Holy Javelina!

Alisha says: A couple of nights ago I was sitting on my couch watching tv when I was startled by some rustling and growling outside on the patio. I sneaked over to see what it was and realized that a herd (eight to be exact) of javelina had wandered onto my patio and somehow gotten into the canister of bird food. At first I tried not to startle them but after a minute realized that they weren't planning on going anywhere until they had finished their meal. I turned on the porch light and took some pictures. They wandered around the yard for more than thirty minutes! I was sad that Dave wasn't around to see them.

SIOP In Chicago

Dave says: It's been awhile since I've posted so here's a quick update on everything. School has been intense but enjoyable. While Alisha has been traveling, I have been grinding away at my classes and research.

Most recently I traveled with some of the other PhD students to Chicago for SIOP. There was a lot of interesting research presented at the conference and I met some great people. The weather was awful despite some pictures from the one day that we saw the sun. Don't be fooled. The day before it was windy with sideways rain and snow. Big cities are always fun for a visit but it's good to be back in Arizona with some wide open spaces and sunshine.

Sea Otter

Alisha says: Last week I went and did four days of racing in Monterey, CA at Sea Otter with Peanut Butter & Co./Twenty12 teammates Kristin, Coryn, and Olivia. It was a cool event and we stayed with another great host family, The Eppersons. We had some great teamwork and Kristin dominated the event by winning three of the four events. Coryn had a 3rd in the crit and I got 4th in the road race. Sea Otter also has a big expo that is going on so we spent a bit of time hanging out in the Felt booth and also visited some of our other awesome sponsors, Cliff, SRAM, Peanut Butter & Co.

Redlands

Alisha says: Redlands is quite the epic race. The 75 mile Beaumont road race saw temps in the 90's. The temperature made this race hard as I felt like heat was radiating from my face. The race got interesting when my Peanut Butter teammates started launching attacks. Tayler went off solo for a little bit and then Alison threw down a sweet attack. There was a chance that she was going to stay off the front until HTC's Evelyn Steven's went crazy up the last climb shattering the field and bringing her back.

Going into the crit I was nervous to say the least. This was a technical 9 corner course that I knew was going to be fast and hard. I had a couple of goals that I wanted to accomplish during the race. One was to work on positioning. I even did a mini attack and was on the front for just a little bit. It was really fun though. Weird, I never though I would say that about a crit.

Luckily the temps were a little cooler for the final Sunset stage. This was a 6 or 7 mile loop that we did 9 times. It had this climb that by about the 4th time you start thinking how am I ever going to get up this 5 more times. Then it also had a bombing fast downhill section with some brake grabber turns. The race went crazy from the start with a small group getting away the first time up the hill. Kristin and Kmac made the first group and the rest of the team was in the second group. It came back together after a couple of laps. It really was a race of attrition. It was a hard race but now that I am not in the pain cave it was also fun. I would like to borrow Tiff P. saying and call it Type 2 Fun. Redlands was a good experience. I learned a lot.

While at this race we also got to meet some of our awesome sponsors. Felt was there as well as Peanut Butter and Co. We went to dinner with PB owner Lee Zalben. He is a really friendly cool guy. Thanks Lee for sponsoring our women's cycling team!!!!

Grey's Anatomy

The set of Grey's Anatomy

Olivia, Tayler and I meeting Patrick Dempsey

There's some new doctors in the emergency room

Alisha says: In between San Dimas and Redlands we got the coolest opportunity to visit the set of Grey's Anatomy in L.A. Vincent, Olivia, Tayler and I toured the set, which was cool and weird to see in real life. It is cool how they put all the shots together so that everything looks complete and like a full huge hospital. We got to watch them film a scene. The highlight of the trip was definitely getting to meet Patrick Dempsey, aka McDreamy. He was so cool and nice, in between takes he kept on coming over to visit with us and then when we left he even walked us to our car. Really cool guy! He is a fan of cycling and even rides himself. Thanks for giving us such an awesome tour Peyton!

San Dimas

Check out our team mechanic Vincent. Looking Cool!

Alisha says: So this was the start of another 11 days on the road. I love it and feel blessed to be able to do all of the amazing things that I get to right now! The three day San Dimas stage race was not one of my better performances. I finished 10th in the time trial which was okay considering the field was over 100 but considering it was an uphill time trial I was hoping to have a better result. Peanut Butter and Co/Twenty12 did place four riders in the top 10 for the time trial. This was Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong's first race with the team and first since having her baby. She placed third in the time trial. It is such a cool experience to get to race with someone who has so much knowledge and experience. The road race was super sketchy the first couple of laps. It got better as the race went on but I never felt that good. The crit was a disaster for me, my legs felt awful from the very start. That's really about all I have to say about it. All athletes experience the ups and downs of competing. It is important to not dwell on the downs and to savor the ups.

Coach Alisha

Alisha says: For the past three months I have been coaching a small cross country team for a charter school called Basis here in Tucson. The school was recently ranked among the top ten high school programs in the nation by Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report for academics. The schools main focus is obviously academics but they also provide many athletic opportunities for the students. I had a small group of really fun kids that ranged from 5-9th grade with a wide spread of talent. I put on four meets at Reid Park where we invited runners from other charter schools to attend. The meets were small but my runners always looked forward to racing the other kids. It was fun and a challenge to map out and mark the courses for the meets. The courses were marked with a combination of flags and paint and could not be permanent, because of this I had one meet where some kids picked up a section of the flags during one of the races. Luckily I noticed and was able to direct the runners in the right direction. We had some fast races that came down to a close sprint for the finish. The season is now over and most of the kids are now playing soccer.