September Update #1

Whew! It's been sort of a crazy month and the blog has gotten neglected once again. Here's a recap of the first two weeks with an emphasis on photos.

Labor Day weekend involved heading to St. Louis for 4 days of crit racing with the Gateway Cup. Super talented fields of riders with about 60 women per day. The last races for me on the road for this season and it was a really fun weekend. Kenda was represented by Kat, Catherine, Christy, and myself. Here's Christy showing us her serious side.


I felt good about how things went and tried to stay active up front and go with some moves. Finished in the mid 20s every day.

Huge thanks to Carrie and Chris for helping make this year's event so great.
They brought in some talented racers and made sure the support was there for the women.

They also helped us get really great host housing. Here we are outside of our awesome host house - thanks so much Edgar and Julie!

After our big crit on Labor Day we got to see the start of the Tour of Missouri. Lots of Pro Tour teams in the States for the event so I turned into a crazed cycling fan and tried to get photos of the pros.

Jens Voigt

Mark Cavendish

George Hincapie's leg (sort of creepy!)

Paul Sherwin and Frankie Andraeu

The next weekend was the Wisconsin Ironman. Dave competed in his 3rd IM and the predicted hot temperatures had him a bit nervous. It was a beautiful morning for watching 2,000 people flop around in the lake.



He had a solid swim and looked good coming out of transition.
The bike was going well until his stomach started to bother him during the last 20 or so miles.
He stomach continued to bother him and he ran half of the marathon feeling really bad.
He walked for about 3 miles and at mile 18 his stomach had shut down and he decided it wasn't worth pushing it to end up in the ER (we've been there before!) and dropped out. He sat in the medic tent for over an hour before they released him and we enjoyed a nice dinner with both sets of our parents. It's unfortunate that he wasn't able to get some closure on his season and capitalize on his excellent fitness but I'm super proud of him nonetheless. It's so hard when you train a whole year and race only a handful of days. Everything has to fall perfectly into place and there are plenty of things that you just can't control. So it goes, though, and he's enjoyed the process of preparing for the event. No IM this next year though and he's already planning on mixing it up this fall with some cyclocross races! :)

The next weekend we headed up to Madeline Island up in Lake Superior to spend some time with Dave's family and go to the wedding of Ryan (Dave's youngest brother) and Rachael. It was a really great weekend - the weather was phenomenally warm and it was a lot of fun to ride bikes with the boys, spend some time with family, and we got to meet our new nephew Adrian. A nice way to cap off the summer. Cider and I enjoying the fresh air

The happy couple

Wedding on the water

Mike and Adrian on the ferry

Riding on the quiet island roads

Dave might have a future in push up contests - here he is demolishing the competition at the post wedding bash.


Well that should suffice for now. Immediately after our weekend up north I flew out to Las Vegas for Interbike. I'll save the Interbike/Cross Vegas/USGP Madison weekend for the next update. Perhaps by the end of the week? Thanks for reading despite the infrequent posts!