoked to see I was sitting by her and that I wasn't a fat or very old man.

the big victories of the past 49 hours would have to be the jigsaw puzzle that was getting whitneys and my bikes into the bike case to fly, that took an act of god and we came out victorious. second being the non verbal first conversation with our ds here, staff speaking little english + us speaking little german made for lots of points and nodding.

whitney and i had our first swiss coffee and i have to say going back to starbucks is going to be a downgrade....for lunch of the staffs sisters invited us over to her house to eat. she has been our translator/care-giver seeing as bruno's parents don't speak any english and we needed to find out where a bank and such was. it was a great egyptian pasta dish (her husband hails from egypt) and for dessert another cup of coffee and a homemade cake by our host, with nothing other than nuts and RHUBARB!

we will be staying here until saturday when we will travel with our teammate jessica to a uci track race to watch her compete.....too bad i cant also, unfortuntely im not swiss :)
sunday we have our first race, a kriterium 20K outside of zurich. should be interesting.

nathan was definately right when he said that this would be completely different than any other europe trip id been on. without usa cycling holding your hand and wiping your butt it has already made things alot more interesting, which will be way more rewarding i hope.

gots to go stay away long enough to at least get the bikes most of the way put together.
adios, wait wrong language....

day 2 of "activities"

2009-06-05T21:00:00.003-04:00

so whitney graciously planned out our remaining 10 days of "activities" outside of our usual training.

yesterday began the festivities with whitney's parental appreciation dinner. we of course helped because we appreciate them letting us stay in their house and eat their food...
we all pitched in to make green pistachio mole enchiladas, cilantro lime rice, and havana black beans from scratch. it turned out really yummy.

today was day two of "activities" and since it was our day off from riding we headed over to boulder for the day. we wandered around downtown for awhile where we found an abundance of hippies, street performers, and coffee shops. we ate at a great himalayan restaurant for lunch...then headed over to "the cup" for a coffee before getting in the car and driving off in search of some winery...

we found said winery and the guy turned out to be a real rude douche, for lack of nicer terminology. so we left and decided to head up to estes park to check out the town. i LOVED estes park...i would live there in a second.....after wandering around and sitting in awe of the billion and one ice cream/candy shops in downtown, we got in the car to come back to ft. collins only to have peter's fav song come on the radio as we drove, Lady Gaga blasting, all the way back...

now it's dinner time..

tulsa was tough, ft. collins is cold

2009-06-03T13:04:00.005-04:00

so the following weekend after the memorial day crit we headed up to tulsa, ok for the infamous tulsa tough. these crits are always a blast. great courses, great crowds, and of course great money :)

tulsa tough was definately tough this year. the tough part being staying clear of all the ridiculous crashes. this race was seriously a crash fest. with three bads ones friday night, one huge pileup that took out half the field saturday night and the death march that sunday was.....it took everything we had just to stay out of the sketchy business. i wasn't sure what made these races more crash crazy than normal but im assuming it was the huge mix of locals and the few pros. maybe the speed wasn't fast enough to drop the less experienced riders......regardless....somehow i came out with all my skin.

whitney and lauren both went down at some point but they are both just fine. whitney's was actually pretty funny to watch when she did a somersault and went rolled feet first in the air...

anyway,

soon after peter, whitney, and i left to head up to ft. collins where we are spending some time resting up and training before we all head over june 15th to switzerland. we are all very excited to have this opportunity and can't wait to get over there and tear it up.

Whitney and I will be racing for Team Bike-Import and Peter will be racing for Alchemist-Skoda.

Check out the pic below for a link to the website!

state crit

2009-05-27T11:18:00.003-04:00

so to relive the incident even more, i've decided to write about my race monday.
so like i predicted, the week prior where i probably did everything the opposite of what would be in my best interest "race-wise" bit me in the "butt" (for the sake of my G-rated blog).

it was very frustrated having had a stellar start to the year and having the past month go completely haywire, from the changes in the team, to crashing and being sick.
perseverance is not an easy path, trust me, but the rewards are there.....somewhere?

so despite the goings on i somehow still pulled out 2nd place....which to everyone that knows me, knows is not acceptable to me. but i deal with it and move on. whitney and i have huge plans this summer and keeping my eyes on that kept the wallowing in my self-pity to a minimum :)

it made for a cool picture and a huge crowd WHOA! so that's cool...
and what better than to get beaten by an ex-teammate. yes Jen, I still remember us getting our butts, there's that reference again, handed to us by Mina back in the day....

moral of the story is;
eat, sleep, and ride....that should make you a good bike racer.....unless of course there's just no hope for you and then I hear Burger King is hiring, but then again maybe not the way the economy is...

the end.

memorial day

2009-05-25T00:00:00.002-04:00

game face bro......game face...

let's throw a little sick in there

2009-05-14T23:00:00.003-04:00

so i did an entire ride the other day with Soulja Boy's Turn My Swag On stuck in my head.

Now this song is sort of annoying to begin with, so having it in my head while I was riding had me pretty close to wanting to pull my hair out..

I've been sick the past few days. I guess it's a combination of the traveling, crashing, and stress of getting everything together for this trip to Europe coming up. Regardless, I can't breath out of my nose right now. I'm starting to feel slightly better everyday so I should be good to go this weekend for the dallas crits. And if not, well I have to be on my game regardless so being sick isn't really an option now is it (hence why I'm bundled up at home like a hermit)

- I got my stitches out Friday, yay, but my leg is still pretty swollen, that might take some time.

After the crits this weekend, we will be heading up to Tulsa for the big crits up there. I'm really excited to go again. Those courses (besides Sunday, don't much care for that one) are some of my favs.

SHOUT OUT to my cousin AMY, it's her birthday today

joe martin

2009-05-11T17:56:00.002-04:00

so the past two races ive had have been complete polar opposites of each other....

which goes to prove that racing has its ups and downs

since the amazing races whitney and i had at matrix a couple weeks back we ventured up to arkansas for joe martin...a race that i notoriously have bad luck at..

well this time was no exception. going from completely dominating a race to having everything that could possibly go wrong happen is quite a blow..

prior to even starting the first stage (which was the uphill tt) i crash while warming up. coming down some slick switchbacks i come around a blind corner where someone was in the road, i swerve to miss them and hit a bunch of mud and leaves.

in total shock, and gushing from my face, i ask whitney to check my bike so we could just ride back down to the van....no sense in sitting there on the side of the road, at least this was my rational.

i get back to the van and have about 15 minutes to my start...nathan puts a band-aid on my face and says your okay just go get it done and come back and go straight to the ER to get stitches...

i was like are you kidding it can't be that bad that i need to go to the hospital..

i get done with the tt and i still have blood dripping all over me...

whitney and i left to go to the hotel so i could shower and eat before going to the hospital..

upon showering i realize that i actually have a hole in my chin and i do in fact need to go get stitches asap..

whitney was nice enough to go get me something to eat while i checked in. about 6 hours later i left the ER to go back to the hotel and try and sleep before the race the next day...

i woke up, obviously stiff and with a hematoma the size of my head on my hip..

the next few days would progressively get worse as far as the race goes. between pain meds and flats i ended up very far down, and more just wanting to get through the race so it could be over..

it's races like these that actually make me want to be out there even more.

the thought of not completing the race never even occurred to me as an option.

it made me realize the value of a good teammate.

it made me realize that the bad is what makes you stronger, so that the good can feel that much better.

im a nerd but hey, it's interesting to me...

2009-05-05T13:45:00.001-04:00

Legend has it that Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear after a falling out with Paul Gauguin. But a new study by German art historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans claimed that it was actually the result of Gauguin’s sword attack - not van Gogh’s self-mutilation:

Gauguin, an excellent fencer, was planning to leave Van Gogh’s "Yellow House" in Arles, southwestern France, after an unhappy stay.
He had walked out of the house with his baggage and his trusty épée in hand, but was followed by the troubled Van Gogh, who had earlier thrown a glass at him.
As the pair approached a bordello, their row intensified, and Gauguin cut off Van Gogh’s left earlobe with his sword – either in anger or self-defence.
He then threw the weapon in the Rhône. Van Gogh delivered the ear to the prostitute and staggered home, where police discovered him the following day, the new account claims. [...]
Although the historians provide no "smoking gun" to back up their claims, they argue theirs is the most logical interpretation, and explains why in his final recorded words to Gauguin, Van Gogh writes: "You are quiet, I will be, too".
They cite correspondence between Vincent and his brother, Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened without directly breaking the "pact of silence" made with his estranged friend.

nicht mehr Englisch

2009-04-30T11:33:00.002-04:00

in the spirit of our most-anticipated trip to Europe this summer Whitney and I have decided that from now until Tulsa Tough we are going to become fluent in German (okay maybe not fluent but "better" than we are now which isn't much).

our goal is to get to the point where at Tulsa we only communicate with each other in German during the race...

time to buckle down

more details on the trip to come, for now it's back to work..

a few matrix crit photos

2009-04-30T09:42:00.001-04:00

matrix challenge..

2009-04-28T11:03:00.000-04:00

so this weekend whitney and i raced in downtown dallas at the matrix challenge.....which is the "big-to-do" in the DFW area besides the State Crit weekend.
it was a great venue and a very organized race. kudos to the promoter and volunteers for orchestrating it!

so whitney, lauren, and i pretty much dominated both saturday and sunday.

lauren winning both her 3s races hands down.
whitney going off the front saturday and winning solo, lauren and i getting second and third.
and myself going off the front sunday and winning solo, whitney coming in 2nd on her own between me and the pack..

thanks to brad for cooking us dinner saturday night.....the riders always appreciate that so much.

post-race sunday whitney and the guys packed up in the van and headed out to do the remaining crits at Speedweek.....good luck to them all.

overall it was a great weekend. it was honestly a huge motivator for whitney and i to do so well.......with all that has transpired over the past few weeks it is easy to become discouraged and lose sight of what we are working towards. however, whitney has been a real tropper and i'd like to thank her for her support as of late...we are going to continue to work hard and represent metro to the best of our ability.....

something fun

2009-04-22T10:31:00.003-04:00

My 3;

THREE NAMES I GO BY
1. shannon
2. fiasconi
3. tropic thunder

THREE JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE
1. cyclist
2. secretary
3. data input

THREE PLACES I HAVE LIVED
1. Keller, TX
2. Flower Mound, TX
3. Grapevine, TX

THREE TV SHOWS THAT I WATCH
1. Scrubs
2. House
3. Project Runway

THREE PLACES I HAVE BEEN
1. Salzburg
2. Prague
3. London

THREE PLACES I WANT TO GO
1. Rome
2. Mallorca
3. Ireland

THREE OF MY FAVORITE FOODS
1. Mashed potatoes
2. Lasagna
3. Crepes

THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO
1. July
2. Spending time with my sisters this weekend
3. My copy of Adobe CS4

THREE PETS THAT YOU HAVE OWNED
1. Baron, my dog when I was 3
2. Herachio, my short lived baby turtle
3. Snowbie, my albino rat when I was in middle school

THREE FRIENDS WHO WILL REPLY
1. doubt
2. anyone
3. will

THREE FAVORITE BANDS/SINGERS
1. Evanescence
2. Depeche Mode
3. Three Days Grace

THREE FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH
1. Hockey
2. Cycling
3. not-Golf

THREE FAVORITE DRINKS
1. Apple Juice
2. Chocolate milk (after races)
3. Cream Soda

new coach..

2009-04-09T22:36:00.004-04:00

so seeing as so many wonder what i am doing for training i have decided to hire on GONZO aka andrew gonzales, as my new coach, both in life and in sport. here is my first day's training with my new coach..

4/10/09

-Up at 4am, warm up at 5am, 25 mile run

-Core Work following run, 200 crunches

-5 1hr intervals, 100%, 3minutes in between efforts

-5 hrs recovery after intervals, small chainring sprints during

-Gym- 2hrs, 4 sets of 25 squats at 400lbs

-Recovery Swim, 2 hrs, backstroke

-Yoga class, 2 hrs

-Trainer workout after dinner, 4 30 min efforts, 90%

Things to remember with GONZO COACHING INC.

-NO HOUR LONG SESSIONS, THAT IS A WASTE

-DO NOT TALK, THIS AINT NO SOCIAL RIDE

-NO SLACKING

-FULL THROTTLE THE WHOLE DAY TO MAKE UP FOR LACK OF TRAINING IN PREVIOUS YEARS

-GOTTA HAVE A STRONG CORE, IF YOU DONT YOU MIGHT AS WELL HANG IT UP

-STOP EFFIN' AROUND

-NO PLANNING JUST RIDE AS HARD AS YOU CAN

rockin' the tt

2009-03-28T23:42:00.003-04:00

here are a couple pictures i found from the tt, its not many but i figure that it would at least hold me over from my lack of posts just until the race is over tomorrow and i can do a full update.

opportunity to move up to top 10-15 tomorrow.....wish us luck!

tootles from redlands...

pace bend flashback....girls win....yay!

2009-03-09T15:32:00.003-04:00

eating whitney's deliciously prepared din-din...
podium for the ladies race

peter racing is biciclette..

casey attacking up a hill..

me attacking

benji being benji..

valle del sol

2009-02-24T16:49:00.001-05:00

so our first race of the season is over and gone.
after having a bad TT, I was somewhere in the top 20. far from what I was hoping for but whitney had a good ride and came in 12th I think.
the road race went slightly better, we still have some kinks to work out but the girls overall worked very well together. the 5 of us pretty much controlled the entire race. we weren't able to get a rider of the front, which is really a feat on that course, but i ended up getting top ten in the sprint and moved up a few spots in the GC.
i went into the crit thinking that we had to salvage the weekend with a really good result. i tried hard to get my head right the morning of having not gotten any sleep the night before.
somehow it worked because i ended up winning the crit which I was totally stoked about. ashley saved my butt and shot off the line like some sugar-crazed 5 year old.....i made it up to her in less than a lap and she attacked the following, perfect timing because the second we were catching her i attacked and bridged across to the girl i spent the rest of the race with. we pulled hard and increased the gap to about 30 seconds by the finish and I sprinted for the win.....
i was excited considering it was our first race and we had a good result from it. it looks to be a really promising year...

the boys were doing well also and had a good showing in the crit. they were always up in the moves.

highlights and low-lights of the weekend:

-benji brought me treats from swiss-land, biberli....gotta try them!

-our artic winter sleeping arrangements, ashley and i found out that the rest of our team likes sleeping in sub-zero temperatures and waking up feeling like death...

-we had an authentic euro foam party when benji had the idea to put soap in the hot tub and ashley proceeded to put half the bottle in......way....way to much...

-corey's trek to get breakfast on the other side of the highway.....he's a regular mountain man...

-andrew (gonzo) acted as our mechanic during the race.....much thanks to him for helping everyone out....he did such a great job and we all appreciated it.

-the girls took a fridge sitting lonely in the hallway of the hotel and brought it to our room so we could store our groceries and my ice-cold simply apple juice

-the boys had fun teaching benji all the english slang phrases that he probably doesnt need to know

-and probably the biggest surprise was waking up in new mexico with snow falling everywhere.....snow....in the desert.....what on earth is happening to the world....

this past weekend we raced down in austin at like the world championships of texas racing, pace bend. photos and update from that will be coming soon..

2009-02-19T16:57:00.000-05:00

"...yall would make like little vampire night loving tim burton babies...."
-ashley

counting down

2009-02-08T09:37:00.002-05:00

"it's gross and cloudy out..."
-shannon

"this is BATTLE weather..."
-ashley

we leave for valley of the sun, our first race, early early tomorrow morning. it happens to fall the exact same time as the NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix. to bad we can't go :(

wish us luck! we'll keep you updated.

wow...

2009-02-02T23:08:00.003-05:00

Contact us to drop off your old objects of affection for the Valentine's Day Is... Art and Live Music Show, or, if you're in the area, just drop off that stuff that reminds you of your Ex at Dunn Bros. Coffee in Addison. We will destroy, defile, and deface these items leading up to and on the day of the event.

you're invited to a party in our....er......living room

2009-01-31T22:07:00.003-05:00

iced roads+below freezing temperatures=shannon doesn't go outside (loosely translated to trainer workout)

"Make sure if you ride the trainer you put it about one inch in front of shannon and tell her she better get used to it...."

-Brandon Chapin

hundertwasser

2009-01-28T11:32:00.002-05:00

i had dinner at Andre Bohren's house the other night. it was great "grown-up" conversation over our dinner of potatoes, rabbit, vegetables and red wine. rabbit, i have to say, it absolutely delicious.....sounds weird i know, but it is possibly the most yummy meat i've had, and supposedly it's really lean and good for you too.

anywho, it was nice talking to someone who knew their way around the art world. andre had all these really cool books on European artists, and some awesome pieces hanging around the house. i was astonished when walking around i saw a drawing by m.c. Escher on the wall and had andre come up and tell me how it was an original and the previous owner was going to throw it away unless he took it.......WTF?!?!??!

so anyway, he let me borrow a book to look through on an Austrian artist named, Friedensreich Hundertwasser. ashley was flipping through it this morning and came upon an interview with the guy where he made a quote that she immediately associated with me. i read it and it is possibly the most appropriate quote to sum up my life as a whole.......

"It is just as if you had a donkey, a beautiful donkey. You like the donkey and you want to take him up the hill, but the donkey does not want to go to the hill and he turns toward the river. Of course you follow him to the river-what is the use of pushing him, pulling him up the mountain? It would give you a bad feeling to beat him all the time to force him into a way that he does not want to go....."The donkey is the subconscious, this outside power which I follow. In fact, it is the easy way, the lazy way, and the lazy way leads to success. The diligent way, the forceful way leads to disaster. If it is forced you see it in the painting. You see so many paintings that the man who made it wanted to fulfil a task, but in the meantime he suffered so much and sacrificed so much that the result is not so important anymore."

-this isn't to say im lazy but forcing life along isn't exactly the greatest idea either....

2009-01-19T23:37:00.002-05:00

ashley will become (with maybe some divine intervention)........the ULTIMATE diva...

im d-diva..

2009-01-19T20:48:00.003-05:00

"I'm just going to get water, I'm like 1000% body fat."
-ashley

so my better half showed up in dallas late last week to be my roomie for the duration of the season...it will be good fun im sure.
we've already laid up late at night laughing and probably waking up the others trying to sleep.
our new bikes have started to show up. we worked a little today getting all the parts organized and ready for assembly. cant wait to get on the new ride.....its going to look sweet!

grandma's boy is hilarious. saltwater willy's still has the best cornbread ever.

my lo mein is calling...

now that's a teammate right there..

2009-01-11T23:45:00.005-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxDqRy9bhtc

2009-01-10T22:14:00.001-05:00

oh i love people with a sense of humor..

fortune cookie

2009-01-08T00:33:00.001-05:00

"Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you."

-europe anyone? :))