Playing Catch-up (Part 1: Livestrong & 6 Hours of El Lagarto)

This is a picture of my dad I made on my computer.

The past few weeks have been crazy busy and now I'm going to try to catch everybody up on all the things that have been going on.

First of all, my dad and I have been working hard to raise money for the Livestrong Foundation before the March 2nd deadline. We have some really awesome supporters and so far, we have collected $946 toward our goal of $1000. If you'd like to help us reach our goal, you can click on the link at the right of this page and donate directly to Livestrong.

Then, at the end of January, my dad and I competed in the Six Hours of El Lagarto as a two man team. It was a lot of fun! My dad did the first two laps, including the sack race. Then I did a lap and he did two laps, and we kept switching that way until he got too tired to do back-to-back laps at full speed.

I was anxious to get started on my first lap, so when it was my turn, I took off. At the finish line, I almost forgot to dismount for the hand-off and ended up jumping off my bike and running to give my dad the baton. My bike did a cartwheel and my mom said she wished she had filmed it, because it was so cool. Unfortunately, when I was warming up for my 2nd lap, my bike wouldn't shift right (uh oh, bent derailleur), and I didn't have time to fix it before it was my turn again. So...I rode my second lap with only the 4 biggest gears in my biggest ring, and somehow, still made it around the course in almost the same time as my first lap.

For the third lap, I had to ride my mom's 29er while my dad got my derailleur fixed. I don't know how people can ride those things!!! My mom's bike is a full suspension 29er and that thing is a complete energy sucker. I wasn't on that bike more than a minute and already my legs were aching. Nope, I'm a 26er hard tail guy all the way!!

One of the highlights of the race for me was when pro racer Drew Edsall (the only person who passed me all day) came up behind me and told me I was riding really well. Then I let him go around me and I actually hung onto his wheel for about 30 seconds (or maybe less, but it felt like a long time). Drew won the solo men's class, so that was pretty cool too.

My dad and I had a great time and raced very hard. Out of 29 teams, we placed 4th (I just noticed we were standing on the wrong side of the podium). My mom wrote an article for Florida Cycling Magazine (starts on pg. 95) about me and other Junior racers at the event.