My Plans for the Summer.

Up until now I've been fairly vague about my plans for this summer. Some of you may be wondering if I'm doing anything at all... While I'm in the USA I'll be guest riding for various teams and I'm riding for Focus bikes, HED Wheels, Enzo's Cycling Products, and Lazer Helmets across the board.

So my plans...I am very excited to announce that from June 22nd to September 1st I will be racing with a Spanish team called Beste Alde Orue Eskola in the the province Basque country (which is in Spain). We will also be racing in Belgium, and the UK for the Junior Tour of Wales. I will live, race, and train at the foothills of the Pyrenees for 2 months. Obviously this is a huge and very exciting opportunity for me, the caliber of racing I'll be attending is really high and will be on closed roads with 60-120, 17-18 year old's everyday. Plus I will get to do lots of climbing, my favorite type of riding. This year really is a dream come true for me, I've wanted to race in the Pyrenees ever since I watched The Tour de France for the first time.

I've had a fairly late start to the season as I've been plagued by a recurring hip injury that started at my crash in the Namur World Cup last December. It was a long and frustrating winter between that and the record breaking sub zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures but my confidence is high and I'm feeling stronger than ever. My racing season started with an excellent trip out to Colorado to get some quality training and racing in. I guest rode for Natural Grocers in Colorado. Soon after getting home I raced Kenwoods, on my HED Jet 5 wheels, where I placed second in the  1/2 race. Last weekend I went out to the first Minnesota series XC Mountain bike race, the Wooly in St Croix. Unfortunately a crash wherein I broke my lazer helmet forced me to take the last two laps easy as to not injure myself for my upcoming trip, but I still had tons of fun riding some really great singletrack on my beautiful new Focus Raven 29'er.

This weekend I've opted to go to the Memorial Classic in Minnesota instead of my usual staple of the Snake alley weekend. I'm sad to miss such a classic as Snake, but it just makes more sense to do an Omnium with two road races and a TT with my upcoming schedule.

The Basque country is a rather confusing conglomerate of provinces in the western Pyrenees that spans the border between France and Spain on the Atlantic coast, and is  home to the Basque people, who (mostly) speak Basque (Euskara). Basque country is thought to have been home to some of the oldest civilizations in ancient history.

 "According to some theories, Basques may be the least assimilated remnant of the Paleolithic inhabitants of Western Europe (specifically those of the Franco-Cantabrian region known as Azilian) to the Indo-European migrations. Basque tribes were mentioned by Greek writer Strabo and Roman writer Pliny, including the Vascones, the Aquitani, and others. There is considerable evidence to show their Basque ethnicity in Roman times in the form of place-names, Caesar's reference to their customs and physical make-up, the so-called Aquitanian inscriptions recording names of people and gods etc."

While racing in Spain, I'll be staying in the city of Durango (Which was the first place in the world to be attacked by Nazi Germany's Airforce in 1937 during the Spanish civil war) in the province of Biscay. I'll end this with some pictures of the mind blowing landscape and architecture. As most of you know I am Home schooled and these trips are a big part of my education in seeing different cultures and learning new languages (I am currently learning Spanish and I'm sure I'll pick up some Basque). In short, I am very excited for this opportunity to become more worldly and create memories that will last a lifetime! Thank You to every one that has supported me in making this happen.