Before I begin I want to tell a side story because it emphasizes a point that I'm going to hit on again and again. I'm real dumb. For over a year and a half a friend and I had talked about doing a marathon that's up north each fall. I was planning on training for it before I broke my neck got stuck in a neck brace for three months. As it turned out I got my neck brace off a week and a half before the marathon. My buddy had spent months training for it and I always said if he goes I'll go, so I went. I've never run a marathon before, I was obviously unfit, and I had just quit smoking. I raced with the patch on. I did okay until mile 21 where my knee locked up, as any self respecting knee should, and I had to stiff leg it to the finish. So all you kids out there that read my posts, keep in mind that I'm not very smart and probably won't live long.

Well, with a marathon under my belt I was obviously ready to race cross. But I was also too broke to afford a cross bike after paying all my medical bills. So I put cross tires on my commuter bike and raced single speed. I was so out of shape that it took me the entire week to recover between races. Stairs were still painful on Thursday from racing the previous weekend. It was December before I could ride in between races.

Sometime that fall, with my skinny legs, belly and coughing fits, I decided to "go pro" as they say. I would take my cross racing as far as it will go and make it my profession.

There are startup costs associated with learning a new trade. For some it's college. For me its coaching, bikes, clean living, training, patience and pain. So I went after the most experienced coach I could find. Hence the "Clark Natwick's Experiment" nickname. And on January 1st I started from scratch and began an authentic training plan. It was slow going at first. In January my body couldn't handle more than three days of training a week. After a month I could handle four, then five and now after five months I'm up to six days on the bike a week.

Most of it's been pretty easy, especially after I quit my job. Honestly the toughest thing has been the clean living part. How do you go straightedge while living with a bartender and a bike messenger whose favorite pastime is to duel each other in the kitchen with a handle of whiskey? Well that one I *tried* to solve by going to meditation camp. I spent ten days in the woods meditating in silence for eleven hours a day sitting absolutely still with my eyes closed, calmly observing the ripping pain in my knees and back. Turns out bike racing isn't all that hard.

Somewhere along the line Clark and I started talking about how I don't even own a cross bike so we contacted Santa Cruz and they hooked me up which is surprising. Let's put this in perspective, they looked at this thirty something out of shape biker, with almost no results to speak of, who was doing cigarette reviews last year and openly drinks too much and thought "I'll take that bet." I can't wait to hit a casino with these guys at Cross Vegas.

Now they're wondering how their horse is coming along. Hmm, I've been getting spanked on the road lately but I don't think they want to hear that. Well, something good happened in testing the other day. I get tested by Clark every so often to find numbers for things like "T1", "T2" and "OBLA" so he can taylor my plan. Anyway, he brought me in and had me suffer on a trainer while he pricked my ear and upped the wattage every five minutes. The next day I get a call saying he's got to change my plan all around because my T1 is higher than he expected and on top of that I need to come in to get tested again because he didn't run the test long enough and missed the upper acronyms. So I guess that's good.