Coach Alisha

Alisha says: For the past three months I have been coaching a small cross country team for a charter school called Basis here in Tucson. The school was recently ranked among the top ten high school programs in the nation by Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report for academics. The schools main focus is obviously academics but they also provide many athletic opportunities for the students. I had a small group of really fun kids that ranged from 5-9th grade with a wide spread of talent. I put on four meets at Reid Park where we invited runners from other charter schools to attend. The meets were small but my runners always looked forward to racing the other kids. It was fun and a challenge to map out and mark the courses for the meets. The courses were marked with a combination of flags and paint and could not be permanent, because of this I had one meet where some kids picked up a section of the flags during one of the races. Luckily I noticed and was able to direct the runners in the right direction. We had some fast races that came down to a close sprint for the finish. The season is now over and most of the kids are now playing soccer.

The Vacuum

Alisha says: We both had a couple of big days on the bike last weekend. Dave did a ride up Mt. Lemmon with his Trisports team during their TriFest. They had quite the big group. Dave had fun racing some out of towners. I think he looks like a vacuum in one of the pictures.

Saturday we rode the Shootout. There was a crazy amount of people, around 185, and things were a bit sketchy for awhile. Once people got spread out it was much better. We also rode Madera Canyon and then rolled back into town with a brisk tailwind averaging around 30mph with a nice group of about 20.

Dave has spring break this week so he has been doing some things around the house, working on his research, riding, and relaxing a little.

Let the Traveling Begin

Stage one road race

Peanut Butter teamwork in the crit

Cold, wet, soggy, stage four

I love these girls: Olivia, Alisha, Kmac, Alison, Cari, Coryn, Lauren, Tayler, Katie

Alisha says: I just returned from an almost three week trip to northern California. First, I kicked things off at a four day camp in Santa Rosa. We worked on a lot of skills, ate a lot of really good gluten free food, had an epic day of climbing, and stayed at a really great host house. Our hosts, the Madison's were such a fun family and took such good care of Tayler and I. When we arrived and there were little goody baskets on our beds, I knew we were in good hands.

Part two of the trip took me to Mill Valley for Peanut Butter & Co/Twenty12 Team Camp. It was really fun to have the whole team together. We were spoiled as we got our new Felt bikes, tons of sweet Pearl Izumi clothes, and countless other sponsor swag. It was like Christmas. We spent some quality time in the saddle pedaling through amazing scenery in the hills and along the coast. We also had many very informative presentations from our amazing sponsors. We have some great equipment this year. Thanks to Pearl Izumi, DZ nuts, Felt, Rocktape, Defeet, Clif, Lezyne, Catlike, Oakley, ZIPP, and Peanut Butter & Co.

Part three included traveling to Merced, CA for the Merco 4 Stage Cycling Classic. The first day was a great road race that was both beautiful and challenging. The team worked great to set up our general classification riders for the rest of the week. Alison Starnes threw down an amazing time trial in stage two to move into the yellow jersey. Stage three was a downtown criterium that featured a 180 hairpin turn. The team rode great to defend the jersey. I don't think I've ever spent as much time in the front of a crit as I did during this one :). Coryn sprinted to a second place finish on the stage. The final stage turned out to be a soggy wet road race. I was put to work right away defending the yellow jersey and worked until I got popped from the group when some massive accelerations came. I hate that feeling. Lauren sprinted for third and Alison finished with the group to win the overall. It was a great team effort and a super start to the season. For some better race recaps check out our team blog http://proman-paradigm.blogspot.com/2011/03/stage-1-tetrick-starnes-debut-brings.html.

After the race it was a dash to the airport, packing bikes, delayed flights, and finally getting home at 1:30am. I was excited to see Dave and even teased him that I had forgotten what he looked like :)