MAGIC SHOES!!!!!!!

I GOT ME SOME MAGIC SHOES!!!

Gosh it's good to be on this team! In this post, I'd like to sing the praises of yet another one of our sponsors: Foot Dynamics. Located right on Main Street in Boise, this place was all to convenient to find.

I went to Foot Dynamics to get some foot beds for my new Bont shoes. I was expecting to receive some nice little pre-made insoles, possibly ones that I cook in the oven a little bit before doing so. Oh how I'd underestimated Foot Dynamics! I had no idea what I was in for, but upon entering, I was brought back to a special fitting room where I encountered this crazy contraption:

Yes, I know it looks like a medieval torture device. In fact, as I sat in the fitting room, my mind started to run wild with potential uses for this machine (most of them extremely painful uses). However, it's actually an orthotic alignment doohickey that makes custom foot molds. Then, with a poof of blue smoke, Jeff Jacobs -- make that board certified pedorthist Jeff Jacobs -- emerged from a trap door in the middle of the floor. He waved his magic wand over my feet, whispered an incantation or two, and then made me stand in the alignment doohickey, before disappearing behind a curtain, where I assume he reached into his red-velvet-lined top-hat and pulled out these bad boys:

 That's right -- these are 100% custom orthotic insoles. Goodbye gross old blue Specialized footbeds (that smell like cat urine). Hello Food Dynamics Custom Awesome (that smell like unicorns!).

UPDATE: 
But that's not all! Then we cooked my Bont's to a nice-and-toasty 160 degrees:

And Jeff pasted some pads to my boniest joints (to give them a little more room inside the shoe once it's been molded):

Finally, I put the new insoles in the nice-and-toasty Bonts and then put them on my feet. I stood still, with my knees slightly bent for five minutes (just like the instructions said), and presto! Fully custom shoes!

Thanks so much Foot Dynamics!

Back in Boise! Hangin' in the Service Course.

Well the winds of next season have blown me back to Boise. Here I am, in the land of potatoes, starting my life as a professional cyclist in earnest. I'm surprised how different I feel, considering so little has really changed. My life will, for most intents and purposes, be very similar to the one I've lived these last several years. I'm still going to be scraping by financially. I'll still be going to (many of the) same races. I'm still going to be working hard, and giving it my all -- however, my perception is wildly different. I'll send you over to this blog, written by a professional distance runner, which does a good job summing up the difference that an attitude can make.

Right now, I'm chilling out here:

Yes, that's the view from the inside of the team's Service Course.

This is what we're doing today (read the name on there):

Sorting goodies. I don't get to use most of this stuff until our sponsor orientation at the end of the month, but here's some of the treats I get to look forward to:

Casual clothing from Castelli. Sweet!  And these bad boys:

Holy shit these things are nice. Bont -- thank you. These will be my first new shoes since 2008! Here are my current shoes (hand me downs from Adrian Hegyvary -- he used these in 2009, and I used them last year):

The internet is wonderful, and it allows us to do many amazing things, like send you an image of my shoes -- fortunately for you, however, one thing the internet does NOT do, is transfer the smell of my shoes too. When I take these bad boys off they smell exactly like cat urine. Exactly. Like. Cat. Urine. I can't express how excited I am to get new shoes, especially ones that smell like new shoes.

YEAH. YEAH YEAH YEAH.