Friday, September 29, 2017

First Cross Ride

Today was my first cross "ride". I went out for like an hour. SO FUN and hard. I practiced dismounting and remounting, shouldering, etc. I love my bike, very comfy.


Well, that's the update, more to come...

Thursday, September 28, 2017

New 'Cross Bike

I just got the Focus AX 3.0!! First cross bike ever.....








                        BE JELOUS lol

More updates coming soon.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Season Wrap Up

So, I said next post on the 13th on my previous post, I lied. So I decided to give you guys a little "Season Wrap Up". 


My first real season was a huge success. I won a lot of races and even upgraded to cat. 4. Since my last post, I did the IL State TT. I took top honors with a 20km distance with a time of 34:04. That's a little more than 3 min faster than last year. Then there was Wood Dale. This crit didn't go well because I did the TT the day before so my legs were shot. I took 3rd place in the 13-15 and I think like 5th place overall. The next race was Winfeild Criterium. I did the 9-14 and we started with the women 4/5. We had a group about 30(Total) riders. I attacked from the start and was instantly put in a group of two. We finished going solo the whole race. I finished second in the sprint. The bright side is the fact that we finished with well over 1:45 on the group. 

After that, it was time for Bloomington. The worlds shittiest road but most fun turns in the world other than Nats. I was the most experienced and most comfortable in the turns so I used that to my advantage. I led for the last lap going 80 percent dropping the other I was with on every turn so that tired him out. Before the last turn I went like 95 percent and dropped him on the turn. On the finish straight, you need to stay in the saddle cause it's too bumpy. Your back wheel jumps and then you can't sprint. The other rider did't think of that so I won that race with like a bike advantage. This was the last win of the junior road season and the last junior race of the season. 

I really wanted to win a series. TOAD I dropped out cause I got sick and Tour of LIttle Switzerland WAS a win but I didn't qualify even though I still the RR and Crit and won them solo. SO, it was time for Fall Fling. It is a 4 day stage race that has 3 crits and one TT. I did the Cat. 5's for the last time. ABR didn't confirm my upgrade for FF so that's why I did the 5's. Day one went okay, I got 4th in the sprint. Our sprint speed was like 57kmh. I ran out of gears so thats that. I was using a 52 14 and that wasn't enough for the sprint. This wasn't a great start to the series. Day one-6pts. Day 2-6pts. Day three went ok. I got 4th place breaking the tie between the me and the other guy. I was still 2nd overall and 7 points down from 1st. Day four went to shit. I got cutoff by the leaader in the sprint which put me into 4th place and 4th overall. BUT, I got me ABR cat. 4 upgrade. In the same day I did the race and got 5th. My dad, the leader, was being worked for by me.  He got the overall for his first time. So thats how fall fling went.



Reflecting on my road season, there is a lot of room for improvement. I had a blast racing with other juniors my age. I made a lot of new friends but one of them decided not to race for the rest of the season sooo....I'll see him in cross though. Any way, I hope to see those riders again next year and destroy races with them again lol. Now it's time for cyclocross.

Before I talk about cross, I want to say that I will no longer be riding with PLUS, s standing for shi... nevermind. The team I will be making a jump to is ABD cycling. Now, time for cross.

This is my first time ever doing cross. The cross bike I have for this winter is the 2015 Focus AX 3.0 (Disc). More updates on the way for cross.......
PEACE, David Kosela