I’ll start with saying that I couldn’t finish the Tour of Puebla. I DNF the 3rd stage with only about 10-15 km to go due to very intense cramps that crashed me out and didn’t let me get up again.. Somehow I just couldn’t ride through them this time, and trying sent me to the ground….
When that happened the group I was riding with had about five riders, and we were fighting for 15th place on the stage. It seemed like it was going to be a decent day on the bike, but it wasn’t… I end up on the ground for about 30 minutes, until my team carried me up to the car, and took me to the finish…
It was a big disappointment for me to come this far and DNF. But I wasn’t going to let myself carry with this throughout the rest of the week. Instead, I told myself that my job now was going to help my team as much as I can off the bike, and help them have the best race possible. So, I took all week as an opportunity to help my team doing the "sougnier" thing. And I still had a great time, and finished off the week super tired, and happy.
Going back now to what might have been the reason of what happened to me on the bike during that stage, was just a combination of many things that went wrong two weeks, and one week before the race. I got a stomach bug during training camp two weeks before the race, and had to take medicines, and couldn’t do much during the week before the race. Things like this happen sometimes, and you just got to deal with them the best way possible...
Now I am back in Guadalajara spending my last few days here, before flying back to San Diego. Time to watch the Vuelta, and enjoy what might be the end of my racing season this year. We'll see...
Mazamitla
Wednesday, 26 August 2009 06:17
I apologize for the lack of updates. Is just that the past two weeks have been kind of crazy and unexpected… In a good way…
After doing Ladera GP a couple of weeks ago, things were looking a lot better with the form I was getting on the bike. And just as I finish the race I went home, and packed my stuff! Again! and left the very next morning for a week long training camp in Mexico. It was at the same place I had a training camp before doing the Tour of Mexico back in March, and with the same team. But now, it was to get ready for the Tour of Puebla.
I knew it wasn’t the best to do a week of hard training in altitude two weeks before the race. But since it was in one of my favorite towns (Mazamitla), I just couldn’t resist the offer. Got there Monday afternoon, saw my teammates, and everything looked as if I had come just yesterday to the Cabin. It was an awesome feeling.
By the next day, I was already out in the mountains with the team doing a 5 hour hard session on the bike. The training camp pretty much consisted on back to back 4-6 hour sessions in the mountains with 3x3 – 5km intervals at 80-90%, pretty much every session, and just to finish each ride we would have to race a 5-10 km climb.
Doing 6,000 – 9,000 feet of climbing everyday on those roads was really exhausting, but at the same time it was really nice to ride in such a beautiful place. Mazamitla is so green right now, that it basically feels like being on a Jurassic Park movie with a bunch of roads to ride on.
The camp finished last Sunday morning, and after that the team drove down to Guadalajara. Now I am just here spending the rest of the week until Saturday. The tour of Puebla starts August 31.
EVERY MORNING
WALKING AROUND THE CABIN AREA
MAZAMITLA TOWN AT NIGHT
THE LAST HILL !
THE COOLEST NIGHTCLUB (MALINTZE!)
A lot going on, not much written..
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 14:46
Things have kept coming back to back ever since I got back from Elk Grove. As soon as I got back last week, it was time to settle for a few hours, and then boom!, back home again, phone calls from friends, family, team race coming up, and wonderful ideas coming together in my mind at the same time…
It was just a majestic week were so many things came together at the exact right moment, and finally found what I was looking for inside of me... Yeap... I’ve been having this vision for many years of this project I’ve been trying to formulate, and it just didn’t came together in the right way, and had to stop creating it, time after time, and year after year… Now it’s finally in me, and ready to come out to the WORLD !
Sounds exciting huh??! And it is!... It’s even more exciting, and good that it sounds, and will grow eventually to a wonderful thing in this WORLD. All right now… Enough has been said, and just wait and see for now on… Luis Zamudio has something amazing under his sleeves ready for you.
Anyway, now I’ll talk a bit about racing this weekend. My team race was awesome (Brentwood GP). I was able to get my sister to take pictures of the race, that I will post later on, and have a nice race with all my teammates. The race went well for us. We sent three guys in the front group, but unfortunately we couldn’t win the race. But we tried. I did get a cool prime, so I am happy…
Other than that, I am back home now ready to move out to La Mesa, Ca. to live with my coach Tommy Nelson for a few months until I find my own place around there.
My racing schedule for the rest of the month should be a couple of local events, such as: Ladera Ranch GP, Sisquoc RR, and maybe Tour of Puebla at the end of the month. For now, I will be training, working, and creating this new special project that I will start in the next few months, for the next few DECADES!
UNTIL NEXT ONE.. HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEK…
Done on the EAST and back on the WEST !
Friday, 07 August 2009 17:09
My last post was about a week ago chilling in Chicago… Now I am surprisingly writing from one of my favorite coffee shops in San Diego called COSMOS!
WOW… long trip… Done with it successfully, and finally getting the time I need to recover now. My last 7 days on the EAST included the Tour of Elk Grove were I helped my teammate Victor get 10th place both days, since he was riding better than all of us, and a long drive back to California!.
Our stay with our host family was such an amazing experience. We had a huge barbecue on Sunday after the race were I probably ate more than 5,000 calories of amazing food they cooked for us just for dinner!! Hehe ! It was awesome getting to spend that sort of quality time with them, after receiving such great help from them all week.
The hard part was though… Getting up at 3 am the next morning to start our drive back towards California!. Fortunately the first half all the way to Boulder was smooth enough to make it before midnight!. We spent the night with my friend Stefan who has this super cool apartment right in downtown Boulder!.
The next morning he took us on an easy ride around Boulder roads, and it was great to be in such a nice place for the first time, and spend all day around just hanging out at new places. Boulder is amazing, and I kind of wanted to stay a little longer, but the road trip had to continue the very best morning, so we couldn’t really have too much fun, but it was still very good…
Waking up the next morning was harder than I thought. Fatigue was starting to catch me now after a month of being on the road, racing, and driving back non-stop. We still got on the car, and didn’t had any problems until we got to Salina Utah were our radiator over heated!. Here we were now in the middle of nowhere getting water from the river for the car, and hoping that we would make it to some town in the next few miles…
Fortunately the only exit that was about 16 miles away had a AAA. One of the few things that were around there! Yesss!! It took like 2 hours to fix our problem, and then kept going… Everything went smooth after that, and I was finally home the next morning by 3 am in San Diego!
I thought I would be super exhausted the next day, but somehow I went riding, to the beach, and hanged out all night with friends until 3 am! Wow! I better rest now… Legs are feeling incredibly good though. Recovery rides have been very pleasant, and body is feeling stronger everyday. So we’ll see how things roll this weekend at my team race! (Brentwood GP).!
All and all the trip had good racing in it. It got me to a better condition, and more motivated to start training towards the rest of the season. It’s amazing how much you can live in very shorts periods of time while traveling! Always very enjoyable and quality experiences that will help forever.
Enjoying Chicago
Saturday, 01 August 2009 07:10
So far our stay around here has been really good. We have been able to stay calm at our host family houses, and enjoy some rides around the city. Going to the lake, doing group rides, eating a lot, and stuff like that have been most of the ingredients of our daily routines around here...
Although, now we are staying in Elk Grove, and not in Chicago anymore. We are starting the Tour of Elk Grove today. 'There is good money, and a good opportunity for us to pull a result. Our host family has been great to us. They hook our team with a nice interview for the daily herald newspaper, and they have also been treating us very nicely like all of the host families we have ever stayed with. I really want to thank you to all of you, because without you, my life wouldn't be so easy at the moment.
