For many it’s the greatest week of the year! For those few (thousand) students who like a drink or two its time to party all week…and why? Because of a bike race? Amazing!
For those who choose to race then it’s a week filled with anticipation and nerves that will culminate in the Womens (Friday 4pm) and Mens (Saturday 2pm) Little 500 races. In the past few weeks seven Tortugans have been riding in circles as they participate in preliminary events leading up to the main race. On the Mens side the teams of both Jon Palak (Wright Cycling) and Ren-Jay Shei (Black Key Bulls) safely qualified for their race and both riders performed well in the ITT and Miss and Out events. Last Saturday was ‘team pursuit’ where Jon was the driving force in his teams strong showing whereas Ren-jay was a vital cog in the well-oiled BKB machine that scorched around the track to a 5th place finish!
On the women’s side it has been a case of domination, utter domination and complete domination for ‘Team Teter’ over the past 3 weeks! Sarah Rieke, Erin Hetzel, Sydney Hatten and Jackie Moeller laid down a spectacular early marker by securing the pole position for the women’s race by an unprecedented 6 seconds! This was just a sign of things to come as through ITTs and ‘Miss and Out’, Teter continued to dominate. This was highlighted by placing four girls in the six rider final that resulted in Sarah and Erin taking the top two positions. The ‘piece de resistance’ (so far) certainly came on Saturday as Teter stormed to victory in team pursuit, in the process setting a time that compared well with the fastest ever. The sight of the riders in tight formation in their newly designed multi-colored kits was reminiscent of the successful 1990s ‘Mapei’ professional squad (but without the implications of drug use)!

So with Teter as the white-hot favorites for the Women’s Little500 and with BKB amongst the favorites in the Men’s, the stage is set for further success this coming weekend! Favorites have been beaten before but Team Teter are so composed and talented it’s difficult to see that happening this time around! Good luck to all the student Tortugans!

In the mid 1980s we would think nothing of pooling a few dollars together, telling our bosses at the bike shop, or construction site or restaurant that we needed a couple of weeks off and drive our old Volkswagen van straight through for 20 hours to southern Florida for some ‘road work’ with the locals. Favorite Atlantic coast ports of call included Boynton Beach, West Palm Beach and Rivera Beach. As long as ‘beach’ was in the name it was a destination. Fortunately, each of these stops also landed us in the middle of route A1A, the Florida equivalent of the Pacific Coast Highway, just a lot flatter. We would take turns driving through the night, perfecting the driver-exchange on the fly-kids, don’t try this-where the current driver would slide under the incoming driver, keeping his foot on the gas and one hand on the wheel until the new driver took control. Most of us would wake up when the van came to a stop at some unlucky relative’s driveway.

Continue reading Spring “Broke,” or Beach Blanket Big Ring-o

The first race of the year is always a nervous time with my main aims of keeping it rubber side down and not getting dropped (looking like a total hack donkey)!  L’espirit RR in Louisville this last weekend was a great opener with warmish weather and a benign, safe course. Riding in the Cat3/4 was a great fit for me as the 70-rider bunch wasn’t as twitchy as it may have been in the Cat4/5 event but the pace wasn’t enough for me to fall foul of the great dropping fear!
Fitting with the course the racing was rather steady with a break of maybe 3, maybe 4, maybe 5 or maybe 6 riders heading up the road early and not being chased hard by anyone in the bunch. Of some surprise to me was that if anything, I didn’t work hard enough as when I did take off the front on the only rise of the race (with about 5 miles to go) I was involved in the racing until the very end. As there was no money or glory on the line (due to the break up the road), I decided to police the front of the bunch ‘Hinault-like’ until the final corner which I went into in 3rd position.
Great position I think you’ll agree..…which would be even better if I had a sprint! Subsequently 30 riders passed me by as with their thrashing legs and bumping handlebars they competed for the glory of 10th place in an early season no money, no points race! Nice job guys (sarcasm attached!). It was greatly enjoyable start to the race year and has lit a fire under me to do significantly more racing than I did last year!
Added to that- it was 65F the next day so Gary, Tom, Bruce, Dave and I got in a great 60miler south of town!!