Poor College Kids RR & Mothballs Crit 2010

Normally, I'd twiddle away a few hours on a Monday writing a blog post about the weekend races and sneaking in a recovery ride before my weekly business meeting. (Not sure which should be higher priority among those three things...)

But, with much rain on the way later this week, I cannot sacrifice the time for carefully crafted scribbling, so you're gonna get a blast of brief bullets and a few random pictures.

Poor College Kids RR

* First off, congratulations to a great group of "kids" from UCSB for putting on such a nice race. I hope they realize how much their effort is appreciated, and what a good job they did.

* P/1/2: Platinum had the largest team and so we immediately went on the offensive with Ben "The Hammer" Haldeman taking off from the gun in this two-lap 67-mile race. We adequately annoyed the rest of the chasing field (about 40 riders) allowing Ben to reach a couple minute lead. After 20 miles or so, ex-Platinum C-Walk got clear with Chesta-san along in tow and they bridged up to Ben. A little oopsy in the turn around took out Chester, so a fatigued Ben spent most of the second lap alone with the fresher Vampy, who eventually got clear on the hills heading back to the finish. Congrats to a strong Chris for the win. Meanwhile Matt had gotten clear and made it up to Ben with several other riders, including an inspired Craig Nunes from SLO and always-aggressive Mark Shimahara. A km out from the finish, Craig surged and only Mark could match him and they finished 2nd and 3rd, with Matt and Ben close behind for 4th and 5th. Gary D'Velo came in 9th surround by pros and such, and the rest of us Cookie, Adrian, HeyRon, and me rolled in clustered around 20th.

* Masters races: KK won the 55+, solo, and Platinum had Kim Bleth and Jon Miller in the field. Dave Worthington won the 45+, solo, from a strong field. The 35+ looked like a real war, with the first 3-4 riders coming in solo after hand-to-hand combat (Rudy Napolitano won, DeMarchi 2nd; Mark Noble 3rd). Jamie Paolinetti won the field sprint, and that was the only decent picture I took:


* Women 3/4 -- Awesome race by Chicken Ranchers Susie Willett and Jane Faulkner for going 1st and 2nd!! This, even after Jane had to bridge back up to the front after the hill. So cool.

Mothballs crit

* Masters 45+: So fun to have a large group of teammates to race with. We were active early and often, and worked well together. I had hoped to be fresh near the end and help keep our sprinters up front, but when a nice move by Chris Black and Tom Anhalt got caught, I had to counter. (You've got to attack after a teammate gets caught!) So I shot my wad for a few laps and was no help in the finale. It turned out that HeyRon and Choo-choo stayed up front just fine and sprinted to 5th and 8th among some very fast and accomplished company (Glenon 1st; John Walsh 2nd; Dave Lettieri 3rd; Peter Sullivan 4th).

* Masters 35+: More powerful riding by Platinum with Cookie in almost every move of the race, and still he and Gary drove the final couple laps to keep Keith in nice position to sprint for 3rd. DeMarchi won a close one.

Brian leading a split in 35+:


Final sprint in 35+:
As always, click on the pics for a larger view.

* Junior 16-17: Are we seeing a juniors revival in bike racing? The fields are getting bigger and they are racing fast and smart. Local boy Taylor Clements got himself out there and looked great getting 2nd:

...in front of a quality field:

...Echelon junior Ben Barthel rode strong:


* Also notable, Taylor's brother Tosh got 3rd at Mothballs and 6th at PCKRR in the cat 5s in his first-ever weekend of racing. Nice start!!

* Mothballs p/1/2/3: For this one, I'm going to steal Adrian Gerrits race report to the team list. Hopefully his copyright lawyers won't come after me!
Team Platinum lined up for the 75 minute crit along side notable pros Rashaan Bahati, Hilton Clarke and Cody O'reilly. Our plan was to try to cover moves with two guys and make aggressive attacks to get a break going so we didn't end up trying to outsprint the aforementioned riders. The plan went very well. We had a couple of riders at the front at all times covering attacks and blocking for teammates. At one point or another I think most of the team was in a some sort of break. Dubberley covered some good moves and started a couple of breaks, Chester, Ben, Mark and Gary were always up there covering moves as well. The rest of the guys were doing a superb job of keeping the pack in control. With about 20 minutes left, I made an attack after the first corner and before I knew it, 4 other guys including Clarke were hammering away. I was pretty shot but managed to hang on and do my share in the break. We managed to get 30 seconds on the field and I got 5th out of 5...I'll work on not getting last next time. Good race guys. Thanks for the write-up, Adrian.

I was disappointed to flat with 5 or 6 laps left because I felt good and would have liked to help one of our sprinters get in good position. My second flat of the day on brand new tires! But until then, the race was a blast. I even had Hilton Clarke on my wheel once or twice ...obviously he feared my speed. Haha.


Dang, even that took too long. Now it's time to ride. Later I will add more pictures perhaps, or maybe they'll go on Facebook ...I'm a spaz at this 21st-century computer stuff.

Oh, I forgot... some links for other peoples race pictures (much better than mine):

From John Goodman

From Michael Krauchi

++++++++++

[add/edit]
OK, I'm sure soon enough that results will be on scnca and SoCalCycling, but since they're not posted yet, I'll put put these up temporarily. Click to enlarge for reading. Sorry I didn't get them all, but I had a camera fail (or brain fail more likely...)

PCK RR results (partial):








Mothballs results (partial):