JB's Adventure Blog: August 2006

Wow, what a day.

The US team had a leisurely Monday morning of packing waiting for the cargo truck that was to take our bikes and checked luggage to Auckland, NZ. We then loaded at 1 p.m. Auckland-time for the drive to Rotarua airport to get on our puddle jumper 40-min flight. We paid our 25-dollar exit fee, or rather USAC did, and then gathered our luggage from the trucks to check it. Most riders got hosed if they were over the 32-kilo weight limit, or like I was; had the bike as an extra piece. Whilst in line, I got a slick Great Britain jersey from Liam.

The flight from Aukland to San Fransisco was really long, but I slept for a good five hours. The remaining seven and a half were spent watching movies and trying to keep my legs from swelling like over-cooked sausages. We arrived at SFO and it took a while to get thru customs as usual. I had an open yogurt from the airplane breakfast in my hand, so the guy checked that I was bringing dairy from another county on my form. I was worried they were going to unpack my bike bag looking for snakes, oranges and tropical plants, but they let me on my way.

Next, Sue invited me as a guest to the United Red Carpet Club where we saw none other than Geoff Kabush. It is good to get a chance to talk to him without the normal pre-race game-on mentality. As it turns out, he is getting married on Oct. 7, the day before Erin's and my first year wedding anniversary. Cool!

On the flight across the USA, I started to get kinda weary. I watched a whole movie, ate lunch, read the stupid in-flight magazine, emptied my desktop and listed to all my music until I was sick of it.

We finally disembarked our aircraft at about 1:15 a.m. eastern time. We got on the moon rover toward the main terminal to meet Suzie's man Tim and his other main squeeze, his dog Ruby.

On the two-hour drive from Dulles to Harrisonburg, we cut thru the grey fog left over from a hot and muggy day. We were finally just 11 miles away from Harrisonburg when Sue, who was driving, started shaking Tim's shoulder to wake him up. Something was wrong with the van. The sudden loss of power was explained by Tim "the gas gauge is broken" OOOPPPS.

Well, seeing as it was a lot like something I have done in the past, I wasn't sweatin it. Tim removed his old GT Avalanche from the back and got ready to ride to the gas station but his tire was flat! No way! So we rummaged thru our bike bags and then got a tube. As Tim pumped I ran the model of what would happen next thru my foggy brain. It occurred to me the sign behind us said the gas station was miles away. I best recollection was maybe three miles. The Trucks on I-81 at 4 a.m. in the morning are pretty scary. I decided to sweet talk Erin into bailing us out. As I sat in the grass on the shoulder, I downloaded a game called Afterburner II to my cell phone and made the best of the ordeal. Erin was our hero and arrived with the precious 2-gallon gas tank normally reserved for the lawn mower. Man she's great! We pulled up the driveway around 4:30 a.m. in the morning!

I was so stoked to be home and I took the best shower ever and then passed out!

The first person to figure out how many vehicles and how many hours my travel home involved gets my autographed number plate from World Championships. Only one guess each, so think carefully!

See ya.

Jeremiah.

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 4:54 PM 16 comments

My body ached all over after this race, but man what a blast to be racing in the realm of the fastest racers on Earth. After a less than ideal start, I went for it on the first and second climb to push into the top 10. I was flying, I was also riding way to fast to sustain. The thing is the course is important to have position because it was cracking into the pieces from the very steep 1000 foot of climbing per lap and the sloppy off camber decent.

After 5 times up the mountain batting with the likes of Sir Bart Brentjins, Oli Beckingsale and Roul Paulison; I started to fade but was re invigorated by getting past by Fill-EPO Mierhage and Thomas Frischnect. I killed my self to beat Merhager but slid out on the downhill and lost a little time on the two warriors battling for the supremecy of team Clean VS. Team Dope. I was just behind them and to say they were fighting it out was true. Brian Lopes was yelling at Frichi "don't let that F@$^&n doper beat you!" It was awesome to see Frichi beat him and even though I was just behind, I did my best and almost blacked out from going SOOO hard! I crossed the line and was so pumped. What a great race and I was so happy Frishi pulled it off that I hugged him.

The result of eighth for me was good; in fact, I heard it was the best World Championships by a USA rider in 11 years. Awesome. The spectators where just killer and some even were singing the Team America theme song! I was really fun.

Now I must hibernate. I am totally wasted from the race.

Thank you to all who have helped support me; it has been a great season.

Jeremiah

See ya at the SM 100!

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 1:06 PM 6 comments

My body ached all over after this race, but man what a blast to be racing in the realm of the fastest racers on Earth. After a less than ideal start, I went for it on the first and second climb to push into the top 10. I was flying, I was also riding way to fast to sustain. The thing is the course is important to have position because it was cracking into the pieces from the very steep 1000 foot of climbing per lap and the sloppy off camber decent.

After 5 times up the mountain batting with the likes of Sir Bart Brentjins, Oli Beckingsale and Roul Paulison; I started to fade but was re invigorated by getting past by Fill-EPO Mierhage and Thomas Frischnect. I killed my self to beat Merhager but slid out on the downhill and lost a little time on the two warriors battling for the supremecy of team Clean VS. Team Dope. I was just behind them and to say they were fighting it out was true. Brian Lopes was yelling at Frichi "don't let that F@$^&n doper beat you!" It was awesome to see Frichi beat him and even though I was just behind, I did my best and almost blacked out from going SOOO hard! I crossed the line and was so pumped. What a great race and I was so happy Frishi pulled it off that I hugged him.

The result of eighth for me was good; in fact, I heard it was the best World Championships by a USA rider in 11 years. Awesome. The spectators where just killer and some even were singing the Team America theme song! I was really fun.

Now I must hibernate. I am totally wasted from the race.

Thank you to all who have helped support me; it has been a great season.

Jeremiah

See ya at the SM 100!

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 4:31 AM 7 comments

So down here in the land of the Kiwi birds and vocanos.

It is pretty crazy down here the town is on the rim of a 25 mile around lake that has a small mountian in the middle. The amazing thing is that this is a giant volcano crater! I remembered the shape from science class, they sometimes have a little lava dome in the middle like the island I saw. Everywhere in town there are these steaming vents that smell like eggs and boiling hot water! Even cracks between the brick walkway have steam spurting out. The ground is alive here!

I did this big ride yesterday and it was awesome i felt good. I rode in the rain over at the local forest trails and did 3 combo intervals. They were simulating the races double pitch climb. the 1st step was 12 mins at at then dropped down a trail to hit a steep pitch 1:30 MAP climb.

It was cold and rainy but after the intevals rode some sick trails they where like Clemson trails but thru the jungle .with redwood and giant ferns. Wow. I would fly here just to ride the trails serious it is really unique.

I topped off this ride with about 45 mins of tempo on the road i was pooped and slept like 12 hrs last night.

Zing zing.

Time to go.

Jeremiah

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 6:52 PM 2 comments

I would rather be real surfing but as they say don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I have never seen such a horse but if I do I will not be shy and give it a thorough dental exam to see what all the fuss is about.

After our work in Aspen was over Sue and I made our way over Independence pass toward Colorado Springs. Sue wanted to see her coach of many years Dean Golich. I knew he was a well known coach but I didn't know he was the director during the heyday of the GT program when he had Roland, Alison Dunlop and Lopes. Dean was a nice host and made room for me in Mari Holdens altitude tent. I didn't use it seeing as we were already at 7000ft. Kinda like having a pool next to the ocean eh? Any hoo. It was neat because there were all these huge trophies from foreign lands and T-mobil jerseys with the rainbow sleeves piled in the corner.

I got a tour of the OTC on Tuesdays by resident athlete and Tour of Shenandoah's all star's Sam Shultz. We checked out the weight room the pools the visitor center the human performance lab and even the head quarters for USA Cycling. I met Sean Petty and chatted with Matt Cramer a little. There were photos of all the US world Champions on the wall fro the last 20 years. Good inspiration.

Sam and I went for a 2+ hr easy mountian bike ride up a mountain and down a green canyon single track that was killer.
Later he took me to dinner at the OTC cafeteria with John Devine and some of the tri athletes. The whole thing reminded me of being at JMU and hanging with Erin's friends at the lunch table. The neat part was it was all sports a whole college campus just for developing athletes. Pretty cool.

Well now we are in Boulder prepping for our flight to New Zealand. Yesterday my former teammate Stephano sent me on a good ride up to Sugaloaf, Switzerland Trail and over to Sunshine Canyon. A good tough ride and sweet views of the mountains I would like to check the place out some more later.

Have a great day.

Jeremiah.

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 7:38 AM 1 comments

Wow.

Today was a huge day for me and a grand finale for the Trek/Volkswagen Team's 2006 NORBA campaign. I won the cross country and Trek/VW is the number one team in the nation!

It has been years since my fear of racing the Norba Nationals at altitude was overwhelming. Today, some 10 years later I slayed the dragon. Not only did I win, but I took the 2-up battle against a faster-than-ever JHK at 9,000 Ft! YES.

The World Championships is coming up in two weeks in New Zealand and I have a feeling that it is going to be a good one for team USA.

Thanks for all of the support from those who've believed I could do it!
Jeremiah

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 8:20 PM 10 comments

Hey peeps.

Good news.

With 5 riders in the top 14 today, Trek/VW is taking over the USA Norba Team competion!

I was 3rd Ross Schnel was 6th Nick Martin was 9th Nick Ranno was 12th and Jeff Shalk was 14th! Sue had a tough race today but yester with Ross took the top honors in the Super D!

The cross country today was really cross country. The course was 1 big lap and took us into the frigen stratosphere, 11,000 ft was the top of the course and the very bottom was still a lung splitting 9400!!

I wasn't handling the elevation so well and suffered to make the front group. This front group was sprinting to follow a blitzkrieg attack by JHK at the foot of the first trail to the top of the mountain. I fought back on by riding like an idiot on the first downhill. There were brick size rocks flying every where but if I didn't push it I woulda been blown away in the ensuing fire road section. So I clawed my way back on and even took a few pulls so we could keep working together some. Jungle Jay Henry who is an altitude freak like JHK was riding really well. We hit the trail again and Wells up the pace. I got dropped again buy Wells Henry and Geoff Kabush. I fought like the Irish even though I was in indescribable agony! I couldn't breath!!

We started the big down hill off the mountain and I made quick work of the 12 second gap and passed Jay to make contact.

On the Trails home I got a lucky break when Wells had a stick in his wheel and had to stop. I took off thru the trail like a rabbit. The Climb up from the boyscout camp was too much and Wells caught me I was cooked. I baaarlleeeey hung on and after a brief decent fired a counter attack for the last techi single track . It worked. Though I put some pressure on the two I lost the gap on the second to last climb as we got back on the fire road. Travis was screaming at me and I was to the Maximum but as I said I was Huuurting! Geoff caught me and I sat up and Wells was closing fast. I pushed the pace so the acceleration that was sure to come didn't blow me out the water but Zoom. There goes Geoff and I jumped but was soggy.

I battled in the sprint with Wells to barely hold my lead to the line. Too close for comfort!

Man I felt ragged after that hacking and weasing.

The Marathon is tomorrow at 7 am OUCH. I doubt I am going for the triple. That was a nail in the coffin. Last year's
2nd, 1st and 7th will have to stand for the record for now.

Race clean!

Ciao. JB

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 6:15 PM 5 comments

Travel Day for the Books

Kiwi POWER! 8th at WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!

Kiwi POWER! 8th at WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!

New Zealand volcano.

Colorado couch surfing.

I WON! Slaying the Dragon

Team Trek Volkwagen Number 1 in America!

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