TheAndrew.net

I have mixed feelings about the 12 hour race this past weekend. The atmosphere was great, as was the shirt, and prizes we got for second place.

However, the tendons or whatever are on the back of my knees are still tight as a mofo. Quads are still tight also.
Basically spend all of Sunday afternoon/evening laying down in my bed trying to ease the pain.

During the race my left knee was bothering me. It’s been happening during most of the collegiate races so I’ve got an appointment set up to have it looked at later this week. E-mailed a local cyclists thats a nutritionist also so hopefully they’ll refer me to someone I can talk to about setting up some kind of nutrution plan.

Dad gave me a cd of pictures he took, so I’ll put some of them up this evening.
Thanks Em, Scott, Tracy, snickers, mom and dad for coming out and supporting our team at the race. Mom, your lasagna will be forever remembered by those that had some.

Last thought for now: riding at night is a blast! (unless your legs, toes, fingers, and other various muscles are cramping up constantly)

so I’m new to this being tagged thing. Sorry Erica.

Seven Things I Plan to Do Before I Die:

• Teach




• Take my family to every state in the U.S.




• Travel somewhere oversees




• Snowboard in Colorado




• Learn how to surf




• Buy a bike frame and build the thing up myself




• ???

Seven Things I Can Do:

• Ride a bike for at least 6 hours without stopping




• Remember how to get most places after one trip




• Listen. Well.




• Grill up a mean bbq pork steak




• Stay open-minded about almost anything




• Create a webpage




• figure out what’s wrong with gadgets (like all the new electronics Ronnell buys)

Seven Things I Can’t Do:

• Ride a wheelie




• Distinguish between different food seasonings




• Eat hot(spicy) foods




• Pay bills on time (see next bullet)




• Manage money




• Sing along to the radio/cd’s when others are in the car




• Figure out a way to learn a foreign language without paying a lot of money for it or receiving a grade

Seven Things That Attract Me to Women:

• realness (as opposed to the many young females out there that act “fake”)




• a sense of humor




• a great smile




• a sunny disposition




• a caring personality




• confidence




• convictions

Seven Things I Say the Most (Recently):

• Dammit




• I’m going for a ride




• I’ll be back late




• please get more syrup




• Thank you




• I’m going to get lunch real quick




• That’s ok

Seven Celebrities I Dream About:
Gotta skip this part. I’m don’t dream about actresses, or find them particularly dreamy, or have them appear in my dream.

This week, as most have this semester, has gone by quickly.

My schedule is sort of set up so that weeks fly by. Beginning of the week is full with work and class, and the end of it is filled with cycling and trying to get homework, etc done.

Tuesday night worlds was good this week. There were just 3 of us last week, so I was kind of worried that I may be riding by myself. No problem, it’s just nice to ride with others. There were a good 7 of us there, and it was a good workout. Not as fast as it was in the summer, but still kept an above 20mph average.
Its like the fact that a couple of the fast guys in town have taken the Columbia Bike Team juniors under their wing and ride with them regularly. I wish I had the opportunity they do right now. But at least I’m able to get into it now while I’m still somewhat young.
There’s one of the juniors that I’ve become friends with and we’ve done some riding together. It’s cool to be in a position to be a positive influence on his life.

Wedneday was a normal day. Work was a little slow. Class was a little long. Then I stayed up way too late playing Madden 2005. (Mom: I haven’t played the XBOX in a long time

Got up at the crack of 11 this morning. Made some pancakes and decided to skip the ride I normally do on Thursdays in order to finish putting my old mountainbike together. I put a little blurb in the stlbiking discussion board, so hopefully someone will give it a good home. We’ve been through a lot together and I wish I could keep it, but that’s not such an economically fiesable plan.

Today is basically over. Might play some tennis after I get off work at 10 for a cardio workout. That or I’ll force myself to throw the road bike on the trainer for an hour or so.

Tomorrow is going to be a road ride for a good couple hours and a work meeting. Then its time to head home and get psyched up for the 12 hour race starting saturday morning. Can’t wait!

So it seems that a new friend of mine has had a few conversations with North Carolina coach Roy Williams.
Turns out a guy that is new to the cycling team, from Poplar Bluff (southern mo), is the brother of Tyler Hansbrough, the best basketball player missouri has producted in a long time. (Who has a younger brother that could contend for the MO player of the year this coming year)

Also had a past Olympic cyclist tell me this week that I have a strong sprint. This is something I kind of know, but not something I would except to hear from someone who has sprinted with the best in the world.

Alright..so the post you’ve all been waiting for. The Murray State race weekend.

As usual it took the team a while to get our crap packed into the 3 vehicles we were taking. Left town about 4:30pm Friday.
My car was loaded down with 3 bikes on top and 3 bikes on a trunk rack on back along with 4 of us inside. We’ll just say my car isn’t meant for that much weight and we had climbed up some hills at slower-than-tractor-trailer pace. Can’t wait to have a car that still has some power with that amount of weight attached/inside.

Got to our beautiful Super 7 motel in Cadiz (I think that’s the name of the town), Kentucky at 10 (ok, I don’t really remember what time it was…so I just made that up). Normally one car goes inside and checks in and then we all go into the rooms. That way we can be charged for a couple rooms with a 2 people in each, as opposed to 3 rooms with 4 people each. Well that plan didn’t work out so well as the Super 7 didn’t have anywhere for the other two cars to hide out of sight. So we parked in a corner and took off a few bikes and started messing around. All in all, we had to get one extra room and were charged for 4 people to a room, paying about double what we thought we were going to be able to pay.

Got up around 7 Saturday morning and loaded up the bikes and headed to a McDonalds about 50 feet from the motel. Had a delightful breakfast (Deluxe breakfast with pancakes, eggs, sasuage…mmmm and headed about 15 minutes down the road to a really nice park.
Unloaded the bikes and then just messed around for a while. The A’s race is always the last to go so we just goofed off for a while and cheered for the C’s and B’s. Mizzou represented well. Took 1st and 2nd in the C’s. Also took a couple of the top 10 positions in the B’s. As for the A’s…we all finished. Chad broke his bike a couple times and came in with Lou. I felt like crap from the beginning. Had a great start as usual, until I encountered a bump in the grass that I didn’t see and it almost threw me from my bike. Luckly my right hand and right knee saved me. Right hand was fine but right knee got a nice cut (and a nice bruise that’s coming in as we speak) on it. I wasn’t climbing worth crap, and you can only make up so much time on the downhills and flat ground. I was about 5 minutes back on Chad and Lou when I came through at the end of the second lap (9.5 mile laps, A’s do 3 laps) when the conference director decided to have mercy on me and said, “if you want to stop now i’ll place you”. (For you non bike speaking readers, that means I still got points for the race, as opposed to DNF’ing, but didn’t have to do the last lap) His words were music to my ears. My reply, “hell yeah! Thanks!”
Part of my climbing problem is that the seatpost I have now can’t go up as high as I need it…so i’ll throw the old one back on it and let the climbing commence.
I didn’t check to see what places we all took…so I’ll find that out when they go online in about a week.

After Chad and Lou came in we packed up the vehicles and went out in search of food. We found it in the form of a all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. We ate a lot..it was good. Then two of the cars went back to the park to practice the dual slalom course and my car went back to the motel for some relaxation.
That’s about it for Saturday. Lou and I walked across the highway to get a Wendy’s frosty, and then I walked back over about 3 hours later with some other guys for another frosty…which my stomach told me later was way too much frosty.

Sunday we got up at 6am and had convenience store breakfast (this is where we all go into a convenience store and choose breakfast in whatever form we see fit). Headed over to the park so the dual slalom guys could practice a little before the course was supposed to close at 8am for qualifying.
The guys, and girl, qualified and the short track races started. Our B riders did well. Lou and I did well. I took 9th and he took somewhere between 15th and 18th.

Then the dual slalom finals took up the next couple hours. Our boys did super-great and we packed up and headed home.
End of story.

The next collegiate race we’re going to is in Michigan in a few week, something like a 13 1/2 hour drive. So if you know anyone that wants to donate a large truck (to haul the bikes) and a large passenger van we’d be glad to use it!

Got a link to this website in class last week.
Really interesting info

Click on the title above or here

One of the instructors for the class I got this from when to a conference that Cheryl Brown Henderson spoke (daughter of “BROWN v. …”)

1. The case is misunderstood, the media wrote the history
2. Brown was teh 12th school segregation case in the state of Kansas
3. One reason for the Brown decision was how the U.S. was viewed by other world powers (i.e. USSR). Claimed the U.S. had no moral authority since they oppressed blacks within their own country
4. Rev. Oliver Brown was the tenth person recruited to created the case, he was the only male in the suit, hence the name “Brown v. Board of Ed”
5. And most interesting to me: The school environments in Topeka were equal. Schools were just as nice, the faculty at the black school had more degrees

races this weekend went well. I’ll post about it tomorrow.
Highlight of the weekend: took 9th in the Short Track
Lowlight of the weekend: sucked terribly in the cross country

Parker, a photo-j major went with us and took some awesome pics. Check them out at http://www.missouri.edu/~pje5f9/murraystate/

Kanye West is coming to Mizzou Arena next month

and
http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org/us/

Song of the day: Lyfe Jennings - Must be nice

I think next year I’ll start doing the MS150 again. Get to break out the “Lifetime Rider” jersey again
(random thought after reading discussions about this years ride)

Had a good recovery ride bright and early yesterday with a guy thats new to the cycling club, or actually isn’t a member of the cycling club yet.

This afternoon after class is the Tuesday Night World ride as usual. I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed the ride yet since it started this summer.

This weekend it looks like about 13 of us will be heading to Murray, Kentucky for Murray State’s race. Course sounds tough, but a few less miles than our race last weekend.

The following weekend I’ll be doing a 12 hour race with a couple guys from Illinois at Landahl park, just outside of Blue Springs. It’ll be my first 12 hour race, so i’m pretty excited about trying it out. Hopefully I can convince a few other Mizzou riders to put together a team.

I’m a little behind on reading for my class at 3 today, and we’re supposed to teach what we read to someone else in the class…so I should get on that.
Classes are going well. Got a group project coming up and plenty of reading to do. Just have to make time to do it between riding the bikes, messing with the bikes, learning how to mess with the bikes, and work.

Have a great day