WARNING: COMPLAINING AHEAD

I try not to complain too much on this thing. I hate self-important behavior, but I thought I'd update the few who still read this space in the winter.

Very edgy lately. Sleep isn't coming easily and my nerves are iffy at best. The snow and ice in Colorado has cut my training down to gym work and trainer rides for the entirety of December. November was a coach-mandated month off, so the combination isn't doing great things for my speed going into Rotterdam. In short: I'm slow.

I'm doing what I can, but when I meet with the velodrome director and he says that there is "no way in hell" that I'll be able to get on the track even once before takeoff, it's frustrating. It validates every reason I have for moving away from here, away from the federation and the olympic committee and all their political pissing matches with each other and the athletes they are supposed to be helping. I'll take the rain if I can at least ride! One month before a major international competition and I'm informed that alarms will ring and security will be dispatched if I jump the fence and try to do a workout on the dry, ice free, empty velodrome.

So I do what I can. Trainer rides. Weight lifting. The track in Boulder is utterly useless for any sprint efforts, so I do fixed gear road rides on days when the temps are above freezing. Hope for good flat-tire luck on the gravel-covered roads and hope there's not ice in that blind corner coming up. Fight the cars who think I should be riding all the way over on the shoulder in the snow drifts. Get it done, do the work and get to Europe and back to where I can do what I love under the lights.

Zesdaage Rotterdam