Playing Catch Up

Hey dudes and dudemars,

There's lots to cover, so I'll be short and sweet, covering all subjects. Ding.

After our scenic tour of DC we made the trek to Philadelphia for the Philadelphia International. This was the biggest, baddest experience I've ever had on a bike in a one-day race with a reported 500,000+ spectators taking in the 156 mile race. I was sadly caught out of position on the second to last lap but still finished the race in 66th, simply for the sake of saying that I've completed Philly. Brent and Glen represented Priority Health like all-stars, by making the final split. It was butter.

I got a kick out of some dude on the Manyunk Wall who shouted, "Let's go Ted King!!!!" and then proceded to shove a camera in my face. The pace wasn't terribly balistic at that point, so I got a kick out this, but I didn't know who it was. A few days later I got an email with the picture attached from my Middlebury riding buddy Nate Simms. Here's the very professional picture he passed along.

With the Triple Crown series out of the way, just 2 days later we were scheduled to start the Tour de Beauce in Quebec, Canada. This is a tough as nails 6 day, 7 stage race featuring just about the most internationally diverse field I've ever seen. There were teams from Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Mexico, Columbia, Japan, and probably some more. I had one of my better stage races in Beauce, so I was psyched... at least for the first 5 stages. In that time, I was the 2nd highest American for a while and then just ousted to the 3rd highest by the always powerful Brent Bookwalter - that was no biggie, though 'cause he's my teammate and he ended up smoking the best young rider competition. I ended up feeling a bit under the weather and developed a pretty gnarly saddle sore in the last 2 stages, so I put all my effort into getting Brent to the line safely with the jersey. The team slowly dwindled down to just 3 riders, but we rode really well throughout the week, which was awesome.

The drive to Quebec was just plain nuts, though! We finished Philly around 3pm, then packed the team car, team van, team trailer, and King family Honda Odyssey for the drive to the north country. We drove and drove and drove and drove that night and only made it to northern Connecticut. Sheesh. That took us to about midnight and then early the next morning (Monday) we drove to mid-Vermont to drop Mayo off for her trip home, and the team continued the venture to Quebec, finally getting in the early evening.

Mayo was a huge asset to the team the entire 2 week period. It was amazing having her at the races and she did a phenomenal job. It was pretty awesome that she did everything of which she was asked, from filling bottles, to running errands, to airport pickups, to setting up pre-race and pulling down post-race. Smooch, baby.

After Beauce, we a hard earned vacation at Squirrel Island. Robbie and I drove the butter Pontiac Vibe home from Beauce, picked up Mayo, and then she and I drove to Maine on Monday afternoon. I had three full days off the bike to clear the mind and pretty much just press my Reset button after 4 of the hardest weeks of racing I've ever had.

In other news, Tom Zirbel had an awesome start to his Tour de Nez by winning the opening time trial. It was a long time coming, but PH finally got it's first NRC win. We're pretty much planning on cleaning up now for the rest of the season. Why not, eh?

(I'll finish by saying that I had the intention of adding lots of good pictures, but blogger is acting stupidly and won't let me add pictures for no apparent reason. Sorry lads. Hopefully I'll add them later.)