Bikes and stuff

I finally got my new road bike in April, The Precious is a Cervelo R3SL equipped with Sram Red. I've got my Quarq power meter in my carbon fibre crank set (on my second one since I wore the one I got last year out) and I've still got my Mavic wheels I bought last summer. So that's my gear geekery out of the way.

I've been riding all winter under the supervision of my coach and started this racing season in February as a Category 3 rider - another jump up from last year. I decided to do mostly stage races this year which are 3-5 days of racing several different stages (like they do in the tour de France). In May I raced in the Sram Tour of the Gila, which was literally in the Wild West of New Mexica. And I did two races in Oregon later on, Mt Hood Classic Stage Race and the Cascade Classic Stage Race.  I placed high enough in those races to earn "upgrade points" and made the jump up to category 2 a few weeks ago!

Now I have to try to not die in the last few races of this season.  Category 1 and 2 riders are often lumped in with the pro riders so this is a whole new and much faster group of riders. Pretty excited to get out there and give it my best though.

-Joel