andy reagan only the interesting stuff

Sept 21st: Pumped for Big Lick

A short three weeks ago, I signed up for the Big Lick Triathlon, for which there is only one distance: olympic. I was scared about the 1 mile swim, but felt I could crush the 25mi bike and would somehow survive the 6 mile run. Having signed up, I immediately started training hard, starting with three workouts the day I signed up! Now, having swam consistently over the past two weeks I actually feel very confident about the swim, having had my best workout yet tonight. I went from barely being able to swim a 50, and I couldn’t even finish 2 50’s…to today doing a 300 warm up, 6×75 with almost no rest, 4×200 with 15 sec rest, and 4×50 with 10sec rest (on the 60), and still felt strong but was out of time and did a comfortable 100 cool-down. Pretty amazing how far I’ve come, but we’ll see how it happens in the open water. On the weekends, I’ve been beating myself up on the mountain bike, and have been doing wednesday worlds as my only other bike ride really for training on the bike…which I have somewhat neglected and am just counting on base fitness really.  I haven’t been running too much either, but did 7 miles yesterday morning followed by a long 2.5hr bike ride.  That, on top of a hard weekend of racing and the 10+ miles I commute every day on my fixie…my legs didn’t want to move this morning.  But they did, and again I felt great swimming.  I’m going to take it easy the next few days, with possibly an suuper easy bike then run tomorrow, and then an open water swim in the wetsuit on Friday hopefully.

All things considered, I couldn’t be more excited for this weekend.  I’ve got all the gear, including a wet suit from Alex Brown, a race belt and timing chip strap (that I can’t find at the moment though).  I put the aero bars on the bike, and yesterday wore the aero helmet during the ride…I really could’ve used more time in that position though, but from what I hear Big Lick is hilly.  Today’s picture is all of that gear laid out, pretty much everything I’ll be taking this weekend. (Plus the MTB for racing Sunday at App State and some other things I couldn’t find haha).

Blogging

I haven't really kept up too well recently, because there is a lot going on while at college and writing up my adventures feels almost like a chore...and then once I get too behind, and try to catch up with the blogging...it's just too much.

SO, an amazing idea popped into my head! The new future of my blog.....one picture per day, every day!! I can definitely keep up with that, and whether I have time to only write a sentence or can crank out a few paragraphs, either work!

September 15th POTD (Picture of the Day): Racing MTB

The past two weekend I've been having a lot of fun racing mountain bikes. I've been borrowing Dave's bike, and have had to keep fixing it up but it's working great. So far, two new tires because I broke the back one going down Old Farm and the front one was so worn out that I kept sliding out in the W&M TT in which I was wearing my TT helmet lol so I got a new one and it helped me grip the trail to a win at the VCU Short Track on Sunday, had to get a new chain before even racing when the old one broke 4 times up Old Farm, got new handlebar grips which I just got and haven't used yet but will hopefully help my hands from hurting, annnnd new derailer cable and housing too somewhere in the past few weeks, wow. But there is a lot more to it than breaking the bike, the fun stuff....like riding fast up and down trails that are super steep and have huge roots or rock ledges that I have to climb! This coming weekend I'll be travelling to NC State to race there and I'm excited, currently sitting 4th in Men's C and the team very comfortably in First Place!!