AMCT – Page 6 – Texas A&M Cycling Team

The second race weekend of this year’s mountain season found a handful of Aggies taking a trip to Lake Conroe. I’ll do my best to accurately describe the events as they unfolded, but my mind has had almost a full week to forget/ embellish what may or may not have happened.

Shane Haga - UH @ Lake Conroe The trip began with a sleepy 6 am drive to Coldsprings. At this point I would like to mention that all the racers comfortably fit into two rental vehicles—this is unacceptable. We need more people racing if we want to maintain our conference win streak! But I digress. We arrived early with much time to spare before the 9:30 start for the time trial. We quickly unloaded the trailer, registered, and went out for a couple laps to get used to the course. Let me go ahead and put the rumors to rest here: It has been said that the trail is dangerously flat and lacking in technical difficulty—these rumors are entirely true. The course was somewhere in the neighborhood of “3 miles”, and reasonably wide, though lacking in markings.

Stolen Fuji is Back!

This is the story of how I got Fuji back. It’s not going to get made into a movie or even told over the listserve for years to come but I’m under some pressure to tell how I finally got him back so here goes.

Last spring while studying very very late for an exam in the Jack E. Brown building, Fuji was stolen from the bike rack outside. Yes, it was a cable lock and yes, I now have a Kryptonite U-lock. I reported it to the campus police the next day, gave them the most detailed description of a bike as you can possibly give and even printed out a picture for them. I had some hope but not a lot.

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.

First time racing for Texas A&M

Race Report by Mark McGraw

In early June 2010 I did a road race with my brother out in the Texas Hill Country at Doss, TX near Fredericksburg. I had just joined the A&M cycling team (I’m an older than average grad student) and had just gotten the kit and my brand new USAC license. My bro is a pretty experienced rider and we agreed to meet out there to do the road race.

Let me specify that this was not a “ride.” I’m new to cycling but I know the difference. I’ve done the charity rides and they’re great, but his was a race. For the serious dudes. The course featured two loops of a 22 mile course on farm roads with some cattle guards and water crossings. By some cattle guards I mean about 40. By water crossings I mean 1. There was also a twisty, steep downhill portion and many small hills. Oh, and one big nasty hill was about 6 miles into the course.