Suhr the Blur

I can't believe this is a possibility! It will be amazing to have a renaissance of Madison racing in the US. I hope the racing will attract interest and fans to pack the arena and start a new heyday of the sport I love. But I am getting ahead of myself, just take a look at the link. News Story From Cycling News

As a pro cyclist without a pro contract, working becomes more of an art than just getting a job. I mean I have skills and desire and plenty of time, but none of these fit into a job that works with a pro cycling training schedule. You see I am a likely candidate for any job I pick, but as an athlete there are certain requirements for the job to be worth the money. 1. The job must be between the hours of 4pm and 12pm. I am not a morning person and when you add in two meals with a two to three hour training ride in between, you are left with rushing to work by 4. 2. The job can not include being on your feet for the entire shift. If this is the case then you end up with no legs for riding the bicycle, which is the only reason you are working shift jobs in the first place. So this is important. 3. Th job can not involve extensive training or being the key member of an extensive project. I need to be able to cut the job when my next big trip comes up. I mean the whole reason I am tr...

My, my, how time flies. I must call this my Fall update since I have pretty much dropped the ball on the blog during this season. As my sister put it, "you should update your blog before you leave again!" I guess that might be jumping the gun a bit, but we'll get there. Wow I guess I have been dormant since a week after getting back from the "Summer Tour." Anyway I have now found some time to update so here we go. A month of my life was filled with Track Nationals. I don't mean that I was gone at nats for a whole month. But between finishing off the major training prior to nats, taking another road trip to LA, participating in a USA Cycling Madison camp leading into nats, racing nats, taking a few days to relax in the CA sun, and then returning home, it seems that we may as well call it a whole month! The USA Cycling camp was a great start to a multi-year program that will work to promote US riders to take part in the European Six days each winter. T...

That's right! Target proudly presents blow-up doll humor for any occasion. This is only a sample of the cards you can choose from on your next shopping excursion. I have to admit that these are quite possibly the most entertaining cards I have seen in awhile and I would buy one in a second. I mean the card contains at least five stages of humor: 1. There are blow-up dolls that you are supposed to relate to. 2. There is some witty little line about the blow-up doll scene. 3. The satire emerges. 4. You can't believe what you are seeing. 5. It sets in...there are blow-up dolls on a greeting card. I approve.

Because sometimes in life you meet people with so much spirit it must be shared. Click the title for the album.

After you are done reading this fabulous story from the July road trip be sure to click on the title for a special surprise. So if you ever find yourself driving through Nebraska on I-80 be sure to stop at King Kong Burger! I believe this is a one of a kind gem in the middle of nowhere, well actually just East of Lincoln. From the highway just look for the giant King Kong in the sky. Once you arrive, you can enjoy all the wonderful gorilla decor, including a Gorilla band which looks like a knockoff of the Chuck E Cheese animatronic version still haunting my childhood. After you have settled into the "jungle" and absorbed the ridiculous extent of which this theme has been applied to the restaurant, you can take a look at their amazing menu. Ryan and I came back to this place for their huge Gyros, but the Kong's smallest burger comes in at 1/2 pound with the range ending at the King Kong with some insane amount of pulverized cow overwhelming the little bun. After eating ...

We made it through the last three weeks of racing. We are on the way home today, Chicago-Colorado Springs stat! Details and pictures to come.

Here is a nice video preview of our last stop on this tour, The NAS Track at Rochester Hills, MI. Enjoy! Detroit Free Press Video Until another internet connection finds me on the road...

A Scene From the Road Cresent Beach, OR Last night, Ryan and I competed in the FSA Grand Prix Madison. It was the culmination to a long day as the race started at about 11pm after 4 hours of other events had concluded. There were 13 teams in the 80 lap race, 32km, and overall the race was pretty quite with few attacks. Our strategy for the race was to stay with the top teams and sprint for the points which were every ten laps. There were about six good teams all keeping the race going, our strategy paid off and with 30 laps to go we were tied for first! At this point things started getting tough. I was feeling really bad with an upset stomach, probably the worst I have ever felt in a madison. Not really sure what caused this but at the same time I ran out of energy. So the last 30 laps was a game of me trying to hang on and Ryan keeping us as close to the front as possible. Yet again our nemesis of the season the Fuji/Salamander guys caught some luck and were able to jump in fr...

Hello again from Puget Sound! I don't know if the picture is any good, I mean taking pics of hte sunset with a camera phone is not a good idea. But there was an awesome sunset last night when we were playing Bocce Ball after dinner. We have not talked in almost a month! I really cannot believe it, but ever since 4th of July things have not slowed down. Finally I am finding some time on the road to write a bit. So to fill everyone in, the 4th of July followed just like the last few years, with wonderfull afternoon storms wreaking the day! After an 8 hour rain delay we finally started racing. And needless to say I was mentally wrecked by that point. So not one of the best memories, but we got through it. Now we are on the road and almost half way through the road trip of CA-OR-WA-IL-MI. Last weekend we race down in San Jose, and ended up having a really good Madison missing out on first place by only 2 points,17 to 19. Tonight we start another weekend of racing at the Marym...

The real track racing season has begun here in the US. And this July 3rd and 4th the Independance Day Grand Prix will take place in Colorado Springs, CO. There is a Madison race the night of the 4th and it is sure to be one of the best of the season! The fastest riders in the US will pair up into at least 4 teams to battle it out over 40km! If you are in the state of Colorado you need to come witness this event. Along with the racing that night there will be fireworks to follow making for a wonderful summer evening. If you decide to attend, racing starts at 7pm on the 3rd and 6pm on the 4th, with the Madison happening no eairlier than 7:30pm on the 4th.

One of my favorite bands, The Format, is offering their last album, Dog Problems, for free until July 16th. So head over to www.theformat.com and try something new! You have nothing to loose and only smiles and aural pleasantries to gain!

Well I have finally found time and energy to update the blog. The part time job at USA Cycling has turned into more work than originally planed. But at least it is a desk job in the sport I love. The weekend excursion to the Southern most islands in the Caribbean was a nice getaway. I would like to say that it was great racing but we were only able to race two events out of the scheduled seven. The rainy season started a week before we arrived and it confirmed itself to us about 48 out of the 72 hours we were there. It rained on Saturday morning, all morning. Then it stopped just enough so we could see the track but not ride it in the afternoon. Then the rain held off Sunday morning so the Palo Seco Games, track and field and track cycling, could go off as planned. We ended up meeting Pablo, a fashion photographer from NY, down there. So our team was made up of Emil, a local Colorado racer, Pablo, and I, along with our coach Des Dickie. Des is from Trinidad, and has ten siblin...

Every night I say I have to update tonight. I promise to have the full story by this weekend. Anyway, 500m track and 45degree bankings makes for a wild ride!

4am tomorrow I will be on my way to the airport to catch my 6am flight to travel all day to Trinidad and Tobago, arriving at 10pm. A nice relaxing day in the sky, hopefully. It is going to be a whirlwind trip. Arrive on Friday, rest Saturday, race all day Sunday (7 races I am told), and fly back Monday. It will be nice to see the beach again. I totally missed it in Aguascalientes "Land Bound" Mexico! Anyway, I am dedicating my races to my friends William and Cassie Holmgren, who are getting married tomorrow night. I am still sad I will be missing it since many mutual friends came into Colorado Springs for the wedding. But I am sure it won't be the last one in our group of friends. I will be sure to take many pictures of the festival and bring back a good story.

After the chaos of the last two weeks, I am finally in one place for at least two weeks. I have moved back in with my parents as I can not afford to commute the 90 miles from Boulder to the track more than once a week, and for the summer I will be on the track at least three days a week, so this would simply not work. My heart is still in Boulder and it will always be calling when I am away. I also started a job today at the USA Cycling Development Foundation as a summer intern. But for the first couple of weeks I will be helping to organize the 10 USA Cycling Development Camps that are planned all across the US in the coming two months. As for training, it is simply amazing! I am far above any point in last season and the real intense track training has not even started! Last Sunday we were doing 20 min Madison intervals behind the motor at around 56Kph, or 34mph, and I was barely breathing. I guess 3 months of intense training toped off by a Six-day at over 7000 ft is finall...

The coming two weeks will contain the most amount of changes occurring at the same time in my entire life, and I am not ready for it! Let me elaborate since that probably doesn’t make much sense. It is not that there have not been changes in my life before, but now all the friends and acquaintances that I have come to know during my years in college are moving on, and unlike in high school where most of your friends are simply people you know and see everyday at school, during college you hangout and get to know people very personally. And for me I only keep relationships that comfort and help me to grow into who I want to be. As I type this, I guess I am realizing that the whole community that I have built around me is about to scatter across the country, all following their personal dreams and aspirations. And from now on, we will only be watching each other from afar, understanding only the broadest of each other’s lives, not knowing nor being able to help with the everyday str...

I know it is a bit much for one post but trying to update the blog when it was in Spanish was a nightmare. Enjoy. Links to pictures are at the end. After getting an invite three days before the event, we frantically worked with the promoter to get our team to Aguascalientes, Mexico by Monday. My coach Mark Tyson and I tried to find another competitive partner for me since my usual partner, Ryan Luttrell was out with an injury. We came up with, Jackie Simes IV, who rode with Taylor Brown in Ghent, Belgium last November when we raced the U25 Six. Jackie is a young rider with racing in his blood, who we knew would be up to racing competitively at the Six. So with a partner and confirmed tickets, I was set to go try my hand at my first elite six-day race. Before I left I did some quick research on what to expect based on past results. I came up with results on last years race. And saw that there were a few well know European six-day riders who attended. Thus my expectations were se...

Well just a day after my last blog my world got turned upside down. I had just finished my last VO2 intervals workout of my five week training block, extended to seven weeks since I came down with that cold for two. (VO2 intervals are the hardest intervals you can do on a bike for an extended amount of time, i.e. over 30 seconds. My last workout consisted of 8 intervals of five minutes each.) So I was happy that I had made it over some of the toughest training there is each year, and was planning how I was going to tackle the two races this weekend. But my plans were suddenly broad-sided by a call from my coach with the news that we got a last minute invite to a Six-Day race in Aguascalientes, Mexico that starts on Monday, and how he was going to try to find me someone to ride with, since my usual partner, Ryan Luttrell, is laid up with an IT Band issue. Anyway, we worked all evening and ended up calling up Jackie Simes out of Trexlertown, PA, who had ridden the Gent Six with us....

Sorry to keep you all hanging. Over the last three weeks we have had some excitement in Boulder, though not in racing. I ended up coming down with a good chest cold that sacked my energy and took a good two weeks to subside, thus making life a bit of a drag and racing useless. I was also at the peak of an intense training block, which lead to me taking some good R&R. In the meantime keeping things interesting, my roommate broke two vertebrate in his back while skiing, and thus is forced to do just about nothing for 6 to 12 weeks. I hope for his speedy recovery. As for me I am looking forward to intense training on the track coming in May. And I can't wait! Although, I did get a taste of the track last weekend. We ended up training on it both days and I ended up doing some sprint training in our final session. This was a completely new experience. The workout was to do accelerating motor 500m. This entails sitting on the back of the motorcycle in the draft high on the...

My friend Allen Krughoff, who I used to ride with on CU Cycling, put together this short with some of the good times of the preseason base miles. This year to try to make base miles (i.e. long, 3-6hr, slow rides) more of a party rather than a bore, he started the Base Mile Militia with the intent of getting a good group ride together twice every weekend for a couple of months. It worked out quite well and was a great time when I attended, so here's the film. I am in the CU kit throughout. Enjoy!

Here is a little food for thought while you fill out your taxes this year. I came across the APT Tax System which Edgar L. Feige, a Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created in response to his recent research. His novel idea is for a completely automated tax system with several distinct advantages, such as the uniqueness of being completely nonpartisan, and fully progressive. I can only hope that this will be a part of the future of this country. For now visit: The APT Tax "Maybe some national figure will realize the power lodged in an idea with virtually universal benefit and agreement. What can you do? First, familiarize yourself with the details of the plan and then tell your friends and bring it to the attention of your elected representatives."

Saturday, March 4th, at the first race in Boulder, I had my first crash on the road. I can now say that falling on the track is nothing compared to falling on the road. I still have some nice deep road rash on my right knee and hand after a week, and the pain is not getting any better. Basically, if I am awake and not moving, then I'm in pain, but thankfully I feel the best when I am on the bike. So how does one get into this mess? Well the race was coming to a close on the last lap. I was in a group of about 10 off the front of the peloton of about 50. We were chasing down 4 guys ahead of us. I was feeling really good. I was really excited, knowing I was about to get a top 10 in a decent field of Pro/1/2's. Maybe just a little too excited. Anyway, the group I was in had givin up on chasing down the break out front and now everyone was jokeying for position for the sprint that was less than 1k away. I was riding on the left side of the group, in bad position, trying...

So in another effort to escape the snow in Boulder, this past weekend my roommate Kiel and I took a trip over to Grand Junction, CO to see the sights at the Colorado National Monument . We thought that this would be the perfect time to escape, since there was no racing, and it would just be a good chance to relax, recharge and reset in the wilderness. So we choose to do some winter camping and to experience some of the scenery from the cycling movie " American Flyers " on the seats of our own bikes. If any of you readers have never seen this great cycling classic, you should pick it up the next time you want a little glimpse into the cycling lifestyle along with some great Colorado scenery. I would rate it about a 6 for the Hollywood's portrayal of cycling, mostly based on the 80's corniness. You might recognize these pics from the movie, it was an awesome ascent, nice and curvy, a tunnel and sheer cliffs all around. From the top, if you look closely you can see ...

Sorry that it has been awhile. After driving back from Phoenix last week, I have been busy trying to recuperate and the brain has been pretty much shut off. As for the recap of the Valley of the Sun Race, I would say I am pretty happy overall with my performance being that the race was the culmination of the biggest five week base block I have ever done (base meaning high volume, low intensity training which is the beginning of every cyclist's season each year); being that I have never put in a real full base block. Last year I was out from January until May with a knee injury and then I jumped straight onto the track never really putting in the slow long rides. So I am feeling pretty good already after putting in this work this season. The VoS race started off with a 22k (13mile) time trial which I ended up 35th, about 1:35 off the leader in the Cat. 2 field. I have never been a good time-trialist but my roommate Kiel lent me his TT bike and I was able to get a decent positi...

I made it back from Phoenix, after an 13 hr drive through the night with my roommate Kiel. Luckily, the whole trip went very smoothly...I will post more later after I get a bit of sleep.

Sorry for the bulk post. The classy Embassy Suites Hotel we were staying at in Albuquerque wanted $10 a day for internet, ha! You can get free internet at a Holiday Inn. Someone please explain this one to me. The trip out of the deep freeze has been wonderful, busy and rewarding. The trip started with a seven day stay in Albuquerque to train with the Cycling Center Team. The weather was a bit cold in the beginning with around 45 degree highs but quickly warmed up into the 60's. With warm air finally in the face, the forth week of base was long and relaxing. One of the highlights of the stay was a citywide group ride organized in support of the Veloport Project that wants to bring indoor track cycling to NM along with an already completed BMX track and a closed loop road course. The project is in the final stages of funding and if all goes well will be completed in 2008! The ride consisted of the two pro teams, Navigators and Lipton, along with the Cycling Center picking u...

If you have 45 minutes to spare this is a good verity show type standup by Demetri Martin: Video from Comedy Central's Standup Showdown

From Oat Bran to Omega-3 the age of nutriantism is upon us. From the National Academy of Science's 1982 report on nutrients, the "Food Industry" has been ever evolving to "produce" the best foods for you. Now it is time to unveil the truth about how the government has manipulated and disordered Americans' view on what is healthy to make room for those companies which profit from this confusion. The time is now to start eating real food and stop eating processed designed nutrients, because for once we should believe that we don't know everything about what foods contain, and the 17,000 new food products produced each year are NOT "better" for us. Stick to what your great great grandma ate and you will be healthier. This is one of the most informative and convincing articles I have come across as to where we went wrong and what you can to do fix it starting today; it is verbose but it will be well worth your time. So start by becoming inform...

Optical Illusion

I am finally going to make it out of Colorado and on to some warmer weather down South, hopefully. I say hopefully because I guess last week it snowed two inches in Mesa, AZ!?! Which is almost as unlikely as me racing the Tour de France. I hope that this crazy weather has gotten all the NM and AZ snow out of its system and will leave me out of the cold for the next three weeks. The plan for the trip is to continue the biggest base I have ever put in on the bike, by first going to a week of the Cycling Center Camp in Albuquerque, NM. Bernard has been nice enough to let me jump into the camp he is hosting for all the US riders that are going over to race in Belgium this season. The camp will also have riders from the intercontinental pro team Navigators Insurance and the pro women's team Lipton. All three teams are having a big unveiling next Saturday night. I am looking forward to the long group rides with these professional riders and the Cycling Center riders that are comin...

After the quick little off season, I have decided to get out of Colorado and put in some good base miles in the fair Southern states. So next Thursday I will be off to spend a week in Albuquerque, NM training with the Cycling Center Team and maybe some of the Navigator, and Lipton Teams. After that I will be headed over to Phoenix, AZ to stay with my cousins, training for another week. And then we will finish it all of with the Valley of the Sun Stage Race. All in all it should be a relaxing trip. Here are the wintery Colorado things I will not miss: Driving in Blizzards Riding in less than 40 degree weather

It is nice to finally see this sort of thing in the news. It will be a nice shift from the eat less approach. The American diet and the Food Industry is truly out of control, producing cheap calories with little nutrition or fulfillment. All you need to eat is on the outer isles of your local grocery store, and just remember if you buy it you will end up eating it. BBC Article

If you find a fortune outside of a fortune cookie, could it be your fortune? I mean, it is just about the same, I did just find it, similar to just picking it out of a set. It could be reactivated by being in the possession of a new person. Or maybe it is still active; I would think they only run out after being possessed by the same person for awhile. Anyway I kind of like my fortune so we will see.