My name is Jackson Hootman and I am a 17 year old cyclist born in Utah but raised in colorful Colorado. I race road for the Prestige Imports Cycling Development Team, one of the up and coming development teams in the country. The purpose of this post is to simply introduce myself so current and future readers can have a better understanding of my perspective as a racer.
 |
| Warm up fun |
 |
| Crit racing in Arizona |
Cycling has played a large role in my life thus far. It has kept me motivated and has taught me a lot about setting and achieving personalized goals. After heart surgery at the age of 3 and stomach surgery at the age of 16, cycling was the only thing that pushed me to stay healthy and maintain an active lifestyle. In addition, when school gets stressful, cycling is always there to provide an outlet. When I ride my bike, I'm taken to a whole different world. I truly owe a lot to this sport. It has opened me up to a community and to a lifestyle that I have cherished for the last couple of years and will hopefully continue to cherish for the rest of my life.
I have been riding my bike for as long as I can remember but I just started racing 3 years ago. After a slow first year, I've been able to achieve a lot of my goals these last 2 racing seasons. I've won a race out of state, gone to nationals twice, podiumed at a state championships road race, and I also had the opportunity to race for Team USA at the Colorado Junior Challenge. Even though I am proud of what I have achieved, I still think I have a lot to learn and still have a lot of room for improvement. This is the aspect of cycling I look most forward to exploring in my future posts. In general, I'm planning for this blog to act as a catalog of my struggles and successes as an athlete, embedded with lessons for fellow cyclists. As I grow and learn, I hope readers will learn alongside me.
Thanks for reading. You'll be hearing from me again soon.
Jackson Hootman
No comments:
Post a Comment