Another State Championship

On September 23rd, another one of my coached athletes won a State Championship. Joseph LaCour won the Texas State Match Sprint State Championship by beating Ryan Nelman. Nelman got 2nd last year in the match sprints elite nationals and is a elite national champion in the team sprint, and a former jhunior national champ, so this was an exellent win for Joe. Hopefully he'll send me a photo of himslef in a state champ jersey real soon!

Team, Coached Athletes have a Great TT

This last weekend was a good one for me and my team. Saturday morning was the Fiesta Island Team Time Trial. This is where all of the local teams come out to see who is the fastest, and the team that wins gets bragging right for the whole next year. We new that the Cyclingscience.org team would be one of th fastest, and saw the DeWalt tools team as our closest rivals. I, along with team Sponsor Gabe French of Gabe French Plumbing. went out there to put a clock on top teams, and let our boys know where they were. THe boys started out a few seconds slower on the first 2 of 8 laps, buyt they kept it nice and steady while the other teams faded, and the CyclinScience.org team put in the fastest time of the day by over 40 Seconds.

Sunday was the individual 20K TT
The day started out well with team rider Chris Daggs getting second in the mens 30-39 category by going ovr 27MPH for 20K.

Two of my coahced athletes put in new personal records for the day, with 17 YO Zac Stein completeing the distance in 30 minutes flat ( and only a 12 seconds from appodium place).

Steve Scott DESTROYED his last PR by 40 seconds, with a time of 28:30. Steve has taken about 3 minutes off of his 20K time in the last 2 years, and it is great to see him continually improve.

Rich Pearson Wins State Champ Citerium

Rich Pearson is my newest featured athlete, and theere is more about him a couple of entries down. I've been coaching Rich since about February of this year. Rich has had a great season with many podium places, but had still not gotten that elusive win. The most frustrating parrt was that it was the same guy beating him almost every time. Rich hit the Masters State Championship races with top form, but it was still going to be tough to beat the guy that been getting him almost every time(not to mention beating all the other masters riders vying for the state champinship). So a few days before the race Rich and I had a conversation about how he could finally beat not only the rest of the feild, but also his "arch nemesis", the Penguin to Rich's Batman.... ;-)

Saturday afternoon, I was excited to get this email:

Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2006 18:07:19 -0500
From: "Rich XXXX"
To: "Sean Burke"
Subject: race results

Sean--I finally beat XXXXXX and won the state
championship for
nebraska masters 55+!! Heres the race report.....

Rich has been working hard all since the later winter/early, and I was honored to help him win his biggest race of the year. Hopefully I'll get a photo of Rich in a State Champ jersey to post some time soon.