All Ellie has been talking about the last week is the race cars coming back. The track behind the house melted out and pretty much drains through my neighbors backyard. I wouldn't be too pumped about that, and he isn't either,but he doesn't seem to want to do anything about 50,000sq ft. of melt off going through his backyard and basement so what do I care I guess. I'd help him push the county for a storm drain at the low point behind his yard but he didn't seem to want to go that route. Happy sump pumping I guess.

So, it's been pretty nice the last week and I got in a solid week of riding along with a solid week of recovery. I'm running about a month behind my normal training schedule. Racing cross into January really smoked me and also ran the season almost a month later than normal so instead of starting early March I haven't really started anything serious yet. I rode quite a bit in March, but not much other that just riding. I did my first LT yesterday to test out the legs and it hurt bad, but it wasn't too bad. I averaged 296 for 20 minutes and that wasn't too bad since I hadn't done anything over endurance pace really since last January. So, I'm starting about where I normally start, but just a bit behind. Normally it takes me until about Memorial weekend to get going fast, I guess the goal is to push that back further since the last few years I've been flying in late June and then I felt I haven't found that form again the rest of the year. If I can find the form in August that would be great.

I'll be lining up this year with a new mtn bike sponsor that I am pretty excited about. I will be back on a Giant for the first time since 2003 when I won the Iceman on it. I'm hoping for a repeat! Without the title sponsor of Mafia providing bikes I had a few opportunities to choose what I would ride and the Giant Anthem won out. Every year mtn bikes are evolving and I can't believe how great these bikes are now compared to even a few years ago. I chose a 26" bike, it seems like that is maybe a dying bread but for most of the midwest racing we have twisty singletrack and I need all my jedi night quickness to keep up and I feel the 26" is a quick bike. Giant has some 29er options so maybe down the road I'll give one a go.

I like this bike because it is super oversized. The headtube is beafy and the downtube is almost square. It use a tapered fork and I'm pretty interested in trying out the new Fox with the FIT system that basically uses a gate to control if it's locked out or open so there is no need for a manual lockout. I like to have control of the lockout but so far in my basement it seems like it could be pretty cool.

The trails are open here so I'll have to get out on the trails with it and get it dirty, I'll report back on how it is.