As I was nearly finished with a good endurance ride on the road bike (my cyclocross bike with slicks) quite the thinkable happened. As I was making a left turn and was on my final fully committed sweeping left hand turn, a cross traffic driver decided to roll their stop sign and cut me off. Reflex had me grab brakes as I tried to tighten my turn to go behind their car, but my rear wheel broke free from the pavement and the whole bike shot out from under me.

I was cleared by the doc to resume my regular activities near the end of February. Up to that point my workouts consisted of the stationary trainer, typically six days a week, sometimes five. I've had very little time actually on a bike since being given the okay from by the doc, and I've realized now that since being on the bike I've only done four or five "climbing" workouts, but a little more than a month is not a lot of training time especially when some of that includes snow days, and a week stuck on a business trip.

Niner Air 9 RDO

As with the previous year, Aaron from Niner Bikes came down from Fort Collins to answer questions. He's a good guy, I've ridden with him a couple of times and every time I ride up in the Fort I'm hoping to run into the 9er guys.

At about 8 weeks I had more x-rays that showed new bone calcification, but definitely showed the injury to be very fragile still. I had been riding the trainer since about two weeks after my injury and by 8 weeks I was doing sustained efforts on the trainer. Overall fitness is okay, endurance has definitely dropped though.

SOLD!

It's been a few days shy of four weeks since I broke my clavicle aka collarbone. Generally I am doing much better now, but I can still tell I am broken. There is a lot of soreness in my shoulder and a continuous numb pain. It seems to be better every day but it has not subsided enough to let me forget about the injury.

2011 was filled with fun, excitement, and worthwhile challenges, but it was also a learning curve with what I wanted to get from my cycling passion and how to go about that. Over the season I found myself stressed with trying to achieve a life balance of training for endurance races, racing and often the travel required to get to races, home life, and also my much needed day job. I often trained tired, and then raced tired. I spent a lot of resources getting to races. Sometimes by the time race day arrived, I really would not feel like racing, but being there and spending the money I'd line up and do my best. Usually once I got going in a race I was happy to be there and had fun, but few times did I feel like I had the quality rest that is needed before a race.

So for 2012 I have joined Rocky Mountain Racing. RMR is based close to home in Golden and is sponsored by Golden Bike Shop, my preferred local bike shop. GBS is the "Drug dealer for