Recovery has been the key for this trip, but I can only recover to a certain extent, when legs really get beat up more easily right now. I try to keep them rolling as the races go, but the legs definitely tell me to take it easy more than usually. Doing back to back races is usually what I enjoy the most doing, but right now that is not the case.

Wow, I am sorry almost 12 days have passed, and I haven't written anything, but the site had problems, and I couldn't log in... Anyway, were did I left things?? Right.. Vegas... Wow... It's been a long way after that. We eventually made it to Utah, and spent the night, and right after we drove straight to Chicago but ran out of energy in Iowa, and spent the night there. The next morning we took off for our first race in Chicago of the superweek series, and to meet our Host Family for the first time. We got there so stressed out, and tired, that racing was only on our minds because the race was only a mile away from were we were staying at.

Having trashed legs from all that driving, none of us felt good, and we were doing a good La Grange exposure at the back of the field for more than half of the race.  I pulled out with 15 to go.. But Jorge, and Alexi stayed there, and rode good getting some primes and stuff. Being back racing for me after such a long time off the bike and out of racing, was definitely a hard way to start, but I had to do it somehow, and I am using this series to come back into the rhythm again, but not exploding myself from the beginning, and pulling out with 15 to go was a good choice. Legs were starting to blow...

The next day was this super fast and technical road race, which was won by the Continental team MTN from South Africa. I only made it 1.5 hours into the race before calling it once again... Jorge did the same thing after getting on some breaks that didn't stick, and decided to save it for the next few days. Since my sensations weren't good, I decided to just take and easy day to really recover and have a nice spin, and go watch my mates at their race. I was really enjoying my time as a regular spectator just chilling on a folding chair with my dunkin donuts coffee, watching the racers go by time after time, and killing each other until one of the craziest things so far on this series happened...

Curtis Gunn from Fly V was off the front, and there was this little black girl riding around here house parking lot, when she decided to ride straight into the middle of the course, when Curtis was going 30 mph, and then KABOOOM!~#%$ yeap... Curtis went straight into the little girl’s bike. Luckily he didn't hit her. The girl went flying back to the sidewalk, and Curtis went flying straight to the ground and broke some ribs. That little girl is the luckiest little girl I've seen to be alive. Curtis missed hitting her by a couple of inches, and she left home with only a few scratches.. Nothing like Curtis... Hope you get better soon Man.

Anyway, the next day I told myself that I was going to finish and ride at the front the whole time. And that's what I did. I rode in the front, until the field got smaller since the race was really hard and technical, and started going from primes after halfway through the race. Got close a couple of times, but couldn't quite get them, and spent all my energy trying, but still finished in the bunch.

The next day was the holly hill road race where I finished 11th last year, and almost won, getting caught on the last 150 meters before the finish by my break companions... This year was a whole lot different. I got dropped in the crosswinds after being on my limit for a good hour of the race, and legs were burning a ton, and couldn't keep up, so I DNF this time...

I woke up pretty tired the next morning, did a small recovery spin, and felt better. The amazing hard brewer's hill criterium was that same afternoon, and decided to give it a go...  The race was so hard, and fast from the gun, and guys were pulling out every lap. I was just riding in the field, and basically sprinting up the climb every lap. Then a fast descent with wet corners on the other side of the course, back and forth. I kept my positioning in top 40 until I looked back and realized I was the last guy in the field, and then went towards the front... Ricardo Vandervelde from GARMIN attacked with 10 to go up the climb, and I went with him, but he blew me off his wheel!, and got back on the group. Jorge later bridge up to him, but then they got caught with two to go, and a south african rider then attacked, and rode away from everyone solo for the 4th time this series!. Amazing,...

Amyway... Here I am now, after taking two days off racing since I was really tired from the last race, and just did two recovery rides to get my energy levels up again. I am feeling good now, and ready for tonight’s race. I should go better, and better now. We'll see... Now that more teammates have come up to superweek it should go better for us. Our only down, is that Alexi got a cold, so he might not be feeling too good in the next few days. Other than that we are off for another week of really hard racing in superweek! Follow results at: www.internationalcycling.com , thank you.

Alexi Martinez, Jorge Alvarado, and myself will be taking part on this crazy road trip towards Wisconsin to do part of the superweek series, and the tour of elk grove with our team. On our way there we are planning to do some good stops in VEGAS, UTAH, COLORADO, and who knows where else, but we are looking forward to hang out at some cool places and train on our way there...

Anyway, our trip started yesterday, but it almost finished that same day too... Bad luck was all over us continuously... My car died on us 80 miles into our trip in the middle of the night. The battery died out of nowhere, and I was barely able to pull off the road since I wasn't expecting it at all... Luckily, we didn't crashed, but things didn't looked that good anyways...

 Fortunately, a highway patrol came to help us fairly soon after and gave us a jump start... But since traffic was so bad, my car died again before getting to the next exit...  So we had to pull off again, until another highway patrol gave us another jump start.... Once we got going again the traffic was still really bad, and we were barely able to make it to the next freeway exit.

We ended up spending the night in the car, outside a hotel's parking lot, since the battery was so dead and wouldn't work at night. It was really uncomfortable, but  we had to hang in there until the next morning... As soon as we got up, we got going again, and the car would last a lot more during the day...

Everything was looking smooth again, until Alexi's bike almost fell off our ghetto rack !!!!. We were barely able to save Alexi's 8,000 dollar bike from getting destroyed, and we were also able to get back all the way to orange county to get the car problem fixed, and start our trip all OVER AGAIN! towards WISCONSIN!.

After a couple of hours of hanging around in orange county fixing unexpected problems, it all finally started to look more positive. We found a better car to take for our trip, and everything looked good again, until Alexi's blackberry died out of nowhere... Bahhhhh, our only GPS system was now gone!... Oh well, I guess things like this can happen anytime, but damm why all of them now???... Finally, we got going again this afternoon, and made it to VEGAS tonight... Training at 10 pm on the road has never felt better than today! haa!!.

My first hard training session since I got back on the bike was today. My coach Tommy sent me out to the famous HONNEYSPRINGS climb to do a field test, and get some Heart Rate info for him, so he can set up my training for the next few weeks, and know were my form is at right now. After being sick for 3 weeks, and not riding at all, the last thing you want to do is a Time Trial up that crazy climb on your first week back on the bike !. I guess that's what I had to do...

The first part of my ride was easy until I got to the base of the climb. I notice my heart rate was jumping all over the place on my way there, and just took it as easy as I could to get there. Once I got to the base, it was game ON, and hit the lap button on my watch and started going hard up the climb. The first 5 minutes were okay, but then my body just began to blow up all over the place. I was zig zagging in no time, and gasping for air just to try and do another pedal stroke. I knew I had still around 25 minutes left of this, so the only thing I could do was to put my head down and keep going however I could.

I was going up pretty slow, but the suffering was harder than ever. I remember my last time I time trial it was when I was 20 (guess why?), and did 26:37. Since then, I haven't timed myself up, or if I have, I haven't done anything faster than that, but I really don't try on that climb anymore. It's just such a hard climb to keep doing this things... But I guess for now on it will be the place were I'll be checking my fitness more often...

Tommy said to push the lap button after the first 10 minutes of effort, and then hit it again, until the end of the climb or 30 minutes, so he could check my average heart rate for those 20 minutes... So anyway, I was running out of time, and the climb was coming to an end, and I didn't wanted to do more than 30 no matter how much I am sucking right now... I was able to go get to the top at 29:56 barely being able to keep pedaling... Don't ask me what kind of sprint I did on the last 500 meters, but I'll just say it probably took one year off my life.

Anyway, that was my ride today. I hope Tommy can get some good info out of this. I am not really sure if I used the watch correctly, so it might have gone all to HELL! AHHHHHHHHH!. We'll see, I'll share the results once I got them....

As most of you might know, the Tour De France is going on at the moment. I am not sure if it's worth watching the flat stages since Mark Cavendish will win all of them by more than 5 bike lenghts. Damm that guy is strong! Can't wait til they hit the mountains. Looks like it will be a very exciting one. I know Contador looks like he will be the man this year, but I am going for Andy Schleck to come second, and Kloden third... That's my guess... We'll see...