This weekend I was very lucky to have my old Turner teammate Jack McCann bring two of his friends, Ryan and Robert, down from Ohio for a few days of relative warmth in Knoxville. The boys rolled in around noon on Friday and cleaned the road grime off of their bikes before I sent them out on a ride, as I needed to recover from the big riding days I had just put in. I tried to give directions as best I could, but they ended up getting lost. They had a good time anyways and then we all went out for some Thai food and Cookout milkshakes to load up for a big day of riding.

a pound of sausage and a dozen eggs

My mom loves hosting people so she was in her element making breakfast for a quartet of hungry young men.

In my typical fashion, we were late leaving for the group ride so we had a bit of a time trial through town and met the Bike Zoo shop ride just as they were heading out.

Part of my assignment for this blog is integrating multimedia, so I used a GoPro camera to document the more heated moments of the ride, namely Kodak road. I edited the video down to about a minute, and you can see it here:

My good friend Cameron Molchan led us on an extra loop, and we ended up getting in 100 miles.

the sun came out

Jack admires the quarry

Sunday was another great ride including three ascents of Look Rock and some bonus miles up East Miller’s Cove in Walland. We were all tired but decided to rally down the descent back to the car. I made another video of that segment. This one is also about a minute, and I think it is a little more interesting than the first one.

I enjoyed catching up with Jack and getting to meet two fun guys. We got in some good training and general bro time. Cycling can be weird sometimes because outside of team events, I don’t get to spend much time with people my age, so the weekend was an all-around positive experience.

The boys are making their way back to Ohio and keeping a close eye on the weather, keeping their fingers crossed for more school closings :).

Next week I’ll be out in Seattle for some testing and bike fitting, followed by the HB u23 team camp. After that, my new teammate Thorsten and I will drive down to Scottsdale, Arizona for a few weeks of racing and training in a warmer climate. Many big things are lined up for me, and I’m looking forward to taking advantage of these opportunities.

Just chillin’