Mayor's Bike Ride

From Graham Howard:

Last Wednesday I attended The Mayor's Bike Ride, a community event held at John Ball Park in down town Grand Rapids. This gathering built on the success of a Grand Rapids Bicycle Summit, an event aimed at making Grand Rapids more bicycle friendly, which was held a week earlier at the GVSU campus.

Local cycling supporters, enthusiasts, businesses, racers and families came by John Ball Park on Wednesday to support and to help showcase what is a very strong and enthusiastic cycling community in Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell attended the event as well and led two bicycle rides, a one mile kids ride around John Ball Park and a 5 mile ride through downtown Grand Rapids.

Roughly 150 people attended the event and probably about that many brought out their bikes and went on the ride around downtown. There were kids on training wheels, BMX racers, mountain bikers, fixed gears, tandems, bikes with dogs in crates strapped on the back and even a few guys perched up high on old fashioned bicycles. The event was a great way to get Grand Rapids bicycle lovers of all sorts in the same place at the same time and will hopefully lead to steps towards creating bicycle lanes on Grand Rapids streets, among other things, and a more bicycle friendly Grand Rapids.

Photos by Josh Duggan
Lots more here

Dana Point Grand Prix

Recap by Eric Wohlberg:

Great location, course.

After watching pretty much every field crash in the last 2 corners and plus the fact that Rock had a full contingent, we weren't too keen to contribute to a field sprint.

From the gun, we were very active with Andy/Frank applying pressure to Rock. There were several small moves but nothing would get more than 10-15 secs as both Colavita and Rock were controlling for a field sprint.

With 10 laps to go, Kirk made a excellent surge, and a 5 man move went clear.

The gap opened quickly as Rock got organized behind it and started riding.

However, they were having trouble pulling it back and got some help from OUCH and Garmin (which is mystifying).

The field was back together at 2 to go, and Colavita had control with Cody sitting nicely at the back of their train.

On the final stretch, Rassan Bahati smoked the last two corners, the Colavita lead out train, and the field for the win.

Cody had a great finish for 5th overall.

Eric

West Coast Collegiate Cycling Conference Championships UC Davis

Report by Paul Mach:

Had some good racing this weekend at the collegiate conference championships in Davis. Here is the 411.

Saturday morning team time trial. My team has been winning without me by minutes all season so we weren't too worried. We won, I don't know by how much

Saturday afternoon road race. 4x20 miles with a 4 mile gravel section. UC Davis had 1of 2 guys off the front with 1 lap to go. 3 Davis guys bridged up to make it 4 of 5. We worked the other guy over and us 4 rolled across the line together. I got second.

Sunday's Crit, 60min, 6 corners in downtown Davis. Rode hard. Spent the second half in a break, attacked with 5 to go. Soloed to the win.

Ended up 2nd in the season long individual omnium even thought I only did 5 regular season races, that was unexpected. UC Davis won the team omnium.

Yeah, I know it's no NRC racing, but it sure does build the confidence before Gila.

Tour of the Battenkill – Day 2

Report by Frank Pipp:

Day 2 of Battenkill. The big one. Yesterday was the “warm up” and Zirbel did his part for the BISSELL team. The rest of us weren’t much help sitting in the bunch about 20 minutes back! Today we hoped to stack the odds a little more in our favor.

Race started out with plenty of attacking and eventually a little move went clear with 2 riders. No problem, not a chance a little duo was going to stay away on this course. This course being 2 laps of 100 km. Each lap containing about 4500 feet of elevation gain and 25 km of gravel roads. A total of 9000 feet of climbing and 50 km of gravel. Good times!

Back to the race... First lap after the 2 riders departed from the peloton the rest of us got to know the course a little better (we did one lap of it yesterday.) There was some splitting up but most everyone regrouped after the more difficult sections. Unfortunately on one of those rough sections, first Sheldon and then Zirb’s flatted. Sheldon got a wheel change and was able to get back on but Tom was left standing on the side of the road with wheel in hand. Apparently a spectator was kind enough to give him a tube so that he could ride back to the hotel. Hitting the showers early!

Second lap the pace heated up with one of the teams sending all of their riders to the front. Eventually they must have decided this course was too much for a chase because they started launching their riders off the front one by one. Eventually one did get clear and that was the end of the chase. The pace slowed way down and I began to wonder if we were now racing for 4th place. Others must have been asking that same question because soon enough the attacks started again and a group of 3 got away. And that was when the bunch decided enough was enough- the pace became steady as a chase began. We sent first Omer, then Sheldon, to take part. The boys did well and brought this group back and that’s when the real fireworks started.

30 km to race, and not an easy 30 km! Of the 8 dirt sections, 4 of them were left with plenty of climbing in each one. And at 170 km in, every time the road turned upwards or the tires slipped on the gravel you felt it! With Sheldon and Omer having done their work, Graham and I took turns covering attacks. The group rapidly trimmed down and soon there were only a handful of us in the front with dozens of others always trying to catch up from behind. With about 20 km left to race, we caught one of the original 2 that had gone away early in the race. Only 2 up the road now, both solo, one somewhat fresh and one that had been away all day. Back in the dwindling group the bombs never stopped. Everyone was taking their turn. Soon Graham was playing the catch up game. 2 gravel sections left and my legs were feeling every pedal stroke. Knowing the suffering everyone was going through I attempted a couple of digs, but nothing happening. Then it was my turn to be calling wait up! Coming from behind is never the way to race and after several efforts doing this the legs were no longer there. Before entering the last dirt section I could only watch as some of the favorites rode away from our group. One of those ended up catching the 2nd place rider on the road, but no one ever saw the one sole leader- out front all day, much of that solo. Impressive. I finished in a group of 15 or so, what was left of the “peloton.” Good for a mediocre 13th place on the day. Graham ended up 32nd. Omer and Sheldon finished the day together in a group further back. Not quite what the Bissell team was hoping for but I think this race turned out more difficult than most of us planned! Of the 160 starters there were 62 finishers. We are already looking forward to some redemption next year!

More photos here.

Tour of the Battenkill

From Tom Zirbel:

A small contingent of racers were sent out to NY to race the Tour of Battenkill this past weekend. It was just Graham and the CO boys: Omer, Sheldon, Pipp, and myself. We're talking old school style here - no massages, cleaning and maintaining our own bikes, hauling ourselves around, etc. The kind of stuff that Glen and Eric did back in the day when they would carry extra inflated tubes around their shoulders and have to flip their wheel around if they wanted to use the other gear. Anyhow, racing unsupported is a good way to help us spoiled pros realize how good we've got it for the majority of races. Plus, we did have an arrangement with the Empire Cycling Team so they would hand us bottles in the feed zone - that was crucial for those long brutal courses. So being as Sun. was the premier event, the plan for Saturday's race was to be represented in all breaks, get a good look at the course (same as Sun.) and try to conserve energy if possible for the 200km throw down the next day. 2 out of 3 isn't bad, is it? Unexpectedly, the 2nd attack of the day stayed away to the finish and I was the lucky winner from the Bissell team to be represented in it. There were 13 of us at first and I was a little outnumbered with 5 different teams having more than one rider in the break, so I had a good excuse to just sit on for the first 40 min. or so. Then BMC started to get wise to the situation and sent Jon Garcia up the road solo. Though only halfway through the race, people were already starting to get tired so I started pulling through to keep his lead in check. The course started to take its toll on the riders little by little be it the long gravel sections, the steep climbs, or just flat tires and soon the break was whittled down to less than 10. With less than 20 miles to go, I took a long, slightly uphill gravel section to do some "visualization" where I pretended that I was Boonen turning the screws on the lead group at Roubaix. It was about a 3 min. effort and when I looked back everyone was still there and I had a "Well, I'm not quite a Boonen just yet" thought. But on the next riser, I attacked again and it was quickly down to 5 guys, so I'd like to think that my visualization did some damage. :) Beyer from BMC and I took turns attacking after that and it came down to Josh Dillon, Beyer and myself with 4k of flat to go. Unfortunately, Dillon flatted out so it was left to Beyer and me, and Beyer played the team card saying that his teammate (Garcia) was chasing so he couldn't pull through. Garcia was sitting on a group of 3 coming back to us fast so instead of trying the sprint in a group of 5, I took the initiative to make it a 2 man sprint and after pulling the last 1500m, Beyer came around me in the end to take the win. I was bummed not to take the victory, but I knew that I would have to come to the line solo if I wanted a sure win and Beyer showed his strength by not getting dropped during my attacks and fighting to the finish. A podium is always nice though and the quart of local chocolate milk that they gave each of us on the podium was so creamy and delicious that it helped wash away that bitter taste in my mouth from getting 2nd.

Tom

BISSELL Team Dominates Copperopolis

From Ben Jacques-Maynes:

The BISSELL pro cycling team headed out to remote Milton CA for the Nor-Cal Classic Copperopolis Road Race. Sunny skies belied cool temps and breezy conditions making for perfect racing conditions for the five grueling laps and a total of 105 miles. Toeing the line for team BISSELL was Andy and Ben Jacques-Maynes, Tim Farnham, Pete Latham (in his return to the road after the track world championships) and a rare appearance by director Eric Wohlberg.

A group of three attacked from the gun, but experienced racers knew that this was not the course to spend too much energy too soon. We sat in for the first lap and part of the second, at which point it was time to start racing. I hit out after a previous attack and bridged up directly, and when no one else came after us we set about tracking down the original breakaway, now three minutes up the road. We combined with them and stayed away for another 60k, when defending champ Levi Leipheimer of Astana rode across on the main climb, taking three riders with him including AJM. Over the next half lap the race came slowly back together, and a disinterested peleton of 25 was together. It seemed most were content to wait for Levi to hit out on the final climb, so I attacked again and got a quick gap, this time with Scott Nydam of BMC. We extended our gap to 1:30 before Levi was curiously DQ'd for a centerline violation, at which point there was not enough firepower to close down the gap on such an arduous course. Scott and I worked evenly but the sting was out of our legs and so we waited for a sprint to the line. Scott lead out but I had enough to come around him for the win, tired but triumphant. To cap it off, Andy attacked his chase group to finish a clear third, putting two BISSELL riders on the podium at the "Hell of the Nor-Cal". Pete showed his fitness by finishing in the top 15, a great result considering the highest climb he's done recently was up a track banking, and Tim and Eric showed their never say die attitudes by fighting to the finish.

Copperopolis

From Ben Jacques-Maynes:

We rode well, I was in 2 breaks and ended up going to the line with nydam, came around for the win. Andy attacked the chase and came in solo for third. Tim and pete were in the group for top 15 or so, and eric got all our flat mojo out of the way by double flatting in the first 5 miles.