Featured Rider: Andrew Gustafson
One of the more fun aspects of running our tours to exotic destinations is the riders we get to meet; as well as hearing their life stories. It’s always impressive to see someone accomplish their goals, set records, and win medals or awards … and even more impressive when someone overcomes some tough challenges and horrendous crashes to return to our sport.

Maybe what keeps many of us in this sport, is the ability to push our limits every now and then … as well as learning from those efforts what we’re capable of in other parts of our life.

I’m more impressed by a ‘recreational’ rider that gives close to 100% in a hard, local century (even if it takes 6 or 7 hours) than a top-notch pro racer that gives only 75% in a Euro classic.

Andrew Gustafson is a rider that has faced two major crashes in the past couple of years - including one that featured a helicopter rider to the U.C.L.A. medical center after a face-off with a motorcycle (yes, ouch!). Just talking to Andrew about the huge number of broken bones, physical injuries, and hospital stay(s) hurts.

But you can tell that Andrew is going to be up and running (er, cycling) full strength in short order if his recent stay on Maui with us is any indication. He’s going to be cranking out (no pun intended) lots of double centuries in the years ahead - he has plenty of miles and years left to capture a few more triple challenge jerseys to add to his current collection; after all, he’s only 69.

There’s a saying that “it takes a long time to become young”, and Andrew proved this every day of our Maui Triple Challenge …

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.