It is unbelievable when you come out of a sickness haze how you get the feeling of what it is like to live like a normal person. It feels like....no...it HAS been months since I felt like a normal healthy guy. I listened to my body and while I i hated doing it, I said no to tons of races and general deep training to give the body and mind a break. This week was my first week back to training and got 5 solid days in between my work and family schedule. The new training program is ramping and is way realistic and something I can execute on and feel good about.

Monday Tempo and cadence Busstop Course
Tuesday Flagstaff Mountain bench mark
Wednesday Tempo and cadence Busstop Course
Thursday Left Hand Lee Hill tempo and Hill interval
Friday Flagstaff early season trial

The body is responding, painfully, but still with a smile. I have been waking up each morning this week thinking "Oh my God, what do I feel like? Do I feel sick again? Did I deplete my immune system like battery acid with yesterday's work out??" And each day I feel better. Miraculous. It's so f'd up when you are sick for so long, your mind is convinced it will never get better. I feel like I am well on my way to something good.

On a totally unrelated note, here's where good kids make good! An old Rocky Mounts devo from a few seasons ago is kicking ass in Italy! Jon Garcia is leading the BMC team over there in Italy at the Giro del Friuli Venezia Giulia . He is responsible for getting us Levon (seen center here) who is racing strong for us these days. Jon's team mate Scott was staying down the streat from me at Dan's for a bit and I can tell you these are good, core kids. It is unbelievable that Jon and this group of kids are breaking legs over there. Kudos.

I'm going to try my luck at a piece of history. A set of genuine used blood bags from Op Puerto! Joy!

Kill some time meandering through these. Taken by my team mate and fellow cross geek Ryan.

That there is a gaggle of Moots...er ah Meets (plural?). What's missing? My Moots. My boys went on the annual pilgrimage this year to D-ville in CA and this is them getting ready for one of their sorties on the mountain. Downieville is bar none one of may favorite MTB Meccas. My Europe biz trip forced my non-participation in this years debauchery and I am saddened to my core. Next time boys.

How Denver got dissed on this tour I dunno. OK, having lived in moth NYC and SF, Denver isn't quite the epicenter of culture and avant garde film, but it's still a bike geek Mecca. The festival will hit some serious cities though which is rad.

Brian Verner of Hunter Cycles and Pure Sweet Hell fame will be debuting films at this festival highlighting some local builder in the Cruz and some photo prints from his study of the Cross scene the past few years. I raced against this guy years ago on the Left Coast and it's rad to see an artist who knows the true pain and suffering yield inexplicable passion. But he nails it all in celluloid.

See the BFF2007 Web Site for details and to buy tix et al.

Cheat, cheat...never beat. Or so says my boy B-dub's slogan on his now worldwide creed of DOPERS SUCK. Basso. What a p.o.s. I will discard my copy of Overcoming even though I love watching Jensy lay wood to the peleton.

Reading the news about Basso 'working' with the Puerto investigators to "relieve his conscience", I immediately went up stairs and brushed off the dust from my extremely limited Operation Puerto t-shirt (3 were made) and will wear it with pride. I put it away because it looked like this thing was a witch hunt. The design is hilarious and was done by my boy Ted at Anthem for (very) personal reasons, not for distribution.
Having Valverde in there as well was pretty prophetic too given the latest announcement. Here's another one of the shirts in action:

This boring waste of everyone's time has got to end. And yes, the pessimist in me says there'll be another wave of some new form of cheating but still my larger optimist side says the Slipstreams of the world will dominate. You didn't hear it from me but rumor has it that a very famous doper-come-clean rider who wears a distinctively yellow kit this season will be moving to the Argyle clad team for 08 to enable a Pro Tour slot and a ride to Le Grande Boucle.

But what do I know?

Dopers suck. Cheaters suck. My sons will know the difference.

We had our first race of the season today...the RM Izze Crit in lovely Lousiville CO. I swung by the event today to chip in where I could and snapped some pics where I could. The conditions were great through the Open 35's and 3's when the torrent came down and the temps dropped.

The RM crew did such a fabulous job. I was proud. Everything was humming and racers seemed stoked. I made it a point to poke about and ask folks about their race and how they liked the course and everyone seemed fairly stoked.

Some pics:

Longman, Fryda and his lady.

Mr. Bobby Rocky Mounts and Jenny K.

Dirk Friel and his adorable daughter

AC with priorities set straight

Peltier's Dovetail-sponsored Pasta Feed

The RM gals