2008 was GREAT!!

This past weekend was some of the nicest weather that we've had in a while. It was beautiful sunny skies and mid 70's. Friday afternoon I got in an ez ride with a quick run afterwards. About 1:45 total. Just felt great to be outside. Saturday morning I was out semi-early for the Lodge group ride. It was a good ride - somewhat fast especially considering that I'm a little out of riding shape. Ended up with 2:30 total and some sore legs. Saturday night we headed over to Loly and Eric's for some fried turkey. Good stuff. It ended up being an early night and I was up early on Sunday for the Sea Turtle group run. Just did the short loop (7mile) and i'm even feeling that in the legs now. Later on Sunday, me and Steph did a nice spin down through Atlantic Beach. Totally mellow except for dodging the drunks on First street. Definitely a great weekend. As I was leaving the gym this morning, I started thinking about this whole year and everything that took place. It really was an awesome year. I can remember back to last December when Steph and I were flying back from our mini-vacation in New York, and I was filling out my race schedule to send to Shawn Burke and it was then that I decided that I wanted to focus on Xterra racing. It seemed like it would be just way more fun than the standard mountain bike racing that I had been so used to.

So with that focus in mind, I set about training as I had never done before - totally structured and with coaching. I had a bunch of really good races and some not-so-good races. And, somehow, the not-so-good races were the really important ones!! Funny how that worked out. But more importantly - I had a lot of fun. Steph always rags on me and says that I'm too serious - and maybe she's right, but I really enjoyed being serious about racing and training for once. It was WAY more fun to show up fit and prepared rather than just "showin up and blowin up" - which is how I usually raced. A couple of top 5 overalls and even some age-group wins were the fruits of my labor - stoked, especially considering that I used to just try to get the fastest bike split and then just survive / finish the run. So all in all, racing wise - 2008 was a success.

Now, as for personal life stuff - I married the girl of my dreams on September 6th. That day trumped all races for sure. It was truly a spectacular day - it all came together after many obstacles and a TON of planning (98.5% of that planning was Steph). We even managed to dodge a hurricane (Hanna) that was supposed to hit Jacksonville Beach on the same day as the wedding. I am definitely a lucky man to have such an beautiful and inspiring wife. She is without a doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me. I also became an Uncle-in-Law - Steph's sister Katie gave birth to Peyton in October. (Cute kid, cries a little much, but we'll work on that). And one of my best buds - Tony, had his second baby - Colin around the same time. And on the job front, I recently got a little promotion. So some more responsibility and some new challenges for 2009.

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming year - I know its gonna be a lot of hard work and won't always be fun - but as a manager of mine once told me, "Nothing bad ever comes out of working hard". Definitely a good thing to keep in mind when things are tough and you lose sight of the big picture. I'm working on finalizing my 2009 racing schedule - which won't be all that extensive - a couple of local races with maybe one or two out-of-towners. I'm gonna be working to try to start in the MBA program at UNF in either the summer or the fall, so besides working and training, I'll also be studying for that.

-sbc