Tristan Schouten's blog

Shredded the first trails of the year today and my hands are sore enough to prove it. Rode the new trails in the kettles that they finished last year and they are much better now that they have had time to settle in over the winter. The Zaskar is way sweet and now that I have the SID bumped up to 100mm of travel it feels even better.

I finished "base" riding today which means I should be fit, not necessarily fast though. I was trying to explain to Jamie that riding 5 hours a day brings you the fitness, but not really speed and that is the second part of training. This spring has probably been the most successful base training I have finished in a long time. I managed to stay healthy throughout and I can only think of a few workouts that didn't go as planned, and other the wedding/honeymoon, I stayed extremely consistent.

The miles are adding up fast these days. The last two weeks have been solid 20+ hour weeks with some long days in the saddle being put in. I can't say the weather is still that much fun to be riding in, today was the first day the sun was out in a while, but I still battled the 20mph crosswind at 10mph for a good couple hours. Riding into the headwind is the equivalent of climbing up a pass so instead of suffering into the wind I envision mountains and a steep road in front of me, it doesn't really work but you gotta think about something during some of those mind numbing rides.

The wedding happend last weekend and we had an awesome time with all our friends and family. Jamie put a lot of time and effort into everything and it showed because the whole day went perfectly and both of us were amazed at how fast it went.

Wow, I just got back from an afternoon meet and greet at Pacific Cycle headquarters in Madison, WI and it was great!

I've been hearing these two words pretty often over the last couple of days. I even had a "Freedom Ride" on Saturday to celebrate the last weekend of riding single. It's exciting. The ride was good too, got in almost a century but after 5 1/2 hours in the saddle I was still 4 miles short... close enough. It was so windy the averages were down a little but after my second consecutive week over 20 hours in the saddle, what's an extra 4 miles gonna do?

Planet Bike Announces Jonathan Page Sponsorship, UCI Race

Madison Wisconsin, March 21, 2008 For immediate release

I don't know what to talk about first. Today I put slick tires on my bonk bike and for the first time in like 5 months rode with about 90psi, all I have to say is I sure felt a lot faster than running half flat cross tires for the last 5 months. It was nice, a little rough, but I gained like 3 mph so when I want to go really fast I'll ditch the triple thick 700x28s and go with something lighter.

Getting ready to move out, I can count the weeks on one hand till the big day. New bikes are close to final and if things turn out like they sound, I'll be one happy bike racer on some killer new rides. This ones gotta go to make room for more, check HERE for details.