Welcome (back) AMCT’ers

Howdy Team,

I hope you all enjoyed your Summers. Welcome back!!!!

I have heard accounts of Spain, San Francisco, Denver, Kansas, Oklahoma and many other journeys. Some of raced a lot, some of us a little, some of us didn’t and some of us haven’t yet. I am glad we are all back to get to more winning!!! and school, too.

Forgive the lack of brevity in this post. There is a lot we should cover.

If you are new to the team/listserv, my name is Clint Hankla and I am the Vice President of Mountain Biking. This will be my second year of competitive cycling, I love it! I hope you feel welcome to pose any cycling related questions that you may have to me and/or this listserv. I DEFINITELY can not answer as much as some of us, but we have a large base of knowledge contained here to share the load. Also, I have talked to a few of you who are either new to the school or AMCT, and you wonder about our rides. Please check out https://amct.tamu.edu for a list of rides and soon to be updated information. Do not be afraid of riding with us!!! We are all here for fun and to not intimidate others…(Except for the Hagas. Totally kidding.) We want you to join in our weekly rides and experience bike racing with us. We have fast and much less than fast rides throughout the week. And we win at races. Often.

For the new AMCTer’s, I know you may be thinking bike racing is expensive and dangerous. It can be both yes. We all have our bad days and our glory days when it comes to crashes and close calls. Trust me, the thought of them is scarier than the actual moments. We deal with it. We learn a lot on the road and become better at watching out for one another with every mile. As for costs, I know we are college students and bikes can cost upwards of multiples of thousands of dollars. Not everyone needs/ can afford what a professional is paid to ride.Work on the engine first, you’ll be very impressed at what your bike can do when you try… intelligently. Also, AMCT gets alot of help from our great alumni, sponsors and friends. This is one club that when you commit to us and we see your hard work we work hard for you. Not that we are a scholarship providing club, but you race for us for little cost, become eligible for great help from in-kind sponsors(i.e., Aggieland Cycling, Specialized, SRAM, are just a few) and are amongst most of the best collegiate riders in Texas and in The USA within our conference. There is great opportunity for you in collegiate cycling, I promise.

As you all may have seen, we have a great schedule in order for our Mountain Season. We are stretching from West to East, across Texas to experience some great races. Even for us A’s, we get to go to Nevada for Nationals in October. I really hope to see a lot of you returning and first time AMCT’ers out there competing in AMCT maroon. There are also, many other races in Texas for Road, Cyclocross and Track racing throughout the years. We are unassociated with what is not on our schedule, but we hope you enjoy competing!! If you don’t have a Mountain bike and want to compete, ask the listserv. You’ll be very surprised at what some of us have lying around and are needing to sell.

Feel free to drop us a post to the listserv or send me or any of our officers an email. I look forward to seeing everyone with an mountain bike that wants to experience the best in Texas mountain bike racing at Camp Eagle this weekend and throughout the Mountain season.

Prepare for a great season!!!!

Thanks and Gig ‘Em,

Clint Hankla