andy reagan only the interesting stuff

Sept 18th

Today was an awesome day of riding and racing mountain bikes, I survived (barely) the 8 miles of cross country race and then won the short track!

The XC wasn’t super tough…somehow I managed to crash many times though including possibly my two hardest mtb spills to date, but what I now think plagued my riding was preoccupation (letting my mind drift too much and not focusing on the trail), going too fast lol and wearing dark sunglasses.  The trail being in the woods, it was shady and I wore them because I needed to keep dust out and protect my eyes…but I think they did more harm than good.  And really on the trail requires 100% focus out there, especially going faster than I ever have on unfamiliar trails.  The first time I went down hard I’m not sure what happened, but I think there was a big lip onto the wooden bridge that I failed to see or pick up my front wheel for…either way next thing I knew I was airborne over the bridge without my bike haha.  Even after having to gather myself and put the chain back on, I didn’t get passed though…but I definitely lost lots of ground on third place who I was tailing up to the wreck.
The second time I hit hard was when I clipped a tree with my handlebars enough to send me flying into a neighboring tree with my shoulder.  That hurt really good, and I got passed haha before getting on the bike and going slow for awhile…shaken up.  It was narrow and I clipped many trees but that was the only one that sent me flying, probably because I hit it so fast.  Not helping matters much, my new right grip slipped off and I rode the last mile holding on to just the narrow metal bar and I missed a turn near the end running right through some tape haha.  Despite the shortcomings, I managed to finish fifth I think lol.
Short track is clearly my event, and I’m getting better because this one was almost entirely in the woods! Pre-riding the course my legs didn’t feel strong, but once I got on it they listened haha.  I loveddd the course, it was super fast with a big drop, some rooty uphills and jumps, and I pretty much mastered a fast line.  We did a “le man” start which means that we lay down all the bikes, then to start the race sprint to them and start riding.  I was late to the start and leaned my bike against a table near the pile…which turned out to be quite advantageous haha.  My legs didn’t feel like running but once we off I was nearly first to the bikes and was able to grab my bike still running and jump on with a considerable lead into the trail.  Later I learned the jake who was second slid out in that first turn and had blocked the field even more for me haha.  After two laps no one was really even close to me which was awesome, but I almost wondered if id taken a wrong turn lol.  I hadn’t, but the course which was super sandy made the turns really hard, and missing one sent me slightly into the woods but not slowing me down…but I had got a bunch of branches and leaves stuck in the cassette and couldn’t pedal.  It didn’t come out pulling them from on the bike, and I had to stop to clean it out…bummer.  jake, an nc state guy, and ben rice passed me while I was stopped.  Jake had been talking lots of trash before the race haha, so I hammered hard and with my sweet line, caught them in two laps and then sped around on the straight away.  When I flew by jake I gave him a pat on the back lol, asserting my dominance in the short track, now back in first place.  I went fast for the next while, and soon enough it was just jake behind me and we had a huge gap.  Not before long, it was the last lap and I asked him if he wanted to make a gentlemans agreement for the finish.  I didn’t want to beat him in the sprint just because I had a bike length head start from in front of him, so we agreed to come side by side, shake hands, and then sprint! We did, and I got him, a fair victory for sure.  The rest of our C team finished strong as well, taking spots 4-7.
Other highlights of the day included hanging my hammock over the race course, taking some fun pictures, and my moms zucchini bread after the race! All the good pix are on my camera (writing from the phone now) but I was able to take a picture of my beaten leg lol, it will make a sweet scar if it scars.  I think it’ll show up at the top, but that’s from the first big crash and only part of it haha, not really too bad though, just sweat made it sting in the second half of the xc and st.
Well that’s all I got, a (slightly longer) xc race coming up tomorrow and I’m going to try to win it!

Sept 17th, an awesome day

Despite having to wake up in time to bike to an 8AM research meeting and spend two hours building a logical model of iron homeostasis (which was actually pretty fun), today was awesome and now I'm at Ben Rices uncles house for the mtb race at NC State tomorrow.
Yesterday was a really long day in class, but I finished both of my homeworks for class well and left stat early (yes!) to meet Raleigh who came up for the night from UNC!  Dave and I made delicious tacos for dinner with his parents homemade salsa, my living room was a bike shop for a while and then I took Ral on a bike ride around Blacksburg and the drillfield by night.
In the morning when I got back I made eggs and cheese toast sandwhiches for a great breakfast. We hung out for a while before I went to brewing class with the few miller high lifes left, and then packed for a weekend of mtb racing! Id like to post the picture of our passenger van filled to capacity haha but its on my camera. So for the pic, imagine 12 happy mountain bikers crammed into a van haha!