Goodbye Montana

My bags are packed, bikes are packed, I'm ready to go. I leave Montana for the last time on Sunday morning to start my trip to Brevard, NC. I am ready to get out of here and start school and training with my new team for sure. The collegiate road season will start in the early spring of 2010 for road riding. So until then I will be racing on my own or hopefully with my new teamate and friend Marschall Hartley. My next race on the calendar is the South Carolina State Championships on August 29th. So I have got 17 more days until the race to prepare. I want to go into my first race down there with a bang so I will be ready in my mind but its hard to know what to expect in that race due to me not knowing anyone and how strong they are. I will have to try and get a low down from my coach on people to watch and who is on form and who is not. But until then its just hard hard training with 3 days of easy stuff when i am traveling down there.

Today I am headed up to Bozeman, MT for my last time to ride with my team from this summer GAS/Intrinsik. They have been like a family to me all summer, allowing me to stay at all their houses for free eat their food. Amazing people and I just want to say publicly, thank you very miuch for everything you have done for me. Last week they even threw me a going away party where we had dinner and drinks. That day was interesting to say the least. So it was Tuesday afternoon and I was laying down to take a nap here in Billings, MT when my crackberry started going off saying I had an email. It was to the whole team saying "come to Nate Weston's going away party tonight" IN BOZEMAN! Shit!! So for those of you who dont know the Montana map, Bozeman is about 2hrs from Billings, and it is already 3 o'clock and there is also a race that night starting at 6 and right after is the party. So I hauled balls up to Bozeman just in time to get to the start of the road race which I was nervous about racing anyway. It was Tuesday and was suppose to be my day off the bike lol. I had just come off a semi successfull weekend taking 2nd in the state tt and being in a break away group in the Zootown Throwdown crit on Sunday for 60min out of the total 70min. So neadless to say my legs were a big tired and it showed when we started the first thing that remotely resembled a hill and I got dropped right away. At that point I though o shit, its over now, how emabarrassing is this. But I caught back up and then out of pure courage (promise you I had no legs left) I attacked about a mile from the bottom of a pretty steep climb and immediately got a good gap. Then my teamate Sebastian crossed the gap and we rode together until there was 5miles left or so and he dropped off the back (he has a newborn and hasn't been riding, if he had he would have easily stayed with me) and I crossed the line for the solo win. I was pretty stoked to have won after getting dropped. That night we had my party and I got one last picture on the podium with my podium girls, and my first win of the season.

So tonight I head back to Bozeman, MT and will return to Billings for one final day on Saturday and then my journey begins.