the chronicles of Rob

changes

2009-04-29T05:04:00.001-07:00

check out my blog on www.mtbracenews.com

yaaa

2009-04-05T20:01:00.001-07:00

i've been in californai for the last 2 weeks training and racing on the bike. so far i've hit fontana pro XCT and the sage brush safari which is part of the us cup series. both races were rad. The courses of each race were new to me and i definitly approve.

Now and for the next 2 weeks i'll be living at the olympic training center in chula vista, california. I like it here. despite not being exactly like home it has pretty much everything i could ask for which is nice. best of all the cafeteria food is great!

today i raced the sagebrush safari and placed 4th. my first professional podium!!!!! i'm happy with this result and expecially with the course. the single track at the sagebrush safari was a lot of funt with berms, jumps, and high speed. i now have a weekly blog post on the website www.mtbracenews.com its updated every wednesday so check it out. or else.

Rob Out

st george

2009-03-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

I was at the desert rampage last week for the first intermountain cup. I've been really enjoying going down to st george for warm weather riding. the first day we got there( thursday afternoon) we did goulds, jem, and hurrican rim trail. This is the most fun trail i've done this year. part of the excitement was due to the fact that i had never ridden it before and those drops came as a surprise. It was great.

Another reason it was so much fun was that i got a new bike to ride. just as we were about to leave my house in sandy and head to st george, the UPS man showed up with an 08 specialized marathon for me to ride until the 09 gets in. what a great bike. the geometry is a bit different from my anthem which i like, i think it handles better this way. another aspect that compliments the handling is the BRAaaaaiiiiinnnn. it keeps everything rigid in the berms so its faster. the fox f80 fork is really neat too because it incorporates the brain tech. I must admit that i'm a big fan of the brain. once you have it dialed in nothing is faster. I can't wait to see the 09 stuff. the dual control shifters were another thing that took a little getting used too. there not as good as grip shift but i do like them more than pods so it is the way to go in the way of shimanamanamo.

The race ended up being pretty good. I was a little toasted from the day before but was strong enough to keep a good pace up the climbs. the course was ok. The climbing sections were a lot of fun and good but the descents were lame, with trails like bear claw and zen so close i would have thought a better downhill was possible. all in all a good course though.

mitch and i decided to go big before going home sunday mornning and cast our lot with the famous 3 fingers of death. after some red bull rampage we hit goulds, jem, and hurrican rim one last time before heading home. a great weekend!

I got home to a snow storm and then a few days of being sick. UGH i hate being sick, sitting at home doign nothing all day is not one of my favorite past times. luckily that passed by thursday and then weather was nice so this weekend has turned out to be pretty good.

on track for de tour/ new bingham store

2009-03-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

It seems that every time i log onto cyclingnew, velonews or mtbracingnews i see that another pro tour guy is out for a while due to a crash. In addition, the tour of california took out a few pro contenders as well. At this rate, i plan to be riding for a pro tour team by the time the grand tours role around. There simply won't be any more protour guys left. I also think its funny that pro upgrades are based on pack experience so you won't take everyone down. Bull plop! leipheimer, vandevelde, they're all taking themselves out along with the rest of the pack. If i can ride my bike without falling down i think my pack skills are pretty legit compared to some of the pro tour guys.

Aside from joking around, i'm headed down to st. george tomorrow for the weekend. I plan to do the intermountain cup down there which should be a lot of fun. I'm a bit dissapointed that i won't be bringning my road bike down with my sweet new SRM but i guesss mountain biking is just about the greatest thing ever so it's all good. The weather is calling for rain on the day of the race so that hsould be pretty gnarly hopefully the mud doesn't turn to clay like i experienced 2 weekends ago.

IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO BE IN ST. GEORGE THIS WEEKEND GO CHECK OUT THE NEW BINGHAM CYCLERY STORE ACROSS THE STREET FROM PIONEER PARK(NORTH SIDE) IT IS GOING TO BE RAD, RAD TO THE MAX. I went down there yesterday to see what all of the hype was about and i wasn't dissapointed. its just too bad that other salt lake shops are going to have to compete with this one.

Go check it out, it'll be worth it!

Treasure

2009-03-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

sweet road bike, addict r3

This is the best road bike i have ever ridden. Super stiff, extremely light, and it just plain looks good. However, i have yet to ride the Specialized tarmac sl2 so this is the best bike i have ridden up until now. I think i'll be changing my mind in the next few weeks.

national championship winning rig....mostly
New team gear!!!!!!
uploaded the pictures on my camera and found some of my gorgeous bicycles as well as my new team gear from the U23 National team. The new gear is sweet. The jerseys, jackets, bibs, vests, shoecovers, are all nike which is by far my favorite cycling gear. Not only are they hooking it up but their stuff works really well too. Now i have the proper dress to go riding in the utah winters which i'm really excited for.

I've been riding outside for the past week which has been sweet. its nice to get outside again. although it looks like the weather is taking a turn for the worst. No worries because i'll be heading down to st. george again this weekend for the first intermountain cup race. I'll be on a specialized but not my 09 race bike. My giant is sidelined at the moment due to a crack and some mroe developing cracks in the rear triangle, the new 2009 epics aren't in yet, so i'll be reppin an older epic. it'll be an s-works but probably pretty haggered.

The first US cup was this weekend but i didn't realize it until the thursday night before the race which left me little options. It would have been fun to go and race but my bike was iffy due to the rear triangle and trying to pack up and go in 6 hours would just be too much so i sat this one out. congrats to sam J on the second place. Looking at the results indicates that none of the "big" players went to this race which is a relief in that i didn' tmiss anything real important.

My first national race will be fontana proXCT tour at the end of march. I can hardly wait to see what i can do with the big boys in the pro class. I think that all of the big names are going to treat the fontana race as the season opener. Although with the new national series i bet some people are still trying to figure out which races count for what. i believe the us cup is different from the PROXCT tour. however, i think that both of these races are slated for the same weekend in march. Do the two series intersect? scheduling conflict? or will there be two races? nobody knows for sure. this is my worst written blog by far and i apologize but i've been really busy with tests and work for school so...

Rob out

St. George

2009-02-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

I got back from St. George last night doing some quality riding. Mitch and I got down there as the light was fading on thursday and just had time to turn one bear claw poppy in. Although a little bumpy from being ridden when it was wet, the riding was sweet! It felt really good to get on my mountain bike again, truthfully I would have been having fun anywhere on the mtb bike.

Friday we met up with some buddies and shredded green valley area before jumping on the road bikes, a very good day of riding and fairly long as well.

The University of Utah guys came down as part of the training camp so I rode with them the next two days which were two really scenic road rides. We rode around gunlock and snow canyon and up to the town of pine valley which was one of the nicest parts of riding down there. The next day we decided to ride to zion national park and ride through the park but, they wanted to charge us $12 a head i had already ridden through the toll, i know not to stop when people yell at you, we ended up turning around, those park ladies ruined our entire day.

It was a good weekend to turn in some easy base miles OUTSIDE. The weather was warm, i was only wearing a bib, undershirt, and sometimes arm warmers and a vest to keep warm and i never had any problems. Getting out and ridign outside really beats the rollers but i'm to big of a wuss to ride out in the cold so its back to the rollers untill the next trip south, which shouldn't be in more than two weeks.

Drugssssss

2009-02-14T16:53:00.001-08:00

drugs in sports has come up a lot in the last couple of weeks. From a-rod to valverde, it seems like the shit is hitting the fan for these superstars. Valverde faces a potential 2 year ban and a rod faces ummm... what is it again? oh yeah a warning, if he gets caught again-15 day suspension. I don't understand why cycling gets a bad rep from doping and yet it is by far the most advanced sport in the way of doping control-besides being infinitly cooler in every way. Football along with other american "super" sports have very poor doping programs and atheletes are found to be dirty just as often! Baseball and football are even more suspicious than cycling. For instance, it is more plausible for a cyclist to be flying up a climb or have a awesome day than for most of the NFL players to be 6'5'' 350 pounds. In my mind there is no question that a large majority of football players are using some sort of performance enhancing substance. Why shouldn't they?? aside from being unethical and cheating, there is very little to no punishment if they should get caught. When people like a-rod are getting 100 million dollar contracts steroids start sounding like a good idea.

Sometimes drug use isn't that big of a deal. Michael Phelps for example. what the hell?!?! He is the greatest swimmer in the world was an national hero but now since this picture has come up everyone is quick to drag his name through the dirt. He is not only the best in the world but the best that has ever lived- I think that is grounds for a little celebration.

That's enough ranting for one blog.

update

2009-01-25T00:40:00.000-08:00

Its been a litle while since my last update due mainly to school. I'm taking all online courses which is bittersweet. The flexibility and freedom of online courses is bliss but it's hard to keep up with them all the time. but i've been skiin quite a bit. doing a fair amount of skate skiing and downhill trying to get some sort of fitness in. Skating is pretty fun, i went with Dave the other day to park city to try it out there and i was very impressed by the trail system they had up there. It was nice to get away from doing laps up at alta. I like skating up at alta, the weather has been really nice, save saturday, and the grooming is great; on some days i don't even ski over my own tracks. usually there is a path groomed up grizzly gulch and i'm looking forward to trying that out of these days.

I got an SRM a few days ago in the mail provided by the U23 development program. I've been checking my emails and constantly checking the ups tracking system for it to get here. Unfortunately when it got here i found that it wasn't compatible with my bottom bracket so i have to wait a bit for my bikes to get here before i can start using power. ... UGH

I moved back home this semester and it's funny how as soon as i moved off campus i found people that i really wanted to hang out with. so now i have a 20 minuted drive whenever i want to go see these peeps up there. It's all good a 20 minute drive is no big deal to hang out with some good people.

this inversion that we had for the last week was one of the worst i can remember. After a few days i started waking up with a sore throat and developed a cough. I would try to escape it by going up the canyon to ski but you just can't spend all day up there as well as having limited car access i had to spend quite a bit of time in the death air. this storm seemed to help though. I can't believe how much better i feel just from this storm.

On the same note as this storm i went skiing today and what a mistake that was. apparently this storm was a southern tropical storm with warmer air. that was evident when the thermometer at the base of alta read 38. It was raining at the ski resorts today-raining in the middle of january, whats the deal with that?!!?!? I tried to skate ski before alpine skiing but nothing had been groomed so i sacked that idea to just go ski. within 20 minutes i was completely soaked from head to toe which wasn't too much fun. Even though, it was raining there was still some sweet snow to be had and i found it on north baldy at snowbird.

Another cool thing about skiing today was reuniting with my old ski buddy tyler green.. he had moved to north carolina a few years ago and skied snowbird saturday for the 2nd or 3rd time in 5 years. It was good to shred with an old buddy.

more and more i feel i need to start focusing on cycling more. The U23 development bio's were updated recently which is pretty cool http://www.usacycling.org/ndt/NDTMTBBios.php check it out. It's not all the way finished but pretty rad none the less.

As the season inches nearer and nearer i'm starting to decide what i want to do about travelling and such. I'm planning to go to the OTC in chula vista which looks like it is as much of a vacation as a training camp. It is only a few miles from the beach and from good cali friends. However, with the recent weather and utah homies i'm contemplating staying in the 801. As well as small decisions like that the decision about school next year enters the picture.

I don't like to complain via on blog but teh University of Utah has been as uncooperative as could be in helping me figure out a schedule to accommodate racing. After talking to 4 counselors and the atheletic counselor the best answer they could give me was "take a break from school"-not exactly the answer i was looking for, seriously what type of counselor tells you to quit school????. The interesting thing is that people that i talk to who work at the U in some program or another say that the U is looking to support people in my situation-ha. Staying in Utah would be nice but i think UCCS(university of colorado at colorado) would be an awesome experience.

Right now i'm undecided about all of these decisions but i suppose i'll figure out whats the best over the course of the summer. On teh positive side, I HAVE ALL OF THESE DECISIONS, i mean how great is life when these are the decisions that i'm worrying about. life is good.

Well i'm sorry i don't have any cool pics to post but i do have a sweet song suggestion. www.youtube.com/user/datarecordsuk its rap that i heard on the radio but it has been stuck in my head. Rob OUT

wisdom teeth

2009-01-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

beforeafter
no i haven't gained a hundred pounds i just had my wisdom teeth taken out on tuesday. It is a lot more painful experience then i had anticipated but I figure now i'll be four wisdom teeth light which should make climbing a bit easier haha. yesterday was pretty bad but i feel much better today and I'm even thinking about doing some snowshoeing tomorrow.

The worst part isn't the pain, its not being able to do anything. I've been confined to my house and have been watching more t.v. than one should.

My oakley order arrived yesterday which made me happy. thanks to Blick and the people at oakley for getting the stuff to me. However, due to the wisdom teeth i can only look at my new goggles instead of using them to shred some pow.

I should be better in a few days and then everything will go back to normal.

Thanks

2009-01-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

#26

The end of the cross season party was the other night and i couldn't help but think about who made it possible for me to race cross this season.

Thanks to Skylere bingham who provided me with the equipment to race cross this season. I've worked at Bingham Cyclery for a few years and just started racing tthis last year. Justin Reimers, My store manager at Binghams was incredibly helpful in working with my work schedule and bike schedule. As well as working with my schedules he would always show up before work or after work to help me with bike fits. He came in early to help me when he had no requirement to. Without any question he was willing to help me out.

this cross season also was made possible by the awesome support from Bingham cyclery 's Ron. He stayed through my race to help out in the pit with one of his spare bikes for me to use

The same goes with Skylere. this summer i asked Skylere for a nice wheelset to use in some really important mountain bike races. Instead of looking around for a spare wheelset that he wouldn't miss, Skylere spent quite a bit of time finding the best wheelset he had. I came in to work one day and skylere had a brand new high-end wheels set waiting for me. When i started succeeding in racing Skylere began helping me as much as possible.

Whenever i asked for help for help from skylere it wasn't a question of if he would help me it was a question of what is the best equipment he could give me.

Thanks to Skylere and the Entire Bingham's crew for helping me with this season.

There are many more thanks i owe to the countless people that helped me and those will come in coming blogs.

I had my wisdom teeth out this morning which has proved to be very painful. However, its been 13 hours since i go tthem out and i'm feeling well enough to write a blog so i can't be doing that bad.

Dorm Pictures

2009-01-04T21:11:00.001-08:00

the closet, desk, and of course-the cross bike

my bed, t.v., and refrigerator.

then the view from the entrance of my dorm.

i had to many bikes in my room or not enough bikes.

It's funny how once i started working at a bike shop and racing bikes i found that i needed more bikes to be able to participate in every avenue of biking.

this is my list so far.

-Road bike-(with several wheel sets for different courses and rides, i.e. climbing, tt, windy day, etc.) and even within this category perhaps a comfort road bike and a racing road bike

-TT bike-for time trialling with different gearing for differnt courses

-fixed gear- for the velo drom and smoking cigarettes with the fixie gang the alley cats

-cross bike- need two of them with several sets of tubuular wheels for different course conditions

-full suspension race mountain bike2.5-4 inches of travel, extra wheels as well as parts for the pit.

-hardtail mountain bike

-downhill bike

-trail bike 5 to six inches of travel

-dirt jumper

-bmx bike

-electra rat fink for cruisin,

-commuter bike

-multiple singlspeeds for probably commuting i can't think of any other use.

that's about all if i forgot some let me know. but that is it about 14 bikes. not to mention the amount of equipment you need. biking is expensive but great.

I love the fact that there is 14 different aspects of cycling to participate in!

any ways, i'm not going baack to the dorms for the spring semester. I opted to do online classes from home to make training more convenient. It was nice having my own "place" and i'll miss that but i think what i decided is for the best. time to bring da pain!

skate skiing

2009-01-01T20:58:00.000-08:00

I bought some skate skis last week to get in some winter training. I underestimated the technique required to be able to skate ski. The first time i wen tout i felt like a dog on ice, i must've fallen over ten times. After reviewing some youtube technique videos my second time out was quite a bit better but i still have a ways to go before i look like the guys on t.v.

Word Up

2008-12-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

It's monday, which means just a few more days until the last utah cross race. I went into the shop today to tune-up my cross bike and to my delight everything was in ship shape except the wheels that were a little out of true and flat. Also at the shop was the 2009 specialized tarmac sl2 dura-ace model. The thing is bad. the paint scheme is by far the best i've seen on any bike yet. Its the bike batman would ride. the entire bike is black and silver and really sleek looking.

Can't wait to get my hands on one.

I started training last week which only consists of rollers at this point but i scored some sweet skate skis yesterday and I'll be trying my hand at that tomorrow when i can find a ride up the canyon.

I've been skiing(alpine) almost everyday for the last week or so and riding the rollers so hopefully i'll have something for the race coming up.

besides that i've just been looking at 09 bikes coming out and trying to figure out the lightest possible set up for my mountain and road race bikes this coming season. IT seems that the lightest parts out there are all made in Europe, this makes it hard to read about the parts when the website is in german. I dont' know if i'll be able to get any of teh dream parts i'm looking at but its fun seeing how light you can make a bike.

I've been keeping up with the U.S. Euro cross camp that is going on in belgium right now and its a pretty cool thing thts going on. Every time i read about it i wish i was over there racing but then again it would've been hard to keep training after mountain bike season all the way up untill now. the winter makes it especially hard and i think this next coming season i'll try to keep going from mountain through cross. the boys over in belgium seem to be doing work i think that the U.S. junior team has a good shot at a podium this year. good luck!

Before i can start dropping sucka fools over seas i've got to drop some l-b's

Back in the Sadle

2008-12-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

School ended this thursday which means that i can focus on training for next year. So far I've ran, rode rollers and went swimming. Today was the first time i've been in the pool swimming for quite some time. Kelsey applied the hurt today during the meek 3500 yards we did. It was nice to get back in the pool as some pre-season training. Although we didn't swim very much we did some fairly fast sets. I'm going to start swimming more regularly starting next week which I'm pretty excited for.

I have a date with the rollers tonight as well as for the next few weeks until some better weather arrives or i go somewhere nice and warm.

next season

2008-12-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

All of this school has made me realized just how much i miss riding my bike and racing. I'm going to be riding for the U23 national team next year and my schedule is slowly coming into focus as the chaos in U.S. mountain biking gets resolved. As of now I start with fontana, california then seaotter before heading across the pond to europe. I'll be in europe for quite some time racing in the worldcups, swisspower cups, as well as a bit of road racing. I don't want to be to specific in which races i'll be in over there lest there is a change in teh schedule. After europe, the main focus will be on national championships and the U.S. cup races.

Aside from a awesome schedule i'm excited to see what i can do in the elite ranks. I had my first taste of the elites in the Boulder cup cross race this fall where i felt i did well given the circumstances. I finished 20th there in the C1 race which i was more than happy with. Moving into the Elites from juniors I've been told that i'm going to get dominated and that it'll be tough to keep going. I'm going to do everything i can to keep this from happening to me.

My last final is tomorrow in math so come thursday it is time to start training for next season. As far as i can tell i wont be doing much riding outside but i plan to start swimming, cross country skiing, weights, and spending some time on the rollers/ trainer. I want to get a coach so if anyone knows somebody let me know! I didn't have a coach this past season and i've heard they are all the rage in professional sports. I'll be doing all of my training from the comfort of my own home rather than out of a dorm room, which will make things like eating good a lot easier. The independence is awesome but you have to give up somethings in order to pursue whats most important. GO MOUNTAIN BIKING

school

2008-12-14T08:32:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted a blog in quite some time so i'm goign to give this thing another shot and try to do better. this week will be my last week of my fall semester and my first time taking finals. I've typically done well on year end tests but that doesn't stop me from being nervous and studying as much as i can. The real tragedy of finals has been not being able to ride my bike. In the last 3 weeks i've had some grade changing tests and had to put the bicycles aside in order to study for them. although, not riding has been pretty nice, everyone had been telling me to take a break and stop riding for a bit so i guess finals did the trick. I finish with all my tests and then begin moving from the dorms at the U back home. i decided it would be best to live at home for the next semester in order to get some good training done along with a better meal plan. The dorms aren't too conducive to training or anything but staying up late everynight. The plan for next semester includes all online courses and some major time on the saddle and training for early season races as well as all races. My official season starts in march next year which would make it very difficult to finish classes which typically end in late april.

I'm planning on going to valley of the sun, which i'm excited for. I haven't really done any road racing and an early season stage race will be perfect for base and getting the hang of things befroe i start rollin with the big dogs.

Utah Cross season ended last week and somehow i finished 3rd overall, which means taht i'll get some sort of prize as Ohran promised. I'm dissapointed that i couldn't train and race cross a bit more serious but it was hard to try to keep going after a long mountain bike season as well as handle school. I did the boulder cup early this year which was awesome. I finished 20th on the second day as the 3rd U23 and picked up some cashmoney. $49 bones- first UCI pro payout boo yah. I felt with that finish i should do some more national cross races and maybe make it out to nationals but it just didn't unfold that way. In the process of doing well at the last NMBS race in Brian head my grades had slipped and i was stuck trying to bring them up and just didn't have the time or the money to train seriously and travel to all the races. Oh well, cross season is finished and the main focus is on next year at the moment and possibly a more serious endeavor into cross.

Like i said i didn't do a very good job of making posts so i'm goign to try to do better. i'll be droppin hollas regularly now.

sundance bloody sundance

2008-05-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

I had a race today at sundance and it was not so fun. no that the course wasnt good, it was awesome , but rather that i felt like gawwbage.

The course was pretty cool and suited me pretty well with all of the climbing. however i wasn't on top of my game and when bart passed me it was all i could do to hang on for the rest of the climb. the downhill was one of the more fun ones of the year but i couldnt get into a rhythm untill the second lap which was too late to recover from the gap that had been put on me. all in all this was an excellent training ride. riding with the pros really makes me work and the course was good.

first blog

2008-05-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

my blog was concieved of part boredom and as a link to all of my fans. Now everyone can get the 411 on my life! Anyways, I was supposed to race today but it was post-poned due to the rain. This year has been unusually wet considering that there are still powder days up at the resorts at the end of May. It's rare that I don't want it to snow but this is enough. Throughout the last month or two i've spent a good deal of time in warm weather(too warm) and trip after trip i come home to frigid temperatures. What gives? Looking at the weather report it looks like from utah through the midwest is suffering from the unusual weather. Luckily the forecast calls for some nice weather over the next week which will be great for riding and also allow for some pool-time. The rain is finally clearing and the thermometer is on the rise, so the rest of the week looks pretty good