Practice, practice, practice is the mantra of 13-year-old Firethorne resident Madeleine McDuff, a highly focused young cyclist training for her first-ever national junior cycling competition later this summer.<\/p>\n
The 5-foot, 2-inch seventh grader, founder and president of the Beckendorff Junior High School Cycling Club in Katy, practices three to four times a week for up to 50 miles.\u00c2\u00a0 She works with her trainer, former National Cycling Champion and U.S. Team Member Garth Blackburn (of Sugar Land), rides with the Katy-based Team Spincycle, an adult team that pedals 30 miles every Sunday morning, and cross-trains during the off-season at Firethorne to gear up for the USA Cycling Junior National Track Championships this August at the ADT Event Center in Carson, CA.<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I race competitively (on track and road) because I want to,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Madeleine, whose enthusiasm for the competitive sport spills over into recreational cycling.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wanted to start a non-competitive cycling club at school so kids will ride with their families and get exercise \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not just play video games,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she explained.\u00c2\u00a0 She noted that cycling seems to be catching on with high school students, too; Katy High recently started a cycling club.<\/p>\n
The Katy native was introduced to cycling at age 9 when her godfather, Katy-based internist and veteran cyclist Dr. Mark Bing, took her to the Alkek Velodrome to ride.\u00c2\u00a0 Dr. Bing, physician for Katy I.S.D. football and wrestling teams, is a Team Spincycle member who loves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to put people on bikes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to Timothy McDuff, Madeleine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father, fellow Team Spincycle member and close friend of the doctor.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought cycling was cool,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Madeleine, who at the time was thoroughly immersed in the dance world, devoting her non-school hours to ballet, tap, ballroom and especially flamenco. She once danced on stage at the Wortham Theater with the Maria Del Espadin flamenco group at the opening of the Houston Grand Opera performance of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Carmen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
By age 10, however, Madeleine began to shift her focus to cycling and, as her mother, Libby McDuff, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153really got into it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the 2007-08 school year, Madeleine had the idea to start a cycling club at her junior high school.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We have a running club and a golf club, so why not a cycling club?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she asked.\u00c2\u00a0 She met with Principal Ted Vierling, who explained she had permission to register a school club if she had a sponsoring teacher.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did she recruit history teacher Rainey Richardson as the sponsor, but she recruited Richardson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two daughters, Ragan and Kate, to join as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Another Team Beckendorff Cycling Club member is Carley Roseberry, a neighbor at Firethorne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Practice, practice, practice is the mantra of 13-year-old Firethorne resident Madeleine McDuff, a highly focused young cyclist training for her first-ever national junior cycling competition later this summer. The 5-foot, 2-inch seventh grader, founder and president of the Beckendorff Junior …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[305,304,303,54],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-adt-event-center","tag-madeleine-mcduff","tag-national-junior-cycling-championships","tag-track-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4tok-eH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texbiker.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}