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Rotation

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Unfortunately, I have gotten out of the practice of saving my work often. With the advent of the cloud and online platforms, I am usually dependent on the autosave function. Because of this, the beautiful description of my love for stage racing and some of the events of the early part of the race will be left to do the same thing that George Washington had hoped that his “faults of incompetent abilities” would end up doing, as my words have been “consigned to oblivion.” (G. Washington 1796) Now to return to trying to recreate what I had originally planned to say when I began the endeavor of sharing with you all my experiences in Sicily.   Throughout the entirety of the trip, we traveled over a good portion of the island. The first day was down the north coast. On the second and third days, we got to see the mountains and grasslands of the interior and the south coast. On the final day, we climbed a large portion of what is probably the most prominent feature of the island, Mount Et...
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REACT check

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I am feeling very proud of myself at this moment. Normally, as a textbook procrastinator, it takes a deadline to make me actually get started on something. For these blogs, that deadline has been before departing for my next trip as it would be kind of confusing to publish a story from a trip that is separated from the present by a few other trips. So, for the last couple, I have been writing them a day or two before departing for the upcoming trip to make this self-imposed deadline. Today, however, I am getting started on this blog the day after arriving back home from this round of racing. Whether I publish this or not today is another question, but this is one of those small victories in life. The trip I am returning from is my second of the year. The team took me up to race a few of the French one-days. The term "one-days" means that each race only consists of an individual day of racing. This contrasts with the stage race format where a race is held over several stages a...
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On the roll

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It was a nice evening flight to Brussels. It felt a bit strange arriving at that airport so late since I usually am arriving at that airport at about 8:00 in the morning on some inter-continental flight from the states. After grabbing our bikes from baggage claim we headed out and met one of our directors, Hendrik Redant, and drove to the hotel in Ghent. Hendrik was a successful professional in the '80s and '90s and is originally from Belgium. This experience he has now gives us the opportunity to learn a lot about the nature of how the races we were about to compete in would play out. Our first day in Belgium was designated as a day for reconnaissance of the circuit at Nokere Koerse. The lap was more or less split into two sections. There was the main road that went along the backside of the course and the small hilly cobbled roads that carried the peloton through the finish. After a couple times around the circuit, we learned what sort of things to look for and where we wante...
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Departure

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It has been a while since I have last posted any sort of blog post, but a blog seemed like a good place to begin to share my recent experiences and update all of you with what I am doing. As many of you who have followed me on social media know, I have never been great at using the internet to share about myself on a consistent basis. Recently, I have left a bigger gap than normal between posts for the reasons of giving myself some space to grow in my own personal life as well as being a bit lazy, so I hope this piece will help to fill in a few of the holes that my absence has left unfilled. For those of you who have not already heard, last fall I signed a two-year contract with the professional cycling team, Human Powered Health. I was and still am so grateful to have received a slot on the program. The team is currently going through some development as they strive to meet the demands of racing at a higher level. All of the athletes on the program are putting in the work to contribut...
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