Across The Pond

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find
the ways in which you yourself have altered." - Nelson Mandela

I came across this quote last night and thought it was fitting was pretty fitting. The place for me that remains unchanged is my home town of Paterson. Paterson is located in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia and has the population of about 400 people. It's been great to return and reflect on my first 4 months of living in the USA and realise how much I did and saw. But enough with that. It's been a pretty hectic two weeks since leaving freezing St.Louis to arriving in sunny Sydney. Training hasn't been going as well as I would have liked which is probably not a good thing going into "the worlds hardest crit series" (Bay Crits) but I'm looking forward to two weeks solid training and racing in Victoria.

My bike getting all arty at "rolla door"

As it is summer down here in the southern hemisphere there is plenty of racing and it has been a chance to blow some cobwebs out before Bay Crits. I have raced on the velodrome in Newcastle twice and had a Saturday morning training session on it as well and also managed to finish the Sunday morning crit as well. It's been good to train out in the country again with plenty of decent roads and solid climbs all around me here. I forgot how bad the drivers are here but was quickly reminded on my first ride when I was run off the road by a truck and almost cleaned up by a few cars. Unbelievable.

Ahh the traffic...

Every ride I have tried to stop at a different cafe for coffee but I keep finding my way back to a place called "rolla door" which is on Beaumont Street in Newcastle. I was introduced to this place by Paddy and Pauly and is deadset the best coffee I have ever had.

Best coffee ever!

Christmas was spent with the fam enjoying good food and wine and boxing day (the day after Christmas for the Americans) was enjoyed at the Avondale Classic. The Avondale Classic is 3km run around "Beautiful Broadmedow" Race Track and was put on by Jess Kilmurray and her boyfriend Pete as challenge to family and friends. The idea is that the following year the competitor should beat their previous years time. The morning was a lot of fun with Pete taking out the run in a time of 10.09 which will be certainly hard to beat next year, but with many of the competitors talking up training hard for next year, who knows. Can I just point out that Pete is an absolute animal, he is definitely the most all round fittest bloke I have ever met, Squirt Qwigley (Kurt Gidley) has nothing on Pete. After the race Paddy brewed up some killer caffeine and Pete and his bro Maxy cooked some huge bacon and egg rolls which we consumed as we watched all the feral/westies/tradies trudge drunkenly to annual Newcastle Boxing Day races.

Pete about to receive the first annual Avondale Classic Cup.

Pete taking the "perfect meal" down the hatch

This afternoon I head down to Sydney on the first leg of the trip to Melbourne for New Years and Bay Crits, hopefully I will be able to give you another update when I get down there.

Until next time, take care everyone!
Laters, Chev.

Photo from the archive: View from the top paddock. look at all those bergs!

A Day in The Life (College)

G'day all,
So I thought I would give you all a little insight into what makes up an average day for me. I will start with college and hopefully do another one when I'm at home.

So for most of you what I do at college is a complete mystery so I decided to take my camera around with me for a day and document my daily routine although this week is finals week so it's not entirely accurate but I'm sure you'll get the picture.

Decisions, decisions...

After waking up, the first port of call is the Cafeteria, or "Cafe" (pronounced "kaff"). The cafe is awesome it's always got good variety and fresh foods and is run by sponsor and friend of the Lindenwood Cycling Team, Ralph Pfremmer.

A healthy breakfast rich in fruits and carbohydrates...

After breaky it is either out on the bike to do the days training or off to class to be educated for a few hours. The class sizes here at Lindenwood are much smaller than back in Oz, with more of a high school set up of about 20 people per class, which works well for me as I fall straight to sleep in lectures.

Cool little campus building, the architecture around campus is all similar to this

So it has been pretty bloody cold here but we have embraced the weather and whenever we spy a frozen dam or creek we take a break from riding to throw rocks on the ice and see if we can ice skate in our bike shoes. Yeah really mature I know but seriously this would never happen in Australia.

I have been getting caught out on my rides lately as the sun seems to just fall out of the sky as soon as it hits 4 in the afternoon, but once I get back in to town I'm greeted with Main Street lit up all very pretty for the festive season, and it's not that bad.

Main Street St. Charlie

The evenings are generally spent either on the rollers, in the computer lab pretending to do homework, or catching up with family and current events back home in Aus.

One of the school buildings by night.

Well after an exhausting day at college its lights out in 310 Flowers. Hopefully I gave you a little bit of an insight into my daily going on's...

310 Flowers in all its glory and yes mum it is a "brothel".

So at the moment I am sitting in QANTAS club in LAX drinking Moet with Paddy wait for our flight back home...lifes tough. We were checking in at STL airport when I turned around and saw a big tall black guy with these huge gold shades on after doing a double take that I realise that its in fact rapper/actor/muscle man LL Cool J. We didn't get a chance to get a photo with him as we were checking in but we did get to say "G'day mate!" on the plane. He seems like a really nice bloke, he was signing heaps of autographs and taking photos with people.

Well I have to get back to drinking more champagne and taking advantage of all the other benefits of this establishment whilst I still can.

Take Care, Chev.

One from the lost archives of photos on my computer: the morning walk to class.

Living In a Snow Globe

Howdy,
Last Tuesday arvo me, Norris and Crades packed the ever reliable Civic and headed 200 miles down the interstate to Springfield, Missouri, to visit our mate and fellow Novacastrian Pat Bergin. Springfield is home to Missouri State University where Pat is studying and swimming and is also Brad Pitts home town. We were spoilt with good food, good weather and some great roads to train on and train we did putting some solid kays down. Thanksgiving had a very international flavour with four Aussies, two Canadians, and a Venezuelan. We feasted on a huge lunch prepared by Eric, Pats roommate and Francy Pats girlyfriend and even threw in a good old Aussie piss up for good measure.
Friday night we were lucky enough to sneak into the brand new $100m basketball stadium where Missouri State were playing the University of Utah which is where Andrew Bogurt played in college and before being the number one draft pick of 2005.

Saturday morning we headed back to sunny St.Charles and waking up on Sunday morning we were greeted with two inches of white fluffy snow. The novelty of snow has quickly worn off having done 4 and half hours on the rollers in the last 2 days and whole day of slipping over on ice and getting frozen from walking from class to class.

Ciao, Chev.

Snow on the footy field.

New Year, New Team, same old cliches

Hey all,

Keeping to my promise of keeping my blog updated I'll be filling y'all in on whats been happening in the world of "Cheva". I'm happy to say that I will be riding for Mesa Cycles for the 2009 season. After a mini camp here in St. Louis last weekend I can confirm that this team is the real deal, the team is so well organised thanks to the great managment and has some great talent in the ranks.
I'm extremely motivated for the 2009 season as I will contesting some very big races both, collegiate and also the races I will be doing with Mesa. The next couple of weeks I will be sitiing down with Paddy nutting out the races I wish to do here in North America. Cycling is a sport of sacrafices; you sacrifice your social life, your time with family, your school work, your right to eat whatever you want etc, etc... As I said next year is going to be for me and if I really want to give this whole bike racing thing a shot I need to stay here over the summer holidays and race as much as possible.
With less than 3 weeks until I return down under I have started getting excited to get home and see family and friends and also do some solid racing and training. I plan on racing on the track as much as possible and also heading down to Melbourne/Geelong with the boys to the Jayco Bay Classic again. After the 5 days of racing I will head north to Bright for a training camp and then finally back to the sunny Hunter Valley.
Last night we went out to a night time Cyclo Cross race and had a blast, but I guess when you put a free keg on and make thin blokes ride around a silly course with all sorts of absurd obsticles you can't go wrong.
Until then I will be charging around Lindenwood and St.Charles with the other Aussies causing absolute mayhem. Oh and if you want to check out some great cliches jump over to Tim Norris (Custard Arm) blog he has some absolute rippers on there.

Beautiful Newcastle beach on a summers arvo (afternoon for any yank reading).

Under Midwestern Skies

Hi all,

Firstly please excuse me for being so lazy with my blog but honestly nothing too exciting has been happening since seasons end apart from drinking beer and sleeping.(Due to problems I have been having with the slow internet connection and heavy load of school work I haven't been able to post this online until now so please excuse that the following events happened some time ago now) I'm writing amidst a very historical moment for the USA,just 10 minutes ago Barak Obama has just won the election and will become the first African American President of the USA. The election couldn't have come fast enough for me as I'm well over the ads,bumper stickers and lawn signs and I have only been here 3 months!!! I must admit it has been pretty exciting to expierence first hand.
So I thought I would do a wrap up of the season that has been 2008.
It all started on the 2nd of January at the Bay Criterium Series in Melbourne/Geelong. Myself, Paddy, Custard Arm (Tim Norris), Ozza, Johnsy and good mate Matt Camilliri all made the trip down for New Years and 5 days of solid racing. I always heard about hard Bay Crits were but it was another thing to actually expierence. The first day I was dropped from the main pack on the 2nd lap! This really set things up for the week as I only managed to finish one race, but I was able to take much away from it (including an impressive power file from the day I actually finished).

After Bay Crits it dawned on me that I was deep in a creep hole after a long season racing all around Australia trying to prove myself as some sort of bike rider. It was a couple of months of putting down a solid base for the coming season which meant lots of long kays. My partner in crime for early season kays was Matt Cammo as just having signed for a German team was looking for some long kays before heading over. The usual Wednesday morning long one which always started at "Beautiful Broadmedow" race course and we ended up anywhere from Blackhill, Seaham or out the back of Martins Creek generally with me drafting behind Cammos 20km efforts.
As any Aussie bike racer knows, as soon as the State Opens start rolling it means lots of travel to far out country places, cheap hotels and a good dose of beer. Oh and some racing as well. First state open this year was the Bathurst Weekend which i was able to manage a 7th in the hillclimb and a 10th in the criterium. I should mention that at the start of the year I had some unsually good form sprinting for reasons unknown. With sprinting form high I managed two more top tens against some good competion at Cootamundra and also at the Sydney Road champs.

With some results early form was high but some bad luck and bad tactics on my half kept me out of the money for a while in the state opens. The McDonalds classic down at Wagga Wagga was such example of some bad luck, with Tim Norris designated sprinter for the day I had completed my job almost perfectly by picking him up with 5 laps to go bringing him to the front for the sprint. On the last lap disaster happened when with Tim on my wheel I got pushed wide and subsequently over a median strip which effectively ended any chance of a result that day. It wasn't until a couple of months later that I was able to make it up to Tim leading him out to a perfect win at the Peter Van Gent Classic.


Gunnedah to Tamworth was the first state open I ever did and this year was the third time I have raced it. A break of 5 went affter about 5km and I was lucky or unlucky enough to be in it as it was acutally decided before the race that my team mate Sam Layzell was meant to be the man to ride the break that day. 100kms later I finally blew after about 3 hours off the front and returned to the bunch for a medicore placing but I did gain alot of form that weekend.

More state opens but not too much to write home about. Finished 7th in the NSW U/23 Individual Time Trial champs which was my last race before heading state side.
Obviously the biggest highlight for me this season was being given the chance to study and live in the USA and it was cycling that gave me this opportunity. Immediately I was able to compete at a level which I couldn't in Australia and that was racing legitiment professional cyclists at Gateway Cup. Also winning a Missouri State gold medal in the points race was another highlight. The trip out to Collegiate Nationals was the icing on the cake with setting the early time for Team Pursuit and finishing 4th in the event being the highlight for me for the year. It's very rare that you get to stand on a national podium and recieve a national medal with three of your good mates.
For now its more training with 12 sessions done last week and the same this week in preperation for the Aussie crits when I get home.
Until next time, take care.
(MORE PICTURES TO COME)

Day time television

A story a local TV channel did on the velodrome in STL featuring yours truly...

Mile High Club

Hwrya?

I have just arrived back to St.Charlies from Collegiate Track Nationals which was held at Colorado Springs. I was pretty excited to get there for two reasons; firstly my mum was coming over to help celebrate my birthday and watch the racing, and secondly, because Nationals have been my and the teams goal for this season. The last two weeks have been the best preparation I have ever had for any race, we had some excellent sessions on the track, we were getting a rub every day to keep fresh, we had the best equipment and most importantly were focused 100% for the competition. So with that I had no excuse not to perform.

I have to mention the trip out and back, it was the most enjoyable trip I have had away on the bike. Tim Norris earned himself a new nick name in the shape of 'Custard Arm' after some target practice at highway signs and overpasses with any form of ammunition we could find in the 15 seater van.

Colorado Springs sits at about 2500m above sea level and I really noticed the altitude after the first warm up session. First event was the 3km pursuit which I was in the very first heat, I ran a bit slower than what I hoped but It gives me a benchmark for next year I guess. The evening session was rained out by the ever changing Colorado weather and lost a whole day as a result. Friday night saw the sprinters in action. Unfortunately Paddy had a hairbrain decision by the so called officials go against him which saw him finish 7th instead of 5th robbing him of valuable points for the overall point score and a medal. The bad luck extended for Paddy into the Kilo where he pulled his foot automatically putting him out of the race. Everyone knows that the Kilo was Paddy's event and was destined for the podium so this was a crushing time. I was suppose to ride the Kilo but we made the decision that a couple of us would miss the event to save ourselves for the Team Pursuit (4 man team 3km time trial), the decision proved to pay dividends as we finished 4th overall after sitting in 2nd until the final heat. It was pleasing to hear everyone commenting on how smooth and mechanical we looked and only after one weekend practicing for the event I think we will have it dialed for next year.

The last event was the Points Race Heat which was 30 guys and 45 laps of pain. I missed making the final by one spot but achieved the primary goal of getting Paddy through. Lindenwood University had a very successful first Nationals showing as we finished the three days of racing in 5th overall in the Division II competition. With only 5 men this was a solid result and with some females on board next year I reckon we will be giving some of the bigger colleges a run for their money.
My hopes and dreams don't lie on the track but after these past couple of days I have been well and truly been bitten by the the fixed wheel bug and will be making Track Nationals a major goal for next season.

For the next couple of weeks I'm going to give the bike a rest and the local night spots a workout until I start preparing for Bay Crits and trying to get some road base in for next year.

Ciao, Chev.

Gateway Cup

Woah what a weekend! Yanks love a crit and shit can they ride them too! The whole weekend was fast and held on some technical courses around the St.Louis area. Well I got through the weekend without incident...just. First race about third lap in I almost put it down in front of Owen "the butcher" Belton when I hit a gnarly hole around a corner and then again the next day when my hand slipped of my bars right in front of Toyota United pro, former Australian National Champion and race leader, Henk Vogels. Henk got his revenge a couple of laps later when he put a water bottle down right in my path on the fastest part of the course (Darren the head coach picked it up for me a momento). Despite all these near misses I had a good weekend and was able to roll in 35th, 43rd and 50th out of about 140 guys.

Every day there were awesome crowds and the whole weekend had a festive atmosphere which is something I hadn't expierenced before. We got to race some cool areas around St.Louis ranging from the swanky 'Laffette Square' to the Italian district of STL 'The Hill'. The second day and third day finished with guys from the crowd offering all the Pro1/2 guys beer on completion. It was good to see Henk not only winning the crits but also the race to beers that were on offer from random revelers on the course.

I pulled up feeling as fresh as a daisy after the weekend so hopefully the form is good and now I guess I just have to leave the legs to do the talking. Next Tuesday we leave for Nationals in Colorado which I'm really looking forward to as it has been a main goal for the season and also will be able to see my mum as she is coming over to "root" for Lindenwood in our Collegiate National Cycling debut.
You can keep up to date with all the action from Nationals at cyclingnews.com with my boy Paddy Kilmurray as your correspondent.

Until next time, take care.

Chev.

Bikes, Babes and Gatorade

Hey all.

This past week has been pretty flat out. Monday was my first official day as a Freshman here at Lindenwood University. So this week I have been getting into the groove of being educated again and just generally finding my way around the campus. Last weekend myself, 'Diamond' Dave, Norris and Ozza made our way up to Indianapolis for some racing. Saturday night we raced at the Major Taylor Velodromes against some really strong competition mainly in the form of Marion College. Those guys ripped our legs off and definately showed us why they are the strongest Collegiate track team in the nation. I skipped the Keiren and pulled out early in the missing out race and managed to finish the scratch race which was an effort in it's self.

Sunday we lined up in the blistering heat for a crit at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. It was weird when we were entering, to my complete asthonishment, I saw, just some normal guy, carrying a rifle around then another guy. I was shitting my pants I thought there was going to be an old fashioned gun slinging show down or something but it turns out it was just the Indy Gun and Knife show phew only some redneck/hillbillies with a shit load of guns. Anyway back to the racing, Diamond Dave did a heap of solid work up front for most of the race to keep it all together for Ozza who was designated leader for the day. With 15 minutes and 3 laps to go Owen broke free and with that power derived from years as a butcher he stayed away from the chasing bunch to the finish and ended up with a time gap of a minute back to the bunch.

This weekend we have the "Gateway Cup" which is a four crit series in St.Louis, and will be the biggest races I have competed in yet and will be the icing on the cake in regards to the form before Nationals. I'm sitting out tonights 70min crit as it starts a 9.30pm and lit only by street lights so me and Ozza are going to eat fairy floss (they call it cotton candy here...?) and watch Norris try and not to become a paraplegic.

Oh some more news, a little off topic though. Me and my dorm mate Paddy have Vanilla Ice of 80's rap fame living next door to us. The set up here with our dorms is that we share the bathroom with the two guys next door to us with a locking door between the two rooms. Anyway this guy is a complete freak! We thought for some time he was some Eastern Block European as he was at the international check in and orientation day, turns out he's just deaf and thus speaks funny and is actually from Illinois. So far some of his oddities have been: trying to drain Hoover Dam every morning at 6.30am by the running taps at full steam, having a bath for an hour at 2am in the morning, smoking cigars whilst wandering aimlessly around the car park, bleaching his hair completely blonde and then asking "is it blonde enough?" and last but not least yesterday morning after waking up and going to answer the call of nature, I walk into the shared bathroom and Vanilla is in front of the mirror, completely nude, purifying himself in some sort of cleansing ritual. As he is deaf he didn't realise I had come in for a couple of seconds and only noticed me when I started laughing so hard that he must have picked up the vibrations with his bat like entani.

Anyway enough about Vanilla. Also if you thought the title of this blog was going to be in some way relevant to what I was going to write you're wrong, just thought it was a sick name for an entry.

Well I gotta go to Home Depot and buy a square mouth shovel to scrape up all the bike riders that are going to crash tonight.

Until next time, take care. Chev.

Missouri State Track Champs

G'day. Life really hasn't slowed down since I posted last it's been an epic couple of days. Last weekend, as part of the Lindenwood team I competed in the Missouri State Track Championships.

Saturday was the 1000m time trial (Kilo) and the sprints which I managed to finish well down the field in the Kilo and didn't qualify for the sprints which I wasn't to concerned about as most people know I'm not the greatest sprinter to grace a bicycle. Sunday was the endurance events; the 4km pursuit, the points race and scratch race. The pursuit was going well until 4 laps in to the 12 lap event my seat clamp failed and my seat dropped right down so it looked like I was riding a BMX.

After some pretty poor personal performances and mechanicals I was motivated to make up some lost ground and with some awesome work by my team mates Owen and Timmy I was able to slip off the front in the 40 lap points race and win it by 9 points and a lap up. The points race was long, fast and hot but is only an apitiser for the 70 lap points race we will be competing in at nationals. After the points race it was decided we were to call it a day because we had to head back to school for the mandatory 'physical' that all atheletes have to have when we were told that Owen was in contention for the Omnium, which the most points for over all in the weekends competition. So after skulling the cold and very refreshing Budweiser I was enjoying, it was straight to the start line for the scratch race which was shortened to 14 laps. The game plan was for Timmy and I to attack as much as possible making everyone else chase and then for Owen to launch an attack towards the end. The plan worked almost perfectly with Tim and I having done our job Owen launched an attack three laps out which stuck to the end which he was able to roll over in third and in doing so winning the state Omnium Jersey. For the record I spent 200m in the last lap spewing that lovely Budweiser up.

This weekend we are heading to Indianapolis for some track and crit racing, so it should be a serious sharpening up of the legs and a form tester.

Until next time, take care.

Ciao, Chev.

Living The (American) Dream

Hi all. Under the pressure of my coach I will be keeping a blog on my activities whilst in the U S of A.

I arrived in the little college town of St.Charles, Missouri on the 7th of August where I will be studying at Lindenwood University for the next 4 years. St.Charles is such a beautiful little town situated right on the Missouri River. The real feature of the town is the main street (called Main Street funnily enough) it is cobbled and tree lined, flanked on either side with cafes, bars and resturants. I have been blown away by Lindenwood so far, the grounds and buildings are beautiful. Our dorm rooms are quite big and I'm lucky enough to be sharing with fellow Australian and HC4L Paddy Kilmurray, who Im sure will be mentoring me over the next couple of years.

The roads over here are much different from the roads back in Aus, they are all in emaculate condition and most have shoulders. A 15 minute ride from our dorm and you are in corn fields, complete with real life Hill Billies in those big old ford trucks and 15 minutes in the other direction you are on a bitching bike path that goes through woods and past a lake. The velodrome is about a 15 minute drive away which is handy for training for Collegiate Nationals which are coming up in September and is my real focus for this year. I have 2 days of track racing this weekend before going on camp out to rural Missouri.

I have to fly now going down to Main Street there is some sort of festival happening down there, Im guranteed lots of beer and lots of women.

Chev.

What I'm listening to.