GOALS

Everyone has goals for the year, whether you articulate them or not. I'm big on the Joel Friel pick a race or event and train specifically for it all year. A lot of people like to race a whole lot of races without thinking about whets important to accomplish for the year. I think it’s actually harder to pin all your hopes on one goal and build your entire season around that.

This year, my goal is pretty convenient. It’s to road race and move up as many categories as possible in road racing. That means that from the minute school gets out, I should be racing as often as I can while maintaining fitness. It means I'm going to do all my training in SD, so that I can start racing at a high level immediately. Specifically, my goals for the year are:

Become a Cat 4, possibly Cat 3

Win a race! (I've never actually won a race all out and it’s getting pretty sad. I don't care if I have to sandbag or whatever!)

Beat John Eppen (Last year I beat him once, he beat me once and there was a third time we raced that he "got sick")

Win HPV!
I'm probably not going to win, to be fair. It’s nearly impossible to beat Chico (they've got semi pro racers!), Cal Poly (they've got an almost perfect bike, when it works) and Missouri Rolla (they're totally pro). Teams like OSU, Montana and Portland have the chance to put it together this year. I think we still stand of chance of top 3 though. We've got lots of experience, a pretty wicked design and some talented riders. Also, I'm spending like forty hours a week working on the sucker and I'll be damned if I don't believe we can put it together this year.

ANYWAY, back to real cycling stuff. I'm not sure exactly where I'll be this summer. I'll probably be in MN, but I'm not going to plan any races until I've got a job. As soon as I've got employment figured out, I'll tell you what races are big for me.