Back to Austin.

I've been back in town for a couple of weeks now. I can't believe I went so long with the lack of training in Dallas. Its not that its bad, Austin is just far better.

While I was in Dallas I managed to play a ton of golf and match my all time number of wins at the Tuesday niter with 2 in a row. I know its no 7- straight. But it will do for me.

The Matrix Challenge went alright. No wins for the team but some money made and still some solid results. I basically sucked, but rebounded nicely the following weekend to make up for it.

Carlos also won the fastest lap and in doing so scored a sweet Trek cruiser bike, or the "scraper"  bike as Tristan calls it.

Last weekend was the 5th annual AT&T downtown criterium. This weekend as a whole was probably one of the coolest moments of my racing career thus far. Top 5 for sure. Thursday was the driveway as per usual, but this time with the Colavita boys, Rashaan Bahati and some out of towners. Saturday was the big show. A twilight crit in front of a few thousand drunk spectators. Always a good time. Colavita won again, with Toyota going 2-3-4. As predicted, the top 2 amateurs in the race came from our team. Carlos got 6th and won the top amateur jersey, and I finished 12th and won the best young riders jersey. Tristan and Tyler also put in solid rides. Making their presence known at the front.

We had this past weekend off from racing, and after one more "off" week, we leave for SuperWeek on the 8th. This kicks off our season. At least the part of the season we care most about. We have very high expectations as always. After Superweek we fly out to California for nationals. From there we will see how everyone is feeling. Gateway Cup and Vuelta Chihuahua are also on our schedule by seasons end.

Hopefully the ORIGINAL rat-tail will join us for some of our expeditions.

Also, thank you to everyone who has continued to donate to the txtough.org website in my behalf.

Keep the $$$ coming. :)

Andrew

Happy Birthday!

Just another day. I think I'll go ride my bike today. :)

big number 20.

Thanks.

Tulsa Tough

Last weekend was the Tulsa Tough. I love coming to this race. It's harder than a Txbra race but its not completely demotivating. This year was a little bigger than last year. The purse was larger, and the competition was tougher. This year there was a cat.1/2 race, followed by the Pro/1 category.

Carlos, myself, Tristan, and Barry did the Pro race. It went pretty well for us. I managed to finish in the money all the days. Not too bad considering Toyota United came with their entire Tour de France squad. I guess they were prepping for Philly. They took 1-5 of the overall and pretty much every stage looked very similar to that also. Carlos scored an 11th on the very hard 3rd stage. Thats amazing considering 10 guys got away early and were never seen again.

I finally felt like I had some fitness. Now I remember what thats like. I was able to surf around the pack and attack and cover attacks. It was nice. Hopefully it just gets better from here.

My next race will be the Matrix Challenge followed by the AT&T downtown criterium in Austin. 

Thank you to everyone who has donated to the Tx Tough.org website in my behalf! Keep the donations coming, its for a good cause!

Mike Dahlheim

Jan Diliberto

Dave Diliberto

Judy Bonacci

Kathy Radford

Ken & Lydia Ferguson

Michelle Shuffield

Frederick Kelly

Farl Maxwell

Sorry for anyone I missed!

Thanks again.

Andrew