SummerQuestin', Olympics, and Marraige

This is such a great time of year with Summer Quest and the summer Olympics just beginning. I am just finishing up SummerQuest and had yet another phenomenal year with them. I will get some photos up of the crew later this week. They graduate on Thursday and I will miss the ones that graduate. So far this month we have been able to go to a Rockies game, rock climb, and move from adding and subtracting fractions to multiplying and dividing them. Pretty rocking stuff really.

Onto training. Things have been going very well. I podium'ed (finally) in a Pro bike race last Wednesday. It felt really good to do that because the past 2 months I have consistently been 4th or 5th. And I won $50 which was even sweeter. I have been feeling really good lately training. It feels like I can train much more than I used to without getting so tired. A good sign. We went on a 40 mile rollerski yesterday and it was blazing hot outside. I felt very good for the entirety of the ski but I think the sun really took it out of me. I got home planning to take a half hour nap starting at 3pm. I woke up at 6:30. Maybe my body was telling me something. Needless to say I had some troubles falling asleep las night.

Most importantly on the list is that the next time I post I will be a husband. Still kind of sounds weird, but I am one lucky guy. Sarah is everything I have ever looked for in a girl and two Saturdays from now she will be walking down the isle and I'll get to call her mine forever. I can't wait. At all.

Some pictures of life:

Cardboard cutouts of my teammates and me

Bike racing (downhill not my specialty)

Where Sarah and I are getting married

My two best girlfriends from childhood

My buddy Conor. A great man.

Doing a 6am ride for 2.5hrs with some 40-year-olds. These guys were pushing the pace the whole time.

My new sponsors (HWK) and friends (Karl and Kevin)

Back to SummerQuest

Ahhhhh... summertime in the Rockies! After a full month of fires in Colorado we finally got some rain. TONS OF RAIN! It almost hasn't stopped raining since July 1st. It has been nice in terms of cooling things off. AND, it has hardened up the bike trails. We raced the Vail Grind last week which is 17 miles and 2000ft of climbing. I was 4th in the Pro category and paid for it the rest of the day and following day with some seriously sore muscles.

This weekend we also did a 125 mile ride with my uncle from Evergreen to Avon and it took us 11 hours. My poor butt. It rained half the time, but we had such a great time with family.

I have just started SummerQuest again and we having twice the fun as we did last year. It's fun knowing all the kids already and they respect us more than we did last year. I think they look up to us. We have a theme of Summer Olympics and I will get to do a presentation on my road to the winter Olympics in 2014. Last week we got to go to a symphony orchestra in Vail and the kids loved it. One of the kids knew I was getting married and wore the t-shirt below. Pretty funny I thought.

4 weeks till I'm getting married. Can't wait. Especially for the 8 days following in Kauai ;)

Home. Wedding Prep.

Back home and back to business. Training camp season has ended and I am back in Vail now getting back into the swing of things which for the next week goes as follows:

- Wake up
- Breakfast
- Train
- Work with SummerQuest kids
- Lunch
- Work
- Train
- Dinner
- Movie/BBQ/Hanging Out/Wedding Prep
- Bed

Pretty standard. Everything except for getting married in August. Can't wait for that and it will be here before we know it. We have been getting everything ready for it and actually don't have much to do before the event.

I officially started SummerQuest today and will be participating in it for 3 hours a day for the month. Very excited to work with this group again and for the rest of July.

It was very exciting to watch Benny True in the trails. One very inspiring guy for me.

I'll leave you with a video that I made after the season with my USST friend, Liz Stephen.

S

Bend (Part II)

I have been in Bend, OR for about a week now with my club from Vail. This time of year is always so fun to train because of the beautiful weather and the attitude coming into the training year. Bend is always a great to place to come in June because of its weather and training variety. This wek so far I have been able to ski on snow every morning (in shorts) and rollerski/bike/run in the afternoon. I haven't seen a cloud yet and life is pretty much as good as it gets.

I really love hanging out with the juniors of our club. They are just fun to hang around with, just as friends, and not as the "younger" kids on the team. I try and play the role model, but also the friend. I was taught from a young age that you should treat people the way you want to be treated and no matter what I have always liked the feeling of making someone I have just met or anyone else, like one of our juniors, feel like you have known them for a lifetime. Besides skiing, I hope this is something they catch onto.

We are here for 5 more days and then I am heading back home for some serious fiance time and work time. It will be nice to have a week of training slightly less intense as this past one. Here is a little taste of what my week looks like when I have a "volume period block"

Like I said in my last post the biking in Bend is spectacular. Not super technical, but very ridable and you can make it as hard as you want. My buddy Reese took some nice shots of me riding the last time we were here and they are below.

Less than two months until my wedding which I cannot wait for. We have everything lined up and ready to go.

My teacher from Red Sandstone today asked if I could help again in her classroom again next year. I told her, "ABSOLUTELY!"

Wedding season!!!

May has been a very busy month with family get-togethers an weddings. I have been from the bahamas, to Minnesota, to Oregon, to North Carolina! Super exciting but all over the place when it comes to training. The training gets done, just not in the linear fashion I am accustomed with.

We played golf this past weekend in NC. I'm not much of a golf player but I like to dress the part.

I recently found out that I will be doing Summer Quest again this summer. It begins in a month. I can't wait after our amazing time last summer!

Back from some serious travel

Wait...no I will still be traveling for the next 2 weeks still. May has been a go-there, come-here month for me. It has involved training, working, resting and injury recovery.

Training has blasted off and has been going very well so far. When you travel a lot you can get out of rhythm of activities you usually have to cross train, but part of being a skier is the ability to fly by the seat of your pants!I have been running, biking, and hiking the trails and roads that I haven't been able to since last summer. Nice to get back to it.

Work has picked up a little again just making sure I can pay the remaining bills (that ITA hasn't covered) and try and accrue some during this time in my life. Always feels a little better web you can buy mom a bundle of flowers and a cool piece of jewelry on Mothers Day instead of just a card.

My ankle injury from my last races in Sweden have been a bit chronic. I have been working with a PT to help with the final pains but I think it is disappearing! Thank goodness!

Going to see some ITA teammates this week in Bend, Oregon. I WS going to try and see Ben at Olympic trials in June but looks like I might be a bit early!

Hope all is well!

Sylvan

The Season has begun!!!

The new season has begun! Every year I "take off" the month of April to spend time with the friends I usually don't get to, enjoy other activities I usually do not get to, and just enjoy myself.

This year I got back home from our last races and hopped on the bike. I wanted to get back to running but the ankle is still reaping the benefits of my crash. I have been going to PT twice a week for the past 3 weeks to heal my shoulder and ankle! It has been quite the transformation minus the fact that my ankle still swells after long runs.It has been very nice to be home though and enjoy the mountains where I grew up! I love it here!

Most recently also I have been working a lot, but one of the perks to my job is that I have to bring other peoples vehicles to be serviced when they are not around. During their service time I have all sorts of time to go venture about on my bike and explore the nearby area. Most recently I went to Glenwood Springs to have a car serviced and came back 4.5 hours later on my bike! Such a great time! Time where I can think and explore places. I found a ghost ski resort I never knew existed! Cool stuff really!

Sarah also ran her first marathon this weekend and I had a blast watching her, though it did look like a total sufferfest! So proud of her!