The latest site counts show that this blog has received approximately five hits this month. One of those was the result of a google search for "Mike Creed" (I know it was you, Mike), so excluding my parents, that means two other people came here disappointed not to see an update. So here it goes. It's the 17th day of 2009 and the 17th day of official retirement from bike racing. Contrary to what cyclingnews might say, that's not changing anytime soon. But given that a few people seem justifiably confused, I thought I should address that post. Most important, to put to rest the fears of all those in the legal community, let it be known that I have no intention of joining your illustrious ranks. More to the point, I'm quite certain that Emory Law School would never have let me in.

As for bike racing, it's true that I'm planning to be involved with the Myogenesis team, but saying that I will "lead" the team is a vast overstatement. I had the honor of racing with some very knowledgeable and experienced teammates during my five years as a pro and some of that knowledge unavoidably found its way into my head. I plan to pass some of that along. I don't expect to do much racing next year, though. Not to say a few weekend races in Atlanta are out of the question. Cycling is an addiction that I don't think I'll ever fully kick.

So on to what's actually been going on. When I last posted I mentioned that I was searching for a lab to join at Georgia Tech (in the Biomedical Engineering program, which is what I'm actually studying. Quite far from law). Shortly thereafter I was offered the opportunity to work under Dr. Garrett Stanley. All indications so far are that it was a good choice and I'm having a great time so far as a member of the lab. Though there're still plenty of unknowns, my own research will be focused on understanding the manner in which the sensation of touch is processed in the brain. But before I can do anything of real substance, I still have a long way to go in grasping the way the brain works. The first semester of coursework was brutal and things won't be getting any easier for awhile. There's a lot to learn. But I'm really enjoying it all nonetheless.

Adrienne and I have also been adjusting a bit more to life here in Atlanta. We actually just signed a lease on an apartment in the Cabbagetown neighborhood and we'll be moving at the end of the month. It seems like a great neighborhood and we're both optimistic that the change will be very good for us. Adrienne has also been teaching 3rd grade at a school in Dekalb County and, despite some tough days, taking a lot of pleasure in her work. In general, things are going quite well. We've even developed a taste for grits and collard greens.

I'm not really sure what the future of this blog might be. For the time being I plan to keep it up, but I think there's a good reason that blogs of Ph.D. students aren't known for their devoted followers. I do plan to post some general thoughts on bike racing, and I'd certainly encourage anyone with any specific questions to pass them on. Thanks to those who still take the time to drop by here.

Our team's press guy, Sean Weide, hassled me this morning about not posting here in awhile. So here's an update. A lot has been happening. Adrienne's report was a good wrap-up of our initial time in Atlanta, but we're getting even more settled in at this point. Atlanta's a very different place than Portland. We're finding a lot of upsides, both people and places, and I think we'll definitely enjoy our time there, but the downsides are discouraging. The mass transit is extremely limited given the city's size, bike lanes are almost non-existent, and the sprawl is unbelievable. Even so, we're doing our best to replicate our Portland lifestyle in the center of this completely auto-dominated city, sticking mostly to walking and bike riding to find our way around. And I think that as we continue to find our niche here, many of the downsides will fade from view. It's not really our problem if a few million people want to sit in 10 lanes of bumper to bumper traffic.

School has also been exciting for me. I just had my first day of class at Emory on Friday, and the classes at Georgia Tech have been going for two weeks. I'm also in the process of trying to find a research adviser, which will really determine the track I follow over the course of the program. Though there's a lot yet to be determined, I'll most likely be involved in research studying the way in which the brain processes sensory data, or the manner in which the brain and spinal cord control posture and locomotion. Fascinating stuff either way, but I have a lot yet to learn in order to make my engineering background useful. My course at Emory is a basic neuroscience course that should partially catch me up on brain anatomy and function, and I'm taking another course at GT, taught by an engineer, that's focusing on the way in which the brain processes data. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm genuinely excited about both the coursework and the future research.

Since we got to Atlanta a month ago, I've been living a dual life: student by day, bike racer in the evenings and weekends. I've spent a lot of time training indoors on a borrowed set of Inside Ride rollers (thanks Yann!), and I've been venturing out for a few group rides as well, which have been very helpful in allowing me to learn the roads. I've also done a little bit of track racing over the last couple of weeks. Jeff Hopkins, formerly of Jittery Joe's and now on the Inferno team, has taken up a management role at the Dike Lane Velodrome, and he talked me into going out two weeks ago. Since I hadn't been on the track since 2001 - and then only once as a Cat 5 - I had to start out as a C. But they moved me up through the categories pretty quickly and allowed me to ride the Cat A points race at the end of the first evening. I went back out this past Wednesday and started the night as a B, then finished with the Category A points race again. It's been a great way to get some midweek intensity in, and a lot of fun too. I wish I'd taken up track racing a few years ago.

I also made a trip out to Portland since my last post for the Health Net Twilight Criterium. Being as it would be my last race in Portland as a professional, I was very motivated to do well, but it unfortunately didn't work out for me. With two laps to go I put everything I had left into one big attack, but just like the previous week in Elk Grove, I clipped a pedal and hit the ground. Thankfully I didn't take anyone else down with me, and beyond re-opening my wounds from the week before, the damage to my body wasn't too bad either. But it was incredibly disappointing to end my last hometown race like that. Even so, it was great to get to spend one final evening as part of the Portland cycling community. I'm really going to miss being a part of that. Jonathan Maus wrote a really nice piece on BikePortland about the night. Again, Jonathan, I really appreciate all that you said. And thanks to everyone else that was out there cheering me on. I heard a lot of people yelling my name.

So now I'm in Greenville, SC for the USPRO championships, which happens tomorrow afternoon. I made the drive up from Atlanta last night and Adrienne will be coming up on Sunday to watch. I'm optimistic that the training I've been able to accomplish in Atlanta is enough to let me put in a good ride, but I really won't know for sure how I'm feeling until the race is underway. Fred and Tyler both have real shots of winning this race, and it'd be great to help them accomplish that.  After finishing the race tomorrow, Adrienne and I will drive back to Atlanta and we'll both do the US 10k Classic early Monday morning. She'll do the 10k run, and I'll do the 100k bike race. After that, I may be done. There's a chance I'll do a crit or two, and I'd like to do some cyclocross in the fall, so I won't stop training. But I'm not doing Britain or Missouri, so I definitely don't have any more stage races to look forward to. It'll be sort of a slow slide into retirement, and I won't really consider myself fully out of the sport until the end of the year.

But this post has grown far too long. I think this is enough for now. More later.

We've finally begun to settle into Atlanta and it seems like the both of us are beginning to acknowledge that this is going to be our home for the next couple of years. It hasn't been easy to make that realization but by doing so, it's made us a little more willing to accept the downfalls and highlights of living in this city.

My initial read of Atlanta was a scary one. We had arranged to stay with some friends of Doug's in Decatur for a couple of days while we apartment hunted. Decatur is a city within Atlanta with a cute little downtown area. We were staying in the more suburban area, where houses were on big lots with large driveways and there were miles of rolling hills in-between main streets. I thought that this was Atlanta and we would soon find ourselves living in a similar situation. This did not excite me.

But our hosts were amazingly friendly and confirmed the stereotype of southern hospitality. Unfortunately, their dogs did not share in their generosity and one let me know how they felt about my arrival into their household by trying to eat the back of my leg. One could argue (that person being someone who's leg had not doubled as a chew toy) that they were just nervous because of the sudden disruption in their routine. Whatever their reason, I would run in the other direction whenever I saw them and let out loud whimpering noises whenever they barked at me. By the end of my stay, I think we had an understanding: they were the bosses of the house and if I was doing something that they didn't like, I would certainly stop immediately.

I guess that's life here. Our apartment is unpacked and the walls are still just as yellow as when we moved in. The last tenant had terrible tastes in paint. Doug and I are feeling the first true pains of returning to the world of renting. Do we spend our own time and money to repaint or do we develop an affinity for OSU orange colored kitchens and sunshine yellow living rooms?

Also: Scout arrived to Georgia on Saturday. Note to those out there: don't fly a 14-year old cat across the country unless you want to smell of urine for a week and have your sleep interrupted by the sounds of your panting asthmatic feline friend. Doug seems to think he deserves some recognition for flying her across the country. I've joked about it since, but I'm sure that the sensation of having cat urine ooze into the open wounds of the road rash created by Friday's tumble was not a pleasant one. Thank you Doug. I'm not sure that Scout is happy to be here but I know we're both happy to have her.

So it's and individual time trial on dry roads, I'm riding my road bike, and still I find a way to fall off. Worst of all, a photographer's there to capture it in embarrassing detail. That's how my weekend in Elk Grove began, and now it's being capped off by a canceled flight at O'Hare. Man. It wasn't all bad, though. Losing a bunch of time in the TT meant I was basically a non-factor in the race, but Fred still had a pretty good weekend. He got third in the final crit and fifth overall, which still means some decent prize money for us. Kelly Benefits absolutely cleaned up, though. Congratulations to them.

The crash captured above resulted from me forgetting that I'm not a time-trialist. I thought I might have been putting in a decent time, so I tried keeping my speed up by pedaling through the last corner. But I clipped my inside pedal on the pavement, adopted a horrible facial expression, then got a close-up look at the curb. Luckily I ended up with just some minor road rash. And a good picture. Please stop laughing.

So now I'm in O'Hare trying to get back to Atlanta. It's been a long day already, and it could get longer. There were some nasty thunderstorms this morning and there was hardly an on-time flight to be seen on the departures screen. The customer service line here at United is unbelievable. I had the good fortune of being on one of the first canceled flights, so I managed to beat most of the crowd and get booked on a flight late tonight with a couple earlier standby options. From the looks of things, a lot of people weren't so lucky.

Adrienne's been in Atlanta all weekend getting our new life setup. We found an apartment in Midtown, which seems like a pretty good place to be. But while I was off racing my bike and having fun (see above), she was stuck doing all the moving. Not fair. I'm looking forward to getting back and starting to figure out the city we'll be calling home for the next few years. The bike riding options look discouragingly limited, but hopefully I'm at least partially mistaken. I'll keep some updates coming.

Thanks for all of the emails and comments as a result of the last post. Adrienne and I made the drive from Portland to Atlanta in five days and arrived on Wednesday with no problems. But with four bikes on the roof, a heavily loaded trailer, and only a four cylinder Mitsubishi to move it all along, it was certainly slow going. This country's huge. It's easy to forget that when traveling around by airplane.

But as I said before, there's still some bike racing season left, so after only about 36 hours in Atlanta I was on the move again. Now I'm in suburban Chicago for a three day race in Elk Grove. We have a short time trial this evening, a road race tomorrow, then a criterium on Sunday. I haven't had much chance to test myself after coming back from China, but hopefully some rest did me good. This isn't the kind of race I'm likely to win, but some of my teammates certainly can. Hopefully I can be of some help.

I'm back in Portland after a long couple of flights. But I lucked out and got a first-class upgrade from SFO to PDX, which made the last leg of the trip much better.

Now that I'm back, it seems like a good time to make a general announcement of some big plans that have been in the works for a little while now. This is going to be my last season as a professional road cyclist. I've made the decision to return to school to pursue my Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, and I'll be enrolling in a joint program at Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Adrienne and I will be setting out on the move to Atlanta in just a few days, with the plan being for an August 1^st arrival. She'll be searching for an elementary education position while I finish out the racing season from there.

Though this decision was not arrived at easily, I'm confident it's the right time to move on in life. At 28, there's no doubt I could have kept riding for a number of years yet, but I was always determined to move on when I felt that I'd stopped markedly improving. Plus, it seems best to leave while I'm still having fun, as opposed to staying to the point where it just becomes a job. I was able to make a living as a cyclist for four years (plus a couple years of unpaid apprenticeship), during which time I saw both the US and the world, got to compete in some incredible races, and had the honor of being teammates with some of the best athletes in the world. It's been a great experience.

Just as difficult as the decision to leave bike racing, and perhaps more so, is the choice to leave Portland. Hopefully it's just temporary. We're having a small get together tomorrow night, July 24^th, at the Northwest Portland Lucky Lab (1945 NW Quimby) at 7ish. Anyone's invited who'd like to stop by and say goodbye. It'd be great to see as many people as possible. But everyone cannot buy us a beer. That'd be a bad idea. I'll also be back on August 8th for the Portland Twilight Criterium (thanks Brad!), so that'll be one more opportunity to catch up with everyone in the local bike community.

There're still a couple months of bike racing season left, so I'll save the full farewell until then. If anyone has any tips on training in Atlanta, drop me an email.

The final circuit race here in China finished up a couple hours ago and Tyler managed to hold onto his lead. As we hoped, there were enough teams interested in the sprint that we didn't have to work all that hard to keep things under control. Alex Rasmussen of Denmark won his fourth stage, and all five of us finished without incident. That was a long ten days.

Now we get to celebrate here in Xining before flying to Beijing tomorrow. I'll have about 24 hours there before flying home late Tuesday. I'm hoping to make it to the Great Wall, but I'm not sure if it'll work out. I'll get the better of the pictures posted here after I get back. Thanks for the comments and emails since this thing started.

We're back in Xining tonight and Tyler managed to hold on to his lead on today's final mountain day. That means we have only a 110km flat circuit race remaining tomorrow before this thing's over. Tyler's lead over second place is only ten seconds and there are time bonuses available midway through the race, as well as at the finish, so the lead certainly isn't sealed up. We're hoping that the sprinters will be fighting amongst themselves and we won't have to worry too much about the Polish climber, Rutkiewicz, gaining time. But nothing's being taken for granted.

Otherwise, there's not much to report. A couple of the teams got to their hotels last night and found that they had neither hot water nor electricity, so they ended up driving back here to Xining to spend the night. The race started two hours late to give them time to drive back to Menyuan in the morning. Sleeping in was a welcome change, but after 170 kilometers of racing, plus the hour and a half transfer back to Xining, there wasn't much day left. So that's all for tonight. Win or lose, I'll get something posted tomorrow.