San Dimas Stage 2 and 3

As we started the road stage for San Dimas, and I was not sure what to expect, as we had ridden the course, but riding it with 8 guys and 150 is a completely different animal. As the race started, the first 4 laps were full out. Along with breakneck speed, the climbs had guard shacks and road medians as fun little obstacles.

Everylap the field became smaller and smaller and coming in to three laps to go, I completely blew my engine up the climb. This only left us with one rider in the field. I knew from the pace of the field that pretty much everyone not in the group was going to get time cut, so I decided against riding in the autobus and went straight to the team van. This was the worst showing I have had....

Definitely took a lot from the experience, and now will use it to make Redlands a success.

Sitting and watching the crit from the side of the road was really crappy.

A Very Humbling Stage One

Well today was definitely an experience to say the least. The best part of my TT was getting announced as the number one rider from Florida. That was pretty much it. I really have a ton of work to do on climbing as today showed me that a lot of these riders are on another level. By no means was I setting the world on fire today.

I didn't finish last from the team or get last, but I did finish in the barrel. This is not acceptable, but we all have our off days. This leaves a lot open for tomorrow, and being far down on the GC means that I am going to have green lights to put myself in the break aways.

Team Ranks:

90th: Travis Burandt
121st: Josh Liberales
123rd: Emiliano Jordan
128th: Ronnie Strange
131st: Christian Velasquez
138th: Adam Carr
141: Garrett White
146th: Jesus Zapata

So a big day of working hard tomorrow to make up for today's beating.


Hopefully I can get some awesome pics of me suffering up on here tomorrow!

Thanks for reading

Team Ride/ Course Preview

Fueling up for the ride, water at the local Valero. Our national Champion Christian Velazquez and New Englander, Adam Carr



To our surprise, while doing the road course, we ran into Obama and the Colavita Women's Team... VERY NICE




Rolling it up the climb on the Road Race course


So we got a nice two hour ride in and were able to pretty much do nothing the rest of the day. We had an awesome Sushi lunch while waiting for registration and eventually got to hit the GNC and grocery store....

Tomorrow is going to be epic, the tt course is very difficult and will be very interesting since I have not done one in 4 years. But the legs are feeling great and I hope to be going strong! Until next time...

Travel Blog 2.0

Welcome back, to the second edition of my travels and racing abroad. This time around I am off for three weeks of destruction starting with San Dimas Stage Race, Redlands Bicycle Classic and ending with Ft. Davis Hammerfest. From the look of things, all of these events will be world class, with fields over 150 riders.

The trip started with an entire day of flying, in which true to form, my carry on bag was picked off of my stack-o-luggage, as I was so scatter-brained, I didn't even realize this until I was through security. Good thing some baggage handler pulled it aside and I had a nice little courtesy call about 20 minutes later.

Moving on to a huge layover in Houston, I enjoyed watching a few movies and wasting some time online. I also enjoyed a $10 airport meal, so I could stay half way nutritional and awake.

After a short flight to El Paso, I was glad to be picked up by the team director and get some sleep, as we had to hit the road to Cali at 6:30am. With four of us in the team truck with trailer in tow it was an all day event.

We stopped to pick up Emiliano Jordan in Tuscon, along with a stop at a sponsor shop for some small items. After taking about 2 hours to do what seemed to be an easy stop we continued our voyage, with another planned stop in Phoenix at UPS to pick up our six boxes of team clothing!

At the UPS hub, things went a little more smooth, and the clothing turned out awesome, hopefully we'll be putting up some awesome pics soon. We also had to get some real food, as granola bars and beef jerky only go so far.

We continued the trip towards Pomona, CA; with some Top Gear episodes, some Paris-Nice stages and some naps. We also got to review the TT start list for San Dimas, and I am the first rider off from our team, riding in the 6th slot. Johnny Clarke and Jeff Louder will be blazing up behind me....

Finally we arrived last night at 10:30pm, I got up to the room in the host house we were staying at and passed out completely!

Host housing is awesome, as we had an awesome breakfast spread; with coffee, juice and oatmeal with fresh fruit. Now we are setting to head off for some course preveiws, team meetings, a nice 2-3 hrs ride and then hopefully some rocking lunch.

More to come later and tomorrow....

Getting Some Team Website Press

So another nice surprise this morning.....

http://tenspeeddrive.com/garrett-white-1-in-florida-race-rankings/

Hopefully I keep this going all year. Thanks for all the support

The Becoming... Continued

... conclusion of previous post.

Unfortunately as the season started, so did my new job, which required almost 70 hours of work a week. Doing business-to-business construction sales, I started the “career” that encompassed all my time. I went from riding six days a week to maybe riding on weekends. It took about a year to realize that this is not what I really wanted to do, as I started to gain weight again and jumped back over 185 pounds. I barely had time to race and when I did, I fought for dear life just to hang on.

So I devised a plan to come back into racing. I was going to train the rest of the season and keep a low profile, downgrade to category three to and gain some confidence in racing again. During this time, I was still working over 60 hours a week, getting home at 9:00 pm and riding my trainer until midnight. I was ready to give everything to go back to my previous level.

Thankfully for me, the company I worked for made some bad market moves and being laid off definitely helped me realize that the corporate structure was not for me. After a few months of unemployment, I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time when I exchanged some emails with Clive De Sousa from Glory Cycles.

Clive brought me on as sort of an all-in-one employee to start out, and gave me opportunities to grow with the business. This career move had a lot of facets for me as it immersed me in the sport, allowed me the time I needed to ride, and also gave me a community outreach.


Over the year and a half I was with Glory, my position grew as did the store’s success. During that time I was able to achieve some solid results in the category 3 ranks and have enough upgrade points to return to the Pro 1-2 level. My plan was slowly coming to fruition.

After finishing the three remaining FPS races as a category 2 rider, I was able to crack top 20 in all the remaining races, but it wasn’t where I wanted to be. I knew I could be faster.

During preparation for 2008, I made a full-time commitment to a coach rather than workout suggestions. Over the years I’d became friends with Robby Ketchell of ColoradoPremierTraining.com, who helped me with coaching here and there, and also gave me some great training ideas. Together we came up with a good plan and I purchased a power meter to make the most out of my training. I put 100% confidence in my coach and followed every workout to a T. Unfortunately that meant a lot of rides alone and a lot of long days in the saddle, but as the season dawned upon us I was more confident than I had ever been. Part of the confidence I gained was in some beginners luck at cyclocross, as I was able to take 3rd place in the overall Pro 1, 2 Florida State Cup.



The season officially started with the 2008 Tour of Bahamas, where I was in a familiar place, racing with big names that I read about. Was nice to see some familiar faces, as one of my home town friends was the lead mechanic for Slipstream and one of my collegiate racing foes was now riding for Rite Aid.

Although things did not start well for me—my hotel reservation got lost and I got hit by a bus one day before the race started— the race was a great experience. I beat Dave Zabriskie in the second stage taking 15th and then got blown off the road in the final stages destroying a set of Zipp wheels. The good results took everything else off the map, and gave me fuel for the upcoming Florida races.

As the year started, I was learning something during every race, and soaking it in like a sponge, and as this happened, consistent results followed. The season was looking up when I secured two guest rider spots; one with Eric Murphy’s Myogensis squad for the USA Crits Speed Week Series, and the other with the Colavita Pro Development Team for a later date. As Speed Week approached, I was completely in shock of the speed and intensity of the races. The only thing that could describe it, is absolute chaos.

My week of racing was pretty much over on night one, as I was involved in a crash that took out over half the field. Thanks to SRAM neutral support, I was able to ride a spare bike for as long as my body would let me, which was only 20 minutes. The next night was just as bad, as it seemed I could not put any power to the pedals. So I took the third night off and finally by the fourth night I was able to finish. It was a small victory and enough to keep me positive after what seemed to be a bad week. To add some insult to injury, I came down with the flu the last two days and started with a fever to ensure our team points. This week was a huge eye opener. I had so much work to do and had to learn to deal with bad luck. Thankfully I was able to tackle down some good results in Florida to slowly boost my confidence back up.

Moving into June, I received an email from Colavita, giving me little notice that they were scheduling me for the New England Race Week. I was beyond happy. It seems so common in the cycling world to hear things and have promises and offers that never materialize, but now this was happening, and everything was taken care of for me. I finally got the break I was looking for. To document things, I started up my blog, Making The Leap, as I knew there were some parties in the Orlando cycling community, who wanted to see how the races went. Thankfully this time around I was able to race to my fullest, taking 7th in one of the big twilight crits. Everyone on the team was awesome and I was looking forward to hopefully doing more races with the team in the future. A few weeks later I received an email confirming that I had earned a spot on the team for 2009. This gave me motivation to end the season strong, taking 6th in the Florida Points Series and winning the last race of the calendar year.

Moving to this year, the Ten Speed Drive/ BH Bicycles Team, will be racing a full US calendar. We are sponsored for our travel and lodging, but food and racing outside of team events are up to the riders. Needless to say these costs add up over the year, as does the amount of time you are away from work and ability to earn an income.



Unfortunately this is the risk and sacrifice you have to take to earn a pro contract. I want to personally thank everyone in the Orlando and Florida community for their support. I hear every one of you cheering at the races and I remember talking to you all during rides.

I would like to ask for your support in contributing to my cause and pursuit of this dream. Donations can be sent via U.S. mail to the address below, or via PayPal.com payable to mightywty@hotmail.com. 1% of your donation will go fund research for Bell's Palsy.

Garrett White
4205 Shadow Creek Circle
Oviedo, FL 32765

Part 3: The Becoming

It’s the second lap and I am absolutely pegged. On the rivet. In the red. I am wondering what I got myself into. Looking at my heart rate monitor only made it worse, as I am pinned at 175 bpm. How I am going to go this fast for 45 minutes? Do all bike races go this fast?

All these thoughts and doubts were racing through my head, as I was just trying to finish. After this short track mountain bike race, I was completely hooked into racing. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. It put any sport or any workout I have ever done into ultimate shame.

After realizing that I had no idea what the hell I was doing, I sought help in our Directeur Sportif, who also ran Colorado Premier Training. After a few meetings, I decided that hiring on a professional coach was the quickest way to improve.

Through some excellent guidance, I began training with a purpose and saw exponential gains. After working hard all winter I went head first into my first road season with CSU not knowing to expect. I came into the season prepared, and during my first year I had great success with various podiums and some top 10s in the Men’s “A” division. I was selected as an alternate rider for Collegiate Nationals, but was unable to attend due to a punctured lung. I was able to take some rest, and during the Colorado road season, I was able to go from a Category 5 to a Category 3 rider in that same period.

Moving into my final year of college, I was setting and achieving goals early on in the season and was learning a lot about myself and how I fit into races. I had the great support of the Rio Grande Cycling Team, to make sure that my grades didn’t dip down because of my cycling commitment, and also good team building in the races where everyone had their chance to ride for the win. Being my last year at CSU, my only goal was to race Nationals.

I was so focused on this, my training started in December and every race was in preparation for Nationals. My fellow teammates and I would spend 10-15 hours a week together, over the next four months, prepping for the race. As the dates got finalized, I noticed that Nationals coincided with my graduation. I had been waiting to race Nationals for two years and I was not giving up the opportunity, so I skipped graduation, much to the dismay of my family, even though they had given me full support and were very proud of what I had accomplished.

Nationals were a big event and I was in a state of shock at the environment of the event. The rider fields were massive, and the depth of talent was amazing. I was racing with guys that years before I had only read about. The crit even was amazing, and despite having some rain, it was the fastest race I had ever done. I was able to avoid all the crashes and came in a respectable 44th place out of 163 starters.

The road race was set to be an even harder course, rolling all day with a 15% finishing climb, which we were set to do 4 laps on. From the start the race was every bit as fast as the crit and with the wind, we sat in the gutter, single file all day. Luck was not on my side, and as the field shredded down to about 60 guys with 20 miles to go, I came completely unglued and couldn’t even turn over the pedals.

After some immense hydration, I was functional again and ready for the coveted Team Time Trial, the event we had been practicing all season. After a good warm up, everything was looking good as we blazed the fastest time to the first turn around. Unfortunately, our bad luck continued as our team captain flatted. We kept it together and finished 23rd out of 40 universities. This weekend helped lay the foundation to see what its like to race at national level and planted the seed to get to that level.




After a few months back in Colorado, my family convinced me to relocate with them to Florida. I spent some time researching cycling and got in contact with Darrell Cunningham from Orlando Velo via email, and Darrell was very welcoming and helpful in guiding me to the group rides and online information about racing in the area. After a weekend of Errol and Windermere rides with Darrell (who owns B3 Café in Orlando) and Darrell Pounders, I was welcomed into the Orlando Velo family with open arms. The guys were very enthusiastic, and I was very excited to be a part of their team.

to be concluded...