The team photo shoot is now in the bag.  We pounded out all of the photos yesterday at an old Subaru warehouse in Denver.  It was nice to get it out of the way nice and early instead of trying to squeeze it in during a race weekend.

They used a bunch of crazy lighting techniques in a dark corner of the warehouse for the individual shots and once we got that taken care of they turned to flooding the warehouse floor for the team shot.  It was kind of weird standing in a giant puddle but they had quite the setup and seemed to really know what they were doing.  I think it turned out pretty well.  They even had a makeup artist.  That was a first for me.

Today I got up nice and early and headed to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs with Jeremy and Heather to get our UCI medical monitoring tests done.  After 5 tries and a lot of digging they finally managed to pierce a vein and get the blood draw done.  After that it was EKG time and as usual the machine said I was suffering from an 'acute myocardial infarction' (aka heart attack), not always the most reassuring news but I guess it's pretty common for endurance athletes to have a weirdly mutated heart.  I passed the physical portion of the exam, nailed the mid-stream urinary stick, and I was done.  I made it  the Denver airport way early and got changed over to an earlier flight.  I still have a couple hours to kill but luckily I managed to sneak my way into the Red Carpet Club so I've been drinking way too many americanos and eating a bunch of cheese and crackers.

I'll leave you with a shot of my sweet lunch the other day at Ted's Montana Grill.  I didn't quite expect a burger to be sitting on top of my 'Ted's signature salad' but the American flag toothpick made it feel right. 

I'm just hanging out at the Tucson airport waiting to get on my flight to Denver for team photos.  I am only going to be in Denver for 2 nights but somehow it still took me a couple hours to pack my stuff and I still feel like I forgot something important.  In a couple months it will feel weird not to be packing a suitcase every weekend but after being in one place for so long I'm a little rusty.  Tomorrow is going to be a solid day of photos in a warehouse in Denver.  Sounds pretty interesting.  Then on Wednesday morning I am going to join teammates Jeremy and Heather and cruise down to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to get our UCI medical monitoring tests out of the way.

It's the trip back to Colorado Springs that reminded me of a video that has been sitting on my computer for way too long.  Hanging out at the OTC Alan and I were bored one weekend about 5 years ago, so we decided to go shred some trails and record it with our digital cameras.  This was back before technology was great and I think we could only record 15 second clips, regardless, we made a pretty badass video.

XC Badasses from Sam Schultz on Vimeo.

The big question is whether or not Obye is going to hop back on the racing bandwagon this season.  He has been hitting the books hard at Law School in Boulder, but I think he graduates after this semester and I have heard rumors that he might try racing again.  I know that he has been spotted numerous times riding in his trademark short and powerful style around the Boulder mountains, most likely on secret training rides.  I sure hope he makes a comeback...

The other day I loaded the pockets with food and decided to make another assault on the Mount Lemmon MTB trails.  It is the time of year to begin polishing the mountain bike skills and around here Lemmon is my favorite place to go because the trails aren't lined with deadly cacti.  Those things kill me, especially when my skills aren't quite primed.  I met up with my new teammate, Russell Finsterwald for the ride.  He has been down here in Tucson training for the last couple weeks.  I'm not sure exactly how he works it considering he is still in high school, but however he does it I definitely approve.  We ran into fellow mountain biker Todd Wells out heading the opposite direction.  It was perfect timing because he was just meeting Meg for a refueling stop so we scored some water and got to chat with both of them.  What a lucky guy.  Russell and I continued to climb up Lemmon and on the way down he kept me on point while ripping down the loose and rocky trails.  Plus check out his guns.  I think he's been working out.  Look for big things from him this year.

In other news, I'm heading to team camp/photos on Monday.  We are doing the shoot in Denver at an old Subaru warehouse.  I think it could be a pretty cool location,  plus the weather should be warmer in a warehouse than it was during the photo shoot last year.  I'm excited to see the rest of the team and hear what they have been up to.  Plus it's always sweet to drool over all of the new gear.  I'll keep you posted.  I'm off to get another Moka pot fired up and then get out on the bike...

Living in the land of cacti and snowbirds it's easy to forget the time of year.  Yesterday I dusted off the MTB and decided to start climbing up Mt. Lemmon.  The trails up there are sweet but I ran into some unfamiliar white stuff.  At least I got first tracks.   

The snow and pine trees didn't last long and shortly after I turned around I was back to a more familiar setting with a 5,000 vertical foot descent down a perfect ribbon of trail and temperatures in the 70's to greet me at the bottom.

Not a bad day in the office and a good reminder that perfect riding weather in February is pretty nice.

With my lack of updates lately it may seem like I have been living in a cave.  Actually I have.  A layman may call it a closet.  Actually it really is a closet, but it's a really big closet, close to the size of a normal room and it makes for the perfect cave-like sleeping spot.  It's nothing that will really impress the ladies or anything, unless said lady really likes to sleep like me.  For over a month now I have been hanging out down in Tucson, AZ at The Cycling House, helping my good friend and TCH owner Owen Gue with his all inclusive cycling bed and breakfast business.  It has worked out perfectly.  Through the gig I get to live in a multi-million dollar home (albeit in a closet) with my brother and some of my really good friends.  The clients that come to the house are escaping their normal 9 to 5 routine as well as cold climates so they give off plenty of positive energy and are always super psyched on hanging out in the desert riding bikes.  Andy and I generally handle cooking the dinners (with me basically just doing what Andy tells me) and I handle other odd jobs around the house, leaving most of the day to get my training in.  It really has been an ideal situation and this is my 3rd season of taking advantage of the gig.  

Since my last update I made the transition from squeezing in all of the ski days that I possibly could in the months of Nov. and Dec. to getting back to work and hitting the training fairly hard.  Transferring from the skis to the bike has been a bit tough and I have had more than one ride where I've caught myself daydreaming about floating through endless powder.  The daydream ends pretty quickly when I  open my eyes and remind myself that riding bikes in a place that has perfect weather 99% of the time is pretty sweet.  My coach (Kristen Dieffenbach) has been putting me to work though.  Instead of the normal 3 day blocks she has had me dabbling with some pretty tough 5 day blocks and that has put me through the wringer.  It's been good to test the limits to see what can handle and this time of year is a good time to play with it.  I had to call Uncle after yesterday's workout and I  took a much enjoyed advance on my rest day today.  Tomorrow it's back to another block of training, I think I'm ready for it. 

So now that I'm back out of my closet, errr cave, I'll try to update more frequently.  Don't believe it until you see it, but it is a goal.

Sitting here in the Denver airport waiting to head to my last race of the season has made me think back to all of the places and experiences bike racing has led me to this year.  It’s been a travel heavy season–a synopsis of my wanderings look like this- Chile, CA, South Africa, CA, Germany, Belgium, Spain, AL, CO, Quebec, VT, NY, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, and finally MI this weekend.   In an effort to avoid getting too nostalgic I will let a few of the pictures from my travels do the talking.

My Favorite race/party of the year is over and as usual Shaun Radley of montanacyclocross.com didn't disappoint.   For the fourth year in a row he put together the ultimate nighttime cyclocross race, Rolling Thunder.  The race just gets better and better each year.  I travel the world racing for 8 months of the year and the coolest race I do is right in my backyard.  It has everything that you would ever hope to find at a bike race: awesome course, rowdy fans, flowing beer, live music, wild after party, and an axe as a trophy (not to mention a really nice cross frame that was donated by Missoula Bike Works).  The entire Missoula cycling community gets behind the event and Shaun always runs it without a single flaw.  The racing action was exciting, with owner operator of The Cycling House, Owen Gue putting in the fastest start I have ever witnessed.  He looked to be a shoe-in for the win, until an unfortunate crash on the hand he broke with a hammer the day before took him out of the race.  

At least the bucket of Jager he won as 'fan favorite' award helped to ease the pain.  After Owen was out of the race, I was stuck battling it out with strong men Sam Krieg and Kevin Bradford-Parish, with John Curry within pouncing distance the entire race.  I was eeking out every second of advantage I could find on my Fisher Superfly 29er MTB rigged up with cross tires.  In the end it took everything I had to roll across the line in front.

Old man Schultz even raced with his patented Subaru-Gary Fisher / Kenda split-kit on his 5" travel trail bike.

I am already excited about next years Rolling Thunder and everyone should think about attending.  It's definitely the type of event that is worth witnessing.

So the off-season has finally arrived.  I have been too busy to be motivated to write anything but right now I feel like my body has finally worn out so I better take advantage and post some photos.  It seems like way more than two weeks ago that I had my pain face on while racing in the last World Cup race of the season.  Who knew the alps had such steep, grassy hills?  That race was hard.  

After the race I was excited to begin the off-season with the Schladminger beer that was cooling in the glacial fed river that ran by our hotel.

Later that night I found myself getting my 'grind on' at the hot and sweaty World Cup finals party.

 Now that I am back in Montana I have been all about adventures.  Most of them involve climbing peaks, or maybe I should say 'attempting' to climb peaks.  I don't have the greatest track record so far.  I have made it to the top of 3 out of 5 of the mountains I set off on.  I have to say that the peaks that I didn't make were actually the best trips.  It's good to get a little ways out of your comfort zone.  

I have been traveling quite a bit lately to some cool places but I still haven't been too amped up on posting entries.  i've decided that if I can't think of anything to write now, I never will so I'm giving it a go.  Over the last couple weeks I have gone from Canberra, Australia home to Missoula, MT for 1 day, and then on to Switzerland and Austria for the last two World Cups.  It's been a bit hectic time-zone and airplane sittin' wise but it has been totally worth it.  I can't believe that my desire to spend time in perfect European mountain towns in the middle of the Alps was in question.  Needless to say, as soon as I arrived and saw this view from the hot tub at our apartment I knew I made the right decision.

I managed to put together a satisfactory ride at the race last weekend, with a 16th place finish on the greazzy course so I was pretty psyched about that.  The day after the race the Rocky Mountain Maxxis crew (who have been nice enough to let me travel with them during this trip) and I motivated to go on one of the coolest post race rides ever.  It started with some intense singletrack cut into the side of a huge cliff face.

The trail had some petty crazy exposure, but I was confident that the swiss-built picket fence was sturdy.  After cutting through the side of the cliff we rode through town.

Even though it was a recovery ride, mountain passes were much too scenic to avoid and we couldn't stop grinding our way up the gravel road climb.  This looks like good livin' for a cow.  No wonder swiss cheese is so delcious.

We finally made it to a spot that looked like it would loop us back to town.  It was touch and go for a while because we were getting real hungry and we weren't sure if it would loop, but it all worked out and we even found a bonus singletrack descent.

Welcome to the new schultzbrothersracing website.  Andy and I have each been thinking about starting up a website for quite some time now, but we have been hesitant to pull the trigger.  We were presented with an excellent opportunity to get a joint site going under the guidance of Colt McElwaine of CyclingDirt.com and it was too good to pass up.  On the site you'll find automatic updates with cyclingdirt videos which should help to keep it interesting.  Sharing a website with Andy makes it somehow feel more reasonable than having my own site, plus it means more updates and more people interested in following us, so it's a win win win.  We are also trying to make it so that our blogs are joined so you can get both of our perspectives at the same spot.  This isn't the case yet, but I think it will be soon.  I'm not sure how often I will actually post entries on here, but if I can stay motivated I would like to do it fairly often.  I guess I'll just see how it goes.  Enough of the intro, I better get a real entry posted...