Pedaling Again!

After 3 weeks of trying to let my hamstring tendon heal by not doing anything but sit at my computer, Chandler Collins and I decided to come up with a new plan. I had one Prolotherapy session over at ProloAustin and have been riding the track bike on the rollers in the garage since. Every day I ride just a little longer. The biggest pain has been getting used to being on a saddle for that long. I'm hoping I'll have my new road bike built up soon so I can get out of the garage and enjoy this amazing weather we've been blessed with.

Alchemy Bicycles just tacked up my new frame for the 2010 racing season. The raw state and flat shape of the tubes reminds me of my first "real" bmx race bike; a high-polished aluminum PK Ripper.

Livestrong, old footy, new bike

Lots of craziness going on in my life these days...

However, lots of things turning for the better.

I did the Livestrong ride the other day on my track bike. I'm dealing with an injury right now so I wasn't able to do the 90 mile with all my bros or get to talk uni-baller-ness with Lance. There's always next year, though. The good news is I have passed the 5 year mark since I did chemo for testicular cancer. What does this mean, you ask... Well, I am officially "cured" of cancer. Yay! No more expensive CT Scans and nasty gallons of barium sulfate to drink.

Some other good news is that my website is pretty much up and running. Check it out here.

I'm pretty stoked to have a new road bike soon from our team's new bike sponsor, Alchemy Bicycles. I think I'm about due for a new fit, so hopefully Dave over at Durata Training can get me hooked up once my new whip is built up.

I was organizing my external hard drive recently and ran across some old footage of me riding bmx at the skatepark in Liberty Hill and racing my old race car in Port Isabel, Corpus, and San Antonio. I miss the sound of those 4 little Honda cylinders screaming at me for more.

I'm about to try some Prolo Therapy with Brad Fullerton over at ProloAustin followed by some chiropractic work with Dr. Chandler Collins. Hopefully, my 2010 season will start off well with these two guys on my side.


Soooo many riders this year. It was awesome!

I rode in honor of Jane Miller, a friend's Mom who is fighting Stage 4 Breast Cancer.

My poor track bike was missing its matching front wheel, a massive gear, and the banked walls of the velodrome. Yes, that is a seat bag on a track bike... DON'T LAUGH!



Jake Conard and I cruising through the Great Southwest Trails in Fort Worth in the Fall of 2004



Ramp Ranch Spring of 2004 on one of the first Liquor frames with my geometry



Ramp Ranch early Spring of 2004 on a Terrible One Barcode thanks to Joe Rich

Dad's winning, too!

My Dad won his heat race and the feature Saturday night in Kyle and I won the last two Driveway Crits. Rogers = winners!


Next weekend is the Tour of Austin. Come out and watch people pedal their butts off for a bunch of cash. It's way more fun when people are yelling from the sidelines.

Fitzhugh – Pedernales – Dripping Springs

I did a pretty awesome route the other day with some pretty awesome dudes. We kept a blistering pace out Fitzhugh to Pedernales State Park, then down to Dripping Springs and back up Bell Springs. I spent the rest of the weekend either laying down or in the water. This heat has got to go!

Dripping Springs

I texted my buddy, Rey to see what he was up to for a ride today and he responded with: Dripping Springs... leave Austin around 7am... cool bunch of dudes.

Austin Bikes guys always have the sweetest rides

Casey Crosby and Mr. Patrick Newell

Rey in amazement at how smooth the asphalt is

Rockwall Crit

Check out toyotacyclingteam.blogspot.com for a full race report on the Rockwall Crit. However, here's how it ended for me. That's Hotel San Jose's Heath Blackgrove gritting his teeth on my wheel. hehe

However, he was racing for 1st place and I was a lap down racing for 13th... but still.

Photo courtesy of Kevin McDade.

Cooper Crit, Little 500 & Austin Flyers Chipotle Burrito Ride

Cooper Crit
My team and I went up to Mc Kinney, Texas last weekend for the Toyota-sponsored Cooper Crit. The course was a lot of fun with its 9 turns and brand new, grippy concrete. The heat cooked us to a crisp over the 75 minutes of racing, but we still ended up all getting in the top 10. Joseph rode off with 5th and John and I sprinted in for 8th and 6th.

Afterward, I played around on Josh from Rol's 26er BMX bike. That thing is so much fun. I think I'm gonna' go hang out at the Walnut Creek pump track and hi-jack it the next time he's out there.


Little 500
The next day, my other team (The Sativa Rollers) and I attended the Rapha/Mellow Johnny's Little 500 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Breaking Away. The dream team that I had somehow put together consisted of: Scottish BMX World Champ and Austin Chronicle Award-winning Photographer–Sandy Carson, Two-time Arkansas Freestyle Bicycle Moto-Cross Champion/Peddler Bike Shop Owner/Father of Two–AJ Camp, 13-time X-Games Gold and Triple Gold Medalist Super-freestyle Trampoline Razor Scooter Champ–Aaron Ross, and myself.

We have been training for months for this event and it all payed off. After practicing our transitions at night with no lights, we knew once we were able to do them in the daylight on an actual race track that we'd be a force to be reckoned with. The team rode fantastically throughout the day and in true BMX fashion, the 500 mile race ended in a field sprint with myself taking the victory.

The Sativa Rollers send a big "Thanks" to all that showed up to cheer us with their cowbells, water splashes, and apple hand-ups. Without your support, this race could not have been won. I'd also like to send a special thanks to one lovely Ms. Kate Sherwin for helping the Sativa Rollers maintain their lead throughout the last 50 laps. She has been awarded the "HIGHest" Award for her smooth, strong efforts.

Celebrating victory

Rollin'

Aaron Ross is the boss

Andrew Willis of Holland Racing

Patrick Newell documents the scene

Jesse Slate

Patrick Newell

Bandits!

Andrew Willis

Austin Flyers Burrito Ride
Who wouldn't ride their bike for a free Chipotle burrito and free beer? Well, over 300 people couldn't resist the temptation so they headed southeast from Austin together for 15-mile, 35-mile, and 60-mile rides. My long-lost Mexican brother and I felt the need to tame the herd as we approached the outskirts of town. In order to keep the attacks at a minimum and to keep the ride as smooth and as safe as possible, we moved rode on the front, side-by-side, to keep the pace high for the next 40 miles. It turned out to be a great, mostly cloudy day for July standards. Oh, and the burritos were scrumptuous as usual. I washed mine down with a Berry Long Ride Smoothy from The Bicycle Sport Shop's coffee bar. I can't wait for next year's ride!.. or I guess I could just go eat a burrito and a smoothy after every ride... hmmmm...


Packed

More than 300 deep cruising down S. 1st

Tour of Lawrence

Saturday's Crit was super fast, had a couple of technical turns, and a long back straight into a headwind. Photo courtesy of Craig Sparks


I'm in Lawrence, KS this July 4th weekend for the inaugural Tour of Lawrence. It started Friday night with 200m Street Sprints, then a downtown crit on Saturday, and a very hilly circuit race today on the picturesque KU campus. The weather has been so comfortable compared to Austin and it definitely made the racing pretty painless yesterday.

Street Sprints:
Basically, we were drag racing on bicycles. They took the top 8 times from the first qualifying round and placed them into a brackets based on category (Pro/Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat 3, and Cat 4/5). Then, the Pro/Cat 1 winner raced against the Cat 4/5 winner and the Cat 2 winner raced against the 4/5 winner. The winners of each of those rounds then raced each other to decide 1st and 2nd and the losers raced for 3rd and 4th.

I qualified, sharing the fastest time of the night with Nick Coil (Cat 1). My eighth-finals opponent was a no-show, so I got a bye-run, then my quarter, semi, and finals were pretty easy. Meanwhile, Josh Carter (Cat 1 winner) was battling the fastest guys over and over again before having to race against my semi-fresh legs. I tried stalling before staging to give him a little more time to recover, but he just rolled right up and staged. He got a really good jump on me at the start, but once we hit the halfway point, I dug as deep as I could and shifted into an extra gear hoping to get one more shot of acceleration before crossing the line. Somehow it worked and I walked away with a chunk of cash and bragging rights that I once beat renowned sprinter, Josh Carter.

Saturday's Crit:
This race was so darn fast, but somehow only let one break get away with only a few laps to go. Some of the larger teams didn't help keep the pace high enough in the last two laps, so Heath Blackgrove won with Stefan Rothe right on his tail. Then, about a second later, the field came through with a massive pack-sprint. Bryan Fawley got 8th and I picked up 7th.

There was definitely room for improvement in the last lap, but considering that we were in the middle of complete chaos, we're pretty happy with our results. Only one rider went down because he blew out his rear tire which is pretty amazing considering 75 of us were hitting all those turns with so much speed.

Photo courtesy of Craig Sparks

Track Racing & TX Roads

Yesterday, I went to the Alkek Velodrome to do a little track racing. Check out the details over at my Team Blog.

Today, I went for a ride with what turned out to be an Austin Flyers women's ride... oops. It wasn't supposed to be that way, I promise—I was just the only male that showed up. I rode with them for the first hour and a half, then turned and spent another hour and a half exploring some roads that I hadn't been on before.

Nothingness

The Aermotor from Chicago

Country Road

Farm Road

Farm

Mom's GED Graduation!

My Mom graduated from her GED program with Highest Honors and was also awarded a scholarship from Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. We're all so proud of her. It was great to see her so happy, walking across the stage. Now it's on to a few years of late nights studying sociology. Keep up the hard work, MOM! We love you!

Me, Dad, Lyss, Mom & Lori

My 6' 2", 13 year-old Nephew, River

Mom, stoked!

Del Mar's auditorium was at full capacity

Everitt, Lori & Mom

Lyss & Everitt

OK, well I couldn't resist getting the obligatory front wheel shot, but this time it's obviously not shot from my bike.

Hot & Busy Weekend

Saturday:
John Trujillo and I met up and he rode with me to Buda. I continued on to San Marcos while he headed back to Austin for some Yoga. I ended up putting in about 4 hours on the bike with 14 or so 10-second sprints. I was pretty exhausted afterward, but still managed to make it into the office for 4 hours worth of work, then an awesome dinner.


Apparently I do not know how to NOT make stupid faces in photos... EVER.

Old San Antonio

Thanks to Jordan at Hufnagel Cycles for settin' me up on an amazing bike.

Sunday:
Austin Flyers/Julius break-in ride. We rolled out from Jo's Coffee and headed south to Buda, east for a bit, then further south. The pace was chill, the company was good, and the weather was actually pretty bearable on this Father's Day/Summer Solstice. This was Julius' first group ride and probably the hardest ride he's done so far. He took the heckling from the veterans pretty well and stayed upright the entire ride even though he somehow managed to run over some road kill while swerving from one side of the road to the other between two of us. Good job to Julius today.

After the ride, I came home just long enough to take a shower, grab some left-overs, and head to the office for what ended up being a 10-hour day. We did get a ton done, so kudos to my boss and I.

Sheri taking care of Julius

The crew hamming it up

Jared—photo victory!

Tulsa Tough Day 2

The race was pretty hard and fast. I sorta' messed up and sprinted for a prime (a lousy pair of sunglasses—woohoo) with only 10 laps to go. Then, somehow Joseph took me from 45th to maybe 9th or 10th on ONE STRAIGHTAWAY! He delivered me to the bottom of the last turn, then I just sprinted as hard as I could for what felt like were days! OK, maybe not days, but that final sprint must've been at least 500 meters! So, thanks to a hell of a teammate, I ended up with 7th place for the today. I should still be in the running for the overall. Tomorrow is gonna' be tough—short, steep hill on the course. It will definitely be a test of strength and my ability to endure pain.

My boy!

Tulsa Tough Day 1

Colton and I went for a little spin on Friday morning along Riverside drive in Tulsa. This path is AWESOME! It's divided in half to accommodate bikes on one side and pedestrians on the other.



We raced the CAT I/II race at 8pm in the Blue Dome district of downtown Tulsa. With 6 jumbo-trons and the streets lined with cow-bell ringing fans, I managed to grab second place out of the 100-man field. It was a pretty fast race with a handful of crashes—one of which that took out my teammate, Joseph LaFico. He's a little scraped up, but ready to redeem himself in Stage 2 of Tulsa Tough.

Oklahoma is OK!

We stopped just outside of OKC on Thursday to go for a quick one-hour ride down an unexpectedly beautiful road through some rolling hills. The sun was setting and the temperature was floating in the mid-70s.

Joseph and I cruising into the sunset after our openers.

Colton and I heading East through some Oklahoma wheat fields

Brian Barnhart Photos from Keyko

I got a little dirty playing in the mud

The second berm of "Whammo" goes to vert

Tabletops are addictive. I want to do these like this until the day I die.

Thanks to Barnz for shooting these and letting me post 'em on my blog. He's working on a website and once it's up I'll post a link so you can check out his other work.