Since last time..a lot of good and bad stuff has happened, so read on if your interested..if not...read it anyway. 

**U23 Nationals** Went great until disaster.  

First let me say something about Augusta Ga, it is literally the hottest/worst place for a bike race, if you have been there...well you know what I'm talking about.  

TT- I was looking for a good ride in the TT, as I have been working on my time trailing for a while.  It didn't go quite as well as I hoped.  Long story short, I didn't have a great ride and the legs never really opened up. Ended up 25th.  

Crit- I skipped the Crit to avoid crashing...why? Because I got an invite to go to Europe and race for the USA National Team.  I didn't want to risk getting injured, because Europe had become my new #1 Priority. Well....skipping the Crit will soon become ironic.

Road Race- It was hot, the strongest guys were suffering because of the heat, which was great for the southern teams.  We did a couple laps then the break went.  It was about 15 guys, we had 3, Tyler Karnes, Alder Martz, and myself.  Coming into the 3rd or 4th lap, I grabbed 5 or 6 bottles, planning on handing them out to my team.  I turned around and held out a bottle for Alder, then my race ended.  I don't remember what happened next, but I know I blindly hit a motorcycle and was knocked out instantly.  My face/helmet took the brunt of the fall, but I was skinned/bruised up pretty much everywhere.  I was loaded up into an ambulance and taken to the medical tent where they did the vital stuff.  Like an idiot, I said no to going to the hospital.  Side Note-always go to the hospital if you don't remember the last 10 minutes of your life.  I didn't even realize I was at a bike race for awhile. After awhile, I started to come around and felt normal.  After the race we headed back to the team house, where I moped around like a crippled old man.  FYI for non-cyclists..road rash is the worst thing ever, seriously, taking a shower is like stepping into fire.  Tyler went on to get 13th that day, Congrats to him. To add insult to injury, my bike broke...which is even worse than road rash.

Toona Pro Stage Race- By the time Toona rolled around my road rash was just about headed up.  But little did I know, my head was not.

Prologe- Not for me, but it went ok.  I was on a back up bike, and the course had something like 18 turns in it, and was only like 3k long.  I ended up 47th.

Stage 1- Very hard day, because I was leaving the race early to get ready for Europe, I was a work horse.  I went with attacks and stayed aggressive all day.  We ended up missing the break which was disappointing for us, but sometimes it happens.  We rode through hot, rain, cold, wind, mud...Mother Nature was pissed off that day.  The race finished on a hard 5 mile climb.  I paced blair up it and finished with the grupetto.

Europe- I planned on racing 3 stage races from July 15th-August 16th.  A couple days after getting settled in, I started noticing weird stuff happening on rides.  First were headaches, which I ignored, then came depression, dizziness, nausea, and panic.  I decided to tell Andrew, although it was the last thing I wanted to do. The way I was feeling was so weird i figured something had to be wrong.  He took me to the hospital where I got a CT Scan.  Turns out my brain was swollen from my crash at Nationals... Its called Post Concussion Syndrome.  I was booked a ticket home.  I took a break. A couple weeks later I went to the hospital to get an MRI, and took it to a Neurologist.  She told me me I had a grade 3 concussion (the worst kind you can get).  She said the swelling had gone and I was in the clear.  Finally.

River Gorge-  Now, between getting cleared to race and River Gorge, I got an invite to race the Tour of China with the National Team.  This provided maximum motivation to train myself sick.  

TT- I love this TT, It is 4 miles long with a climb in it. The start list was stacked with some horsepower, and was very, very strong. I had no idea how my top end would be as I had not raced since early July.  I got a great warmup in and headed to the start. Since the race was less than 10 minutes, there was no pacing.  I went as hard as I could from the start to the finish.  I finished 5th place with a 7:51, and an average speed of 30.6mph.  Not so bad. Nate Brown (current u23 national TT Champ) of Trek Livestrong won it with a 7:30...32mph!  

Crit- I was worried about the Crit.  After a crash its hard to mix it up again, you just have to do it.  Turns out all I needed was a good HTFU pep talk from the Hincapie U23 motivational speaker, Mr. Alder Martz.  The Course was a classic 4 corner flat crit.  This was the perfect race to get my balls back...A twilight pro crit at over 30mph.  I attacked off the line, which is pretty dumb but I just wanted to go.  The team worked well together, in every move. Alder Finished 5th, after a long breakaway. 

Road Race-  This is one of my favorite races all year.  Its a 60 mile course with a couple hard climbs, one of them is the finish.  I got into a couple moves with all the big names, but they came back because no one was willing to work.  Small groups rolled off and ended up forming the break.  I missed it, but teammate Isaac Enderline was in it, sweet.  More small groups got away, as the first big climb approached.  Sand mountain is a hard climb and is about a 15 minute climb.   Nate Brown attacked at the base, pulling a group of 5 or 6 of us off the front.  He pulled off and sat up, as he had been chasing all day due to an early flat.  I took over and narrowed the group down to only 2 of us, Brian Toone, and myself. We flew up the mountain, pulling out a considerable gap on the field.  After the decent, we kept driving it.  After about 10 miles we had a small group in sight.  Having a carrot to chase always makes it easier to suffer.  We slowly clawed our way back up to them.  Little did I know the group had 2 of my teammates in it...sweet!  AJ Meyer, Alder Martz, Tyler Karnes, Brian Toone, Pat Allison, and me.  We worked like a well oiled machine.  Approaching the final climb, Alder and Tyler pulled off after killing it on the front for me.  Coming into the final climb of Raccoon Mtn, I had no idea what I had left.  I did a seated attack at the bottom, pulling Brian away with me.  He still had a snap, and I didn't.  He put a gap between us with an attack, about 10 seconds.  It stayed that way all the way to the top.  I didn't have the legs to get back up to him.  I ended up 11th, 9th overall.  Isaac finished an impressive 7th, winning the cat 2 omnium.  

I felt good about this race, going into China...Ill post again from there...thanks for reading

M. Stone