Week 3 Murrieta!! 05/25/2010
So another week of training as been done. It consisted of Gym, Sprints, Street riding, trails, Perris BMX track and Chula Vista ABA track. Not many exciting things are happening besides the fact I’m in the USA training. Everyday consists of a training session in the Am followed by face book etc then down to the park for a Basketball session. After lunch there’s usually a street ride before heading to track, trails, and sprints all depending on what day it is. On Friday Alex and I headed up to Supercross with Sam Cools to hang out at the shop for the day and see what goes on behind closed doors at the factory. We also rode the local track (Apple Valley) This is an awesome track to play on. Got some more goodies so now my bike is real SEXC!! At Last week’s gate session at Perris BMX track there was Sam Willoughby, Khalen Young, Maris Strombergs, Steven Cisar that’s to name some, it’s awesome rocking up to the track and having those types of guys to test yourself with. We are racing next weekend in Roseville which is like a 7 hour drive from here so it’s going to be a fun road trip! We race both days up there; both days are a USA UCI round. When we come back from the race we head straight to Chula Vista to meet up with Ken, Sarah and Trent and get ready for our weeklong camp on the SX track, going to be awesome!! Haven’t had a day were there has been no sunshine! Must suck to be in NZ now. There are talks of Disney Land on Thursday that will be fun. Man I never thought coming to another English speaking country would be so hard to order a coffee, apparently at Starbucks they don’t understand MIKE, haha I get, Marc? Marco? Or “could you please spell it” and I still get on my cup “Myke” haha check the photo. Hopeless I tell ya. All for now, back to the relaxing in the sun!! Gym in 2 hours. Shred           Murrieta 05/16/2010
We’ve been in California for a week now and it’s been amazing!! Flew in from Copenhagen on Monday night, drove a couple hours from LAX to Murrieta which is home for the next 2 months. Got to the house late Monday night sprinted in the door and shot gunned the only Mattress, Yus!! Willers took the master room with huge bathroom and walk in wardrobe while Jimmy Kurt and I got our own little rooms. The house is 2 storied with a big kitchen, lounge and garage so is perfect for us. BikeNZ has also rented us a Chevrolet Suburban truck/wagon. We have all settled in well her and all don’t want to go home. Got stuck into training the day after we arrived, sorted out our gym memberships etc. Still struggling with the ribs and shoulder but am almost back to full strength now, heavy weights at the gym are a struggle.Last week we hit two tracks for skill sessions. Wednesday night we went to Lake Perris, same track we went to with the whole team on our Europe trip. We rode on their and did a few gates etc. On Friday we went on a road trip up to Apple Valley to go to the Supercross factory and meet Bill Ryan the owner face to face and have a tour of the factory, had a tour picked up a few more goodies, including 2011 prototype hubs that are so sick! And a one off paint splatter stem, looks awesome with the matt black Fox yeah bars! We then headed to the track which was just 2min up the road, the track was just surrounded with rocks the place was awesome reminded me so much of the movie “cars” the track is also off Route 66 where the movie is based off. We are racing in Roseville on the 4th of June it’s an ABA race, so we will be road tripping 7 hours for that one. Then when we get home from that we go straight to Chula Vista for a week long training camp on the Olympic training track, we will be using their gym and restaurant so that’s going to be awesome, Sarah and Ken are flying over for that. I’ve been slack on the updates will try keep updated more frequently now that we are settled in now. Here is Some random photos of the past week or 2          Video 05/05/2010
Not much happening here in Copenhagen, all the country teams have rolled in now Australia,USA,Dutch,France are all staying at the same place. Practice tommorow afternoon for the riders that can ride, im out aswell as Pickard and franks. 5 left to represent!! I have got a video of my crash in Italy last week and a couple of Jimmy. 1 of his crash into the fence in Italy and 1 of his first attempt at the Chula Vista first straight. good times! Copenhagen 05/04/2010
ITALY! Hmm what to say about that place... Very different, old looking, nice woman, crap roads, tiny portions of food, terrible BMX track, that about sums it up. Arrived for racing on Saturday afternoon all pumped up and ready to go. Practice went well and was feeling rather good. The whole team looked good through practice. My first Moto came around, I got crammed out of the gate and unclipped, did a mega 1 footer over the second jump and had to played catch up. Sherpen of the Dutch team was in front of me and had a massive crash after double wheel casing the first jump, he landed head first into the take off of the step up, broke his jaw, thumb and split his spleen and some other internals. I finished up 4th in that race. Motto 2, I had an alright gate and was out in the bunch down the first straight, pulled a move on the 2nd turn and pulled into 3rd, jumped the first pro jump and almost rammed into the back of the guy in 2nd, all my concentration turned to him and forgot about the step up coming up, when I hit it I missed judged it and clipped the top of the landing and it through me OTB (over the bars) and landed into the take off of the 3rd double. Was out for the count, don’t remember getting up or getting back to my tent. Apparently I was walking around asking where we are sitting and kept asking how I crashed, Amusing!! The ambulance team at the race were awesome! If anyone had crashed they were there sprinting with at least 5 paramedics carrying all the equipment. Shows up all the NZ fatty’s that need to be yelled at a million times before they even put down there donuts. Sarah and Marc rode awesome Sarah winning both days and Marc taking a 2nd on Saturday, he didn’t race Sunday like 20 odd over elites. The Dutch team pulled out of Sundays racing, Thomas Allier went nuts at the track organisers trying to get the event called off because it was too dangerous. A lot of drama went down about the track. So we are in Copenhagen now, arrived here last night. We are staying in an awesome hotel, and are having buffet Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner Nice! Rode down to track today to check it out. Looks awesome, am so hoping my ribs clear up by Thursday so I can get on the track and maybe race. Went for a ride with Jimmy and Pickard before to pick up a birthday present for Trent and OMG its sooo cold it’s not funny. I haven’t experienced this weather before, colder than Wellington ever gets and this is during the day. All for now.. Shred!!      Italy 04/30/2010
Well we arrived in Rome at 6:30pm after an amusing 14hours of flying which constituted Some wacked moments involving Pickard and I with sleeping pills in our system J works wonders those pills. When we got to Rome we went to sort out the rental cars. We had booked three cars, 2 mini vans and a station wagon. In NZ you would expect the mini vans to be like an 8 seater van but not over here, mini vans= cubes, Fiat Cubes! Tiny little things that could fit 2 bikes max. So we had a few problems with the cars which only took 2hours to sort out!! Finally we got a station wagon a Cube and a 9 seater bus as they call it and headed out of Rome to a town called Perugia. Got there at midnight so we got all the rooms sorted and went straight to sleep. In the morning most of us went on a recovery ride to explore this town, maaan Fulton Hogan would be worth millions here, these roads are terrible!! Pot holes everywhere. Also found out that Italians like to use their horns a lot, Shot Jimmy! Later on we went to check out the track an my god! To explain the track simply go to your local skate park put in a start ramp and remove the coping from the spines and that’s Perugia BMX track for ya. We had a track session at 3pm with some of the local riders; Nic Fox managed to go OTB on the first jump on his very first lap! Hahaha yeah Gisborne! And Mr Pickard the man himself decided to forget there was a miniature roller after the 2nd jump and took a huge digger OTB into the concrete berm! Ken has just taken him to the hospital as I write this. He tried to tuff it out for a day but fail! This morning we went to the track to meet up with some people that were taking us to a press realise in Perugia main city. We took the Mini Metro from the track to the city and had a look around, Reminds me so much of all those horror movies “Hostel” etc. We got to the building were the Conference was taking place and sat down to listen to five guys talk Italian to each other, Completely pointless for us but at least we will be on Italian TV tonight. You can have a lot of fun in this country when not many people know any English J and they don’t know what you are saying to them. We have track practice tonight starting at 6pm for the juniors, the racing is night racing too which is good as I’m still getting no sleep trying to get used to this time zone. All for now, internet is expensive here, but will update on how racing went and results from everyone. Heres a Bunch of random photos from the past couple days. Shred!!      LAX 04/27/2010
Im just sitting in the LAX gold lounge waiting to catch our flight to Zurich then connect on to Rome. Had an early morning gym session this morning then headed off to Murieta to pick up a bike frame from Redmans house for Willers. He has an awesome 8 lane gate on top of a container in his back yard with a pritty fun looking track connected on. Thats where we will be doing some gate sessions when we come back to stay after europe. Blurr 04/26/2010
Well missed yesterdays update. It was just a recovery day so we went to Pacific beach in Down town San Diego. We all took our bikes and road on the water front for about 2 hours Saw plenty of good sites, Human and Nature. Spooned a bum, bunny hoped a bum, heaps of good things went on! Sammy Cools hung with us on Saturday and she brought down my new prototype “Blurr” frame. Matt black soo sick!! Also some other goodies. Today was our final session on Chula Vista supercross track before we head to Rome tomorrow.There was a huge turn out of USA riders to name a few, Donny Robinson, Sam Willoughby, Nic Long, Barry Nobles, David Herman, Tyler Brown, Denzel Stein, Connor Feilds. Had some super packed Practice laps, and was good to get in the middle of those guys just to see how I could handle it. Best practice week for Copenhagen we could had asked for really. After track we had lunch and chilled for the arvo then went back to the training centre for some downhill/uphill sprints. They have the perfect areas around the centre for sprints, smooth road no traffic, rattle snakes and rabbits!! Have just packed up my bike getting ready for a huge day tomorrow another 14 hours of flying Ahead of us, and no doubt this time we will not have 4 seats to sleep on, bring on sleeping pills i think! That’s all for this America trip, bring on Europe. Euro rounds 3&4 this weekend!! Shred!!        I love Chula vista 04/25/2010
This morning started at 8am with breakfast at the hotel for a normal continental breakfast finally, gave me proper energy rather than a t-bone steak. Packed the vans and headed to the OTC for another session on the supercross track. Got there warmed up, everyone is comfortable on the track now so everyone hit the first straight first time down the ramp, which is good to see. Did an hours worth of gates with the USA team, Nic Long, David herman and Barry Nobles. Sarah joined in with the Womens team. The track had dried up by today so we could hit up the 2nd and 3rd straights, which was so much fun, to bad we only had 3hours on the track, could have been there all day. Finished up at track and headed to the good old salad bar for lunch again. 4pm came around and off to the gym we went for a big leg session!! good times. finished up at gym went home to shower etc then off to a mexican restaurant for dinner were i tried turtle :) tastes like chicken, rattle snake and eel does too.. Tommorow brings a rest day and a recovery ride at a local beach if we can't be bothered going to Venice.. Heres some random photos, didnt get any today. Shred     OTC Supercross track 04/23/2010
Today started off with the same old breakfast as the passed days, Then headed to the gym where everyone had a upper body session to do. From gym we went to the salad bar for lunch, so amazing!! Then a hand full of us went to a shopping mall and through down some dollars. Got some Adidas shoes for $20 and 3 hats for $30, everything here is so cheap... Went back to hotel packed up the car and headed to the OTC (Olympic training centre) for the show down with the Supercross track. Everyone was super pumped to ride, we all warmed up on the girls amateur straight first off while watching Sam Willoughby, Denzel Stein and Tyler Brown battling down the first straight. Pickard went to the top first and through down like 2 pedals and made the first straight by heaps. Then the rest of the team got up there and starred down the bottom and started to stress out!! Jimmy’s first attempt down a Supercross ramp was hilarious! He pinned it down the ramp and just launched the first jump all sideways hahaha he ended up on the girls second straight!! GOLD. The rest of us got down the straight ok to start with then we all started to free up and started enjoying ourselves. The track is a different world, so amazing and fast. We are on the track again tomorrow and Monday weather permitting. Sunday is going to be a rest day with a beach ride at Venice beach!! Should be good. Heres photos of the track, the facility is amazing! Shred!!      Mall Cop 04/22/2010
This morning started at 8am, woke up from the wakeup call packed all my stuff to get ready for the Supercross track then got told it’s a no go because of the weather, fail!! So today was called a rest day and i went straight back to sleep. Had a sleeping pill last night and wasn’t used to them so it destroyed me, I had Asian eyes the whole time (sorry mum) I got up at lunch time and headed out to get some food. Half the team went with John for Mexican and the other half came with us to a steak house. Something interesting happened at lunch today, we were sitting down after we had ordered and Ken went to me “Mike you should hit on the waitress!!” this waitress wasn’t the best looking item in the pantry so I was like no way man, we had a little argument he was saying I had no game etc and left it at that, well I thought we did anyway until she comes back and Ken asks her if she would like to show me around San Diego a bit in front of 7 of us, I put my head down in embarrassment obviously while she turned into a tomato, Ken just oh don’t worry he’s just really shy that’s why he never asked you. She replied “I’m really shy too hehe” Gosh at this stage I was hating life, she left and came back with the bill and said if I wanted her to call to leave my number on the bill. So Ken left his number and the hotels number on the bill and Jimmy took it and gave it to her. Very interesting lunch that’s for sure, and she still hasn’t called haha fingers crossed she doesn't J After this wonderful lunch we headed back to the hotel to pick up the rest of the guys and head to a shopping centre in San Diego city. Stuff is soo cheap over here, Everyone brought something I think, i got a pretty purple t-shirt for $12. If you have ever seen “Paul Blart Mall Cop” the movie, Pickard and I got a photo with a mall Cop who looked very similar to the guy on the movie, check out the photo.. Then headed back to drop John the strength trainer to his parents in laws house in Newport, very Ghetto town, smallest roads ever with shops that look 1000 years old, pretty cool. Got back to hotel and went to “Outback steak house” with the whole team. Had a huge 20oz steak and salad, couldn’t finish it so Trent the tank had to. That basically sums up Thursday. We are hoping to get on Chula Vista SX tomorrow morning or afternoon weather permitting So fingers crossed for tomorrow. Some random photos again... Shred!!     |
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