He summed up the race on Facebook:

“Race update for family and friends who’ve been asking. Well… 2 burped tires, 3 wrecks, and of course stopped 2-3 times for mechanical trouble. Resulted in a very tired and bruised body. But did score me a 2nd place and overall champ for 2013 Texas marathon series. Feels great to have achieved my goal, but now it’s time to rest, at least for a couple of days.”

Mike had a very strong season and on the podium in every race. He leads the overall results by almost 80 points.

His finishes were:
2nd at Palo Duro Canyon MTB Marathon
2nd at Holidaze Marathon
3rd at Fat Chuck’s Revenge
1st at Excrutiation Exam
2nd at Miles of DisComfort

Aguayo is a Cat 1 rider on the BikeLane MTB team and is trained by his team mate Nathan Winkelman.

On the road ... Wendy Law, left, and Shirley Duncan, who cycled around Australia in the 1940s.

Today I read this cool story on The Sydney Morning Heraldby Diana Allen and Gerry Carman. It’s not team related at all, but I thought I share it anyway.

Wendy Law was celebrated across Australia and beyond as one of the two “girl cyclists” whose three-year odyssey of riding their bicycles up and across the continent began soon after the end of World War II.

In 1946, at 19, she and her equally adventurous school friend, Shirley Duncan, 21, were dissuaded from travelling across war-ravaged Europe and instead opted to ride their Malvern Stars to Queensland. They had already ridden in Victoria, to Adelaide and around Tasmania to prepare themselves. They envisaged being on the road for six months – but did not get back to Melbourne until April 1949.

It took them a year to get to Queensland and on to Darwin, then they pedalled south to Adelaide and crossed the Nullarbor to the west. They were the first female cyclists to cross the Nullarbor, but by then they had already attracted the attention of the press and were dubbed the “girl cyclists” as they drew crowds in every city they passed through. Their trip also featured on Movietone News.

With sponsorship from the bicycle company and little other money, the pair earned their way doing a variety of jobs, including working in a fruit-canning factory, helping on a cattle station and modelling in city stores. They sold sandwiches and ate lots of complimentary Peters ice-cream; the company was another of their sponsors.

Danger was a constant companion: their bikes had neither brakes nor gears, which made hill climbs particularly demanding; and they were attacked twice as they slept.

The first attack took place near Mount Kosciuszko and neither was injured. In the later attack, in Darwin, they were sleeping in a church hall when Duncan awoke to find a man grabbing her by the throat and threatening to kill her. But the barking of their dog, Peter – an inseparable companion they had picked up along the way – brought the vicar to the rescue. Duncan was always miffed that her attacker was fined £10 for unlawful entry but only £5 for molesting her.

Taking police advice, they bought a small revolver but confessed to being more afraid of it than anything or anyone else. They did, however, practise shooting at gum trees.

Law kept a diary of their journey and more than 60 years later expanded it into her book, With Bags and Swags: Around Australia in the Forties (2008).

Wendy Law was born on August 26, 1926 in Hamilton, Victoria, the youngest of six children of Arthur Law, an inspector of schools and later principal of Melbourne Teachers College, and his wife, Lillie (nee Chapman). One of her three brothers, Phillip Law, a scientist and explorer, was director of the Australian Antarctic Division, for which he led 28 expeditions.

After Wendy left University High, she became a secretary at radio 3KZ and was an integral part of the team that presented the first Carols by Candlelight in Melbourne.

Soon after completing the epic journey, she headed to Borneo to visit her brother, Pete, who worked for Shell. She loved Borneo and found herself a job in Kota Kinabalu, where she met and married Brian Suart, an English engineer. After their marriage, they moved around the world for many years with Cable and Wireless.

Adventurous … Wendy Law Suart, left, and Shirley Duncan in 2008. Photo: Paul Rovere

Following Brian’s death in 1990, Suart widened her life of music and writing by resuming her wanderlust, travelling to Bulgaria, Antarctica, the Amazon, Yangtze and Irrawaddy rivers, from Tierra del Fuego to China and Russia, as well as trips to Borneo, Hong Kong and Melbourne. She played piano, having had lessons in her youth from jazz pianist Graeme Bell. For 11 years – until a few weeks before she died – she played piano at an antiques warehouse in England. In recent years she released a CD, I’ve Heard that Song Before, featuring 46 tunes from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

Wendy Suart is survived by her children Phillip, Rowan, Jonathan, Joanna, Peter and James, seven grandchildren, her brother Pete and many nieces and nephews throughout Australia.

Mike Schwarzkopf secured the overall win in his category – congratulations. He worked hard for it and I’m sure will do well as he moves up to Cat 2.

Not so lucky were Hirem and Nathan. Both missed their races due to unfortunate circumstances. For Nathan that had major consequences. He missed the overall win in the Pro category by just 7 points. Still, 2nd place is incredible – congratulations as well.

Congratulations to Kim Davis, Madeleine Bruno, Gary Rogers, and Andy Puentes who finished in the top-ten for the season overall.

For the first time TMBRA offered the Super D format as another option to the racers and 45 took advantage of it. Racers were on the same 4x 4-mile course as the Pros.

Shiner rounded things off with some free beer. It can’t get much better than that.

Cat 3 Women 40-99
2nd Kim Davis

Cat 3 Women 11-12
5th Madeleine Bruno

Cat 3 Men 30-39
3rd Mike Schwarzkopf

Cat 2 Men 50-99
9th Bob Sparacino

Cat 2 Men 15-18
8th Eric Labod

SingleSpeed Cat 2/3
2nd Chris Labod
4th Andy Puentes
5th Gary Rogers

SingleSpeed Open
4th Mike Aguayo

Below are the top ten finisher in the 2012 Texas XC Mountain Bike State Championship Series.

Cat 3 Women 40-99
7th Kim Davis

Cat 3 Women 11-12
7th Madeleine Bruno

Cat 3 Men 30-39
1st Mike Schwarzkopf

Cat 2 Men 30-34
7th Gary Rogers

SingleSpeed Cat 2/3
4th Andy Puentes

Pro
2nd Nathan Winkelmann

You’ll find pictures of the event here and a cool little video here.

Seth, severely dehydrated and with a flat, finished the race in 2:30 hours.

It sure was warm enough last Saturday and the course was tough. I haven’t looked at my data yet, but those who pre-rode the course said, it’s around 3,000 feet of climbing. Sounds about right.

A couple of team members had bad luck. Mike ran into a Cat 3 rider who decided to pre-ride the course in the wrong direction while the Cat 1 raced. Mike is OK, but DNFed after the crash. Seth overheated so bad that he walked the last 4-5 miles. He still finished, but was in pretty bad shape. I’m certain, he would have sold me his bike for $1 at that point.

There were also some problems with the course markings. Instead of doing the same lap twice, volunteers changed barriers as soon as the last rider in a category passed certain points on the course. A neat idea, but in practice this caused several problems.

First for dumb riders like myself: I though a couple of times that I missed a turn because I felt like I rode sections two or three times even though they said the two loops would be different.

Second, it made it virtually impossible to pre-ride the course as Dave “happily” confirmed after the race.

And finally, it turned out that they had trouble rerouting riders in time. For example the first two in my category rode 1.5 miles less than the rest. They would have won anyway, I’m sure, but their times are off quite a bit compared to everybody else.
As I said, nice idea, but sometimes keeping it simple makes more sense.

In any case, it was a great race. Here are our top ten finishers:

Pro
7th Nathan Winkelmann

SingleSpeed Cat 2/3
6th Chris Labod
8th Andy Puentes

Mike Schwarzkopf took 2nd in his class. He’s still a race behind the leaders in the overall results, but should make up for that at the next race. Adding Pay Dirt points to that will most likely secure the series title for him.

Andy Puentes cracked another helmet when he crashed just two miles before the finish line. He lost two spots, but still got 7th place.

All of our riders that made it out to Pace Bend ended up in the top ten – congratulations.

Pro
1st Nathan Winkelmann

SingleSpeed 2/4
7th Andy Puentes

Cat 2 Men 50-99
8th Bob Sparacino

Cat 3 Men 30-39
2nd Mike Schwarzkopf

The race that almost didn’t happen… on the eve of our race weekend, the National Forest Service decided to close all trails in the Sam Houston National Forest due to drought stricken hazard trees. That includes the Double Lake area. Fortunately GHORBA was able to receive a waiver for the race.

“We had 460 racers, none was hit by falling trees. Quite a few of us hit trees, but none fell down”, as Kevin Highfield wrote in an email this morning.

Quite a few team members showed up to race or to support the team and it was nice to see everybody. Even though we didn’t win in any category, everybody placed well.

Mike Aguayo raced with the Pros, when he saw another rider clipping Eric Fleming’s handlebar in an attempt to pass him on a jeep road and causing him to crash. Eric went over his bars and landed hard on his helmet, actually splitting it in two. Everybody just continued their race, while Mike stopped to look after Eric who was in major pain until help arrived. Mike showed world class sportsmanship and represented the team in the best way possible.

Here is the list of top ten finishers:

Pro Men
9th Mike Aguayo

Cat 3 Women 40-99
4th Kim Davis

Cat 3 Women 11-12
4th Madeleine Bruno

Cat 1 Women 19-39
5th Mary Gilmer

Cat 3 Men 1-10
10th Cameron Koen

Cat 2 Men 45-49
8th Mark Fraske

Cat 2 Men 35-39
4th Kelly Simmons

Cat 2 Men 30-34
4th Gary Rogers

Cat 2 Men 15-18
5th Eric Labod

Cat 1 Men 30-39
9th Kevin Fontenot (even though he’s much older)

Single Speed Cat 2/3
6th Chris Labod
8th Seth Montgomery

Our own Papa Rudy posted pictures of the event here.

You find the complete list of results here.

Let me introduce you to the Bike Butterfly. It’s selling points…
• More visible – The BB’s 3.5 sqm wingspan makes you easy to see.
• Slow down fast – The ultra light nylon/kevlar fabric acts as a wind-break.
• Hard to forget – Once experienced, pedestrians will always look out.

But see for yourself…

Oh, and in case you’re one of the few that would like to order one, here is the link to their website.