LSAT, Nationals, Francais, the list goes on...

So now is the time this site becomes functional. Semi-functional anyway, as I'll probably only update with key race info and won't talk about sitting at home training in the rain. I just took the LSAT this morning and hopefully it will be the culmination of my studies... if I don't get in the score range I'd like I might take it again in December, but I put in a lot of quality study time and as long as its on par with my best practice tests I shouldn't have any problems. Quite a few people have asked how/why I decided with an apparent amount of spontineity to just up and apply to law school... and while the reasons are numerous and longer-brooded over than it appears, my best explanation is that the time seems right and I'm excited about it. There are of course many more ways I can justify the decision but this is more a blog devoted to extolling the virtues of things like tall socks and under what circumstances it is or isn't okay to wear leg warmers over your shorts. So if you want the meat on the rest of my life you'll have to buy me lunch.

Looking forward, we're about T minus 72hrs from the winter track season getting into full swing. I leave for LA on Tuesday for nationals, and will be racing Wednesday through Saturday. The order of events will be the Mass Start Test, Scratch race, Points race, and Madison, one event per day. The time standard was lowered by a HUGE six seconds this year, so it's going to be really tough to make the time. They actually just took the old Olympic time standard and made it the talent pool standard... I'm a lot faster than the last time I took a crack at it and I missed it by 17 hundredths of a second, so I'm a little ambivalent about my chances now. But I'll ride splits that will put me on pace and hang on for as long as possible. The faster you ride the faster it's over, after all.

As for the sixes, right now the name of the game is patience. My partner from last year, Keven Lacombe, has had a great season on the road that landed him a new contract and trips to the Pan-Am Games and World Championships. We'll try to get some pro invites later in the year, but right now he has enough of a good thing on the road that it sounds like he won't bother doing the UIV Cup events. USAC and some other North American teams are also trying to get invitations, which is a bit of a nightmare because so many teams just creates a bottleneck with organizers and partners. Everyone is holding his cards close right now since it's early in the year, and no one will commit until all the offers have come in. The result is that probably most of the tentative teams and invites will go unfilled and everyone will be pissed at everyone. Which is the status quo when it comes to bike racers organizing themselves. I love the sport, don't get me wrong, but it seems to attract a disproportionate number of assholes. So my theory is that sometime around December there will be quite a few unhappy young bike racers who start casting their nets a bit wider after getting the finger from someone else. So although there are some great events that I'll have to pass up in the meantime, including a pro-invite to the inagural 3-days of Geneva, I think it will be best in the long run to be patient and make a very directed run at some good events.

I'll shoot for daily updates from Nationals all next week, including some photos and videos if there is something worth photoing and videoing. Oh, to pull the title all together, I just started taking French classes too. A few of the law schools I'm looking at have dual degree programs with the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, which is a more sophisticated way of saying the big national law school in Paris. It adds an extra year but you get a French law degree along with a JD, and since I have EU citizenship and want to go into international law anyway, it seems like a great move. So I have between three and four years to become fluent in French. Tres bon. For those keeping tabs, that means my Deutsch is going to have to go on hold for a while... relegated for now to bench warming along with Hungarian and Italian.