Wendy Park

Great Team help on this race. Thanks to everyone that came out and donated time and effort over the weekend, it is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!!

Now with the race.............Not much to say. I felt good, was racing good but had 2 flats and that ended my day. Tony had 3 flats! Total of 5 flats between us, not what you would call a very good day. I know that's racing and that happens, but 5 flats! Oh well, it's not like this is the only cross race this year.

120 or so racers on Sunday, our biggest ever. Thanks to all that came out and raced, bought T-Shirts and continue to support our series, we all hope you liked the new venue and the course design.

Later all

Bike Authority

Lake Effect 10th. Anniversary Series long sleeve T's. Jeff McNaught's design on both sides, really cool, super job Jeff, Thanks!

First race of the series is this Sunday at Wendy Park near Edgewater. See you there.

Later

KTR Double Cross

Michigan. Wow, hot and dry condititons both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was in the 80's and Sunday was cooler and in the 70's, very nice actually. Lots of rolled tubies, flats, crashes and fast speeds. Great course. 2 miles in length on Saturday and a couple clicks more on Sunday. They changed the course slightly on Sunday, which I liked better.

Saturday was a dismal day though for Tony and me. Tony raced the 2-3 race, he was in a 3 man break for 1,2,3 that had formed on the 2nd of 5 laps. He was riding very strong and was leading the break when he flatted on the rear. He got to the pit and put the spare rear on but it was 10 speed and he has 9 speed! Damn! he tried to ride it but it was popping and skipping and it was impossible to ride. DNF! We will have a 9 speed in the pit for the next race that's for sure.

I raced the 45+ Masters. Started out fast, got to the middle of 6 laps, still fast, my shifting is going South very fast too, about as fast as the race. Chain won't stay in anything in the back hardly and I don't understand why, very frustrating. I checked everything over on both bikes before we made the trip up. Anyway on the last lap toward the end there was a wicked short steep climb that sucked the life out of your legs every climb up. Well my chain decided to snap while I was about 3/4 of the way up. Now mind you I was putting every pound of power I had in my body to climb up this thing because I should have been in my 25 but was only able to be in the 21 or so at that time. The chain snapped and back I came, not too gracefully too I might add. I did a backward tumble, bike on top of me and I came to rest at the bottom of the hill. I picked up the bike with the chain stuck in the rear spokes, ran up the hill and the rest of the way into the finish to end up finishing 13th out of 23-24 starters. I would not have placed any better at the finish had my chain not snapped, but I might have placed better if I was not having problems for about half of the race. I did get another new chain and Rudy installed it after the race. Come to find out a pin had worked it's way ouf of a link which was causing the bike not to shift properly and when under a heavy load, snap!

Sunday was better, not as hot either. Tony raced the 2-3 race and this time again got into another early break. He was sitting 3rd. in a break for the first 4 spots when he came into a tight 180 downhill turn when he went down and into the rope. They used rope instead of ribbon on this course (very good idea too) The rope got tangled up in his bike somehow and he lost a few spots there. He was trying to make up his lost position when he went down again in another tight downhill section. He slid all the way back to 10th at this time. He said he was trying too hard to make up the lost positions and wasn't paying attention. He regained his composure and fought back on to get back to 3rd with 1 lap to go. On the last lap he was 10 seconds off of 2nd, whe he flatted again!, this time past the pit and pretty close to the finish. He rode the whole way in on a flat, running the last steep climb to finish 5th. The way he was riding he for sure would have either caught 2nd. or at least would have sprinted it out for 2nd. Very impressive race. Hopefully all the bugs have worked themselves out for the remainder of the season this weekend for him.

Master 45+ was very fast again. A break of 6 formed after the 1st lap. Rudy and I were in it and after a short while Rudy and 2 other riders got a gap and got away. I was in the group of 3 for 4,5,6. We were working very well together when another rider caught on. We ended up dropping one of the 4 and that still left 3 for the 4,5,6 spot. Last lap up the steep climb we are all still tgether and I'm thinking this is going to be a sprint for the last podium spot of 5th. We rounded the last short uphill left onto the pavement and I went just a little wide and that was enough for the other 2 to get just a slight gap and when the sprint started I wasn't able to close it. I ended up 6th. just off the podium. I was very happy today with my race except that last move, but I felt strong and had a good RACE.

Robert WON both of his races. He was awesome this weekend and raced with alot of intensity, I wonder where he get's that from. Excellent racing Robert!

Julie WON both of her races too. Saturday she won with a hard charging rider that kept her pushing hard for the win. Sunday Julie had such a gap on the 2nd. place woman that she could have put it in cruise mode, she didn't though and pushed just as hard to the finish as she did Saturday.

Rudy was 2nd. both day's in the 45+ Masters. He was 2nd. Sunday to a racer that raced in the Elite race on Saturday.

Jeff finished 8th on Saturday. He rolled a tubular, grabbed his pit bike and made his way back to 8th. Nice finish Jeff.
Sunday he flatted and I don't know what happed to him after that. He was racing strong up til then though.

Lots of good competition this weekend. We stayed and watched the Elite race on Saturday which John Page won. He toyed with the field for 1 lap when he decided to put the smack down on everyone and just completely rode away from everyone. he made it look effortless. Hats off to Tailwind for a great venue and 2 great races, we'll be back for this one next year.

Double hat's off to our photographer Nick who snapped some good photo's this weekend. Nice job Nico!

Later

Look who's back

from the dead! Jon "Tibor" Rentschler, we go back a long way. Jon and I met at Lubrizol back in the 80's when he was doing the boiler water treatment engineering program there. He came to work one day and one of my co-workers said "hey that guy that does the boiler treatments is out there and has this sweet bike in the back of his cargo van with an even sweeter motocross bike in there too". I had to go out and look and sure enough I looked through the back window and there was this all Dura Ace Merlin with some Mavic Helium wheels and a big KTM motocross bike, I was like I gotta meet this guy, it's not everyday that someone comes into Lubrizol with anything fancier than mine, except Derek, but that wasn't til years later.. Anyway I hunted him down which wasn't too difficult and introduced myself and we started to talk about bikes and motorcycles and all the other stuf that goes along with it.

He invited me to ride with him and the group that he rode with in Chardon one evening and we all got along very well and ended up riding and racing together for quite a few years. One year though Jon said I'm done riding my bicycle and I'm going into motorcycle racing full time. Jon raced trials and hare scrambles while we were riding bikes and he was a VERY good GNCC (Grand National Cross Country) racer. GNCC is basically the same as a mountain bike race but with high powered dirt bikes, so it wasn't like he was just making a cold leap into full time motorcycle racing.
He had some nice sponsors and traveled all across the country racing the GNCC circuit and earned National Ranking in his racing divison which was Senior Vet A, equivilant to our Masters A or 40-45 Masters. That pretty much ended our riding together. He tried to get me into GNCC but I didn't want to throw the whole bicycle thing out the window and travel all over the country and get my ass kicked at every event, so I stuck to bicycles (I know, I get my ass kicked there too) and Jon stuck to motorcycles for a long time. We talked and saw each other but didn't ride together anymore.

Just recently Jon called me up and said, "dude, I wanna ride my bike again" but my Merlin is so out of date that I'm even ashamed to ride it on the hoopie ride on the bike path. Jon now lives in Mahoning County and frequently sees the likes of Sal Ponzio, John Fiumura and the guys from MVC. I said thats easy enough, stop by Bike Authority and talk to the guys there and they'll hook you up with whatever you're looking for and it will all be good and we can start riding together again. He did just that and got a new Cervelo SLC with all Red components, new shoes, helmet and even wanted to as far as getting a CSC team kit. I said that's where you have to slam on the brakes! No team kit! If you do, I'm not riding with you, you'll have to sport that outfit on the bike path down in Canfield.........I think he secretely did order it though and he'll pull it out on our next Wednesday night ride....

We've now been riding on Wednesday nights for the past few weeks and it's been great, like old times, but just not as hard. Jon had a double hip replacement over the winter courtesy of all the hard GNCC racing he has done over the years. He had his hips replaced at the Cleveland Clinic over the winter and is now riding his bicycle pain free and is even going to break back into bicycle racing next year when he has the okay from his doctor to start putting full pressure on his hips. I would say he is doing pretty awesome already, we've done a couple 30+ mile rides together and have averaged 18 1/2 mph. on both of them.

Welcome back buddy!

Wendy Park

is going to be a great cyclocross venue! Robert, Julie, Tony, Kevin, Jeff, Rudy, Derek and myself went to the park today to map out a course that we will be using this month for the start of our Bike Authority / Lake Effect cyclocross series, which is also our 10th year anniversary of this series. This race and venue will be the first of 6 races in the series. The location of Wendy Park is on Whiskey Island near Edgewater Park, just slightly West of downtown Cleveland off of the West Shoreway. Directions to the Park are located on our teamlakeeffect.net website.

The course that we designed has quite a bit of everything in it, (not a lot of sand, but some) that will make it challenging but fun for all racers and abilities. The course is just a hair shy of 2 miles in length. I'm looking forward to race time there. We all spent about 3 1/2 hrs. there designing and riding.

After we finished at the Park, Derek, Jeff, Tony and me went back to Derek's and rode another 1 1/2 hrs. on the cross bikes. Another great ride! We rode into the Euclid Reservation and climbed and did trails, rode along the Lake at the Parks there and did trails and off camber stuff and some miles on the road, it was a great ride. This weekend had to be the best weekend for riding I have had in a long time despite the rain Saturday and the hot humid temps. today.
When we finished our ride and got back to Derek's, Rene broke out the ice cold beers and we all sat out back eating homemade salsa, chips and ice cold beer, it doesn't get any better than that! Thanks again guys.

We are making the trip to Davisburg Michigan this weekend for the start of the 08' cyclocross season. Tailwind sports promotes this race series and it's also a UCI race so there will be some big names there and very good competition. The more UCI races you do the better starting position you will get for U.S. Nationals in December.

I had to throw this picture in also. I stopped for gas on the way home from Derek's house and this was a promotion the station had going on to lure people in to buy their $4 per gallon gas, IT WORKED! Nah, just jokin'

That's it for now.

It's not too often

that I get excited about doing a training ride in the rain, but last night and this morning I couldn't wait to get out and ride, in the rain that is. We planned a 2 hr. cyclocross ride in and out of the nursery roads around East Painesville, Perry and Madison. There are plenty to ride too, lemme tell ya. Lots of sand, gravel, dirt, mud, sharp corners and lots of power sections, good cyclocross training roads and good training overall for the conditions to come later this fall.

Tony and I headed out just after 10:00 this morning in the rain. We were pretty wet already by 1 mile out, but at least it wasn't 55 degrees, it was pretty warm. We got to the first nursery at just past 2 miles and the fun set in immediately. Sandy mud about 2-3" deep and lots of it. HR pegged about 1/4 mile into the first road trying to simulate Broadview Heights' soccer field. Each section of hard to ride through stuff I would try to imagine a section of a race course that I have done that I could compare it to, it was pretty motivating actually. We rode the hard to ride stuff hard, and worked on jumps and technique in the corners. We had to jump out on the road to transition from nursery to nursery and then we would recover until the next set of nursery roads. We rode 5 different nurseries and then decided to head to the Outdoor Y and get a few laps in there before we rounded out the 2 hrs.

We got to the Y, jumped into the upper set of trails and rode to the back of the facility, came out into the clearing and noticed they were having a major soccer tournament back there. there were tons of cars there and talk about tearing the place up with all the mud, it was insane. Between the guy parking cars in the muddy grass areas and the muddy soccer fields that place is going to be a mess for quite a while, and to think they won't allow a bike race there only once a year because they claim it will tear the grounds up.........I don't know.......... Needless to say we didn't stick around there very long.

From the Y we rode to the local elementary school that is 1 mile from our house (the opposite way as the nurseries) that we have a little cross course designed there. We rode 2 hard laps and that put us at 1:55, perfect, 5 minutes to get a nice easy cool down spin home and then start the clean up process. Actually with the amount of road we did, the bikes weren't all that bad. The standing water on the roads washed most of the nursery grime off.

Great ride today and all of it was in the rain and crappy conditions, I sure hope that I can get this excited about racing in these conditions!

Later on.

Hard cross workout

last night. Still a little bummed about the races being cancelled out by the airport. Not that I was going to be able to make ALL of them, but I was planning on half. I was all suited up and rode a complete lap to check out the course on Wednesday and couldn't quite understand why there wasn't anyone there yet and it was almost 4:30. I cecked my cell phone that I had inside of my truck for any messages and saw that Lynn had called saying that the race was cancelled, hmmmmmmm. I got home about 5:45 and had to ride, so Lynn and I went out for a nice easy ride, I was really tempted to drop the hammer on her because I was ready to race earlier and I felt my legs were good enough to put her in the hurt bag. I didn't because I know she's been doing some on the bike training herself and my brilliant idea just might backfire on me and then I would never hear the end of it, so I just settled in and rode nice and easy to make 1 party happy :-)

Last night was a little different though. Jeff Craft and I met at the Outdoor Y in great conditions and had one helluva workout. We did race simulations with barriers, interval sets and practiced quite a few fast starts. It was actually the perfect cyclocross workout that benefitted both of us I think.

Well that's pretty much it for now, need another cup o joe.

Later.

Last Triathlon

of the season today at Presque Isle. It was pretty blustery with the winds out of the Northeast which made for the worst non-cancellation swim of the year. I'm actually glad they didn't cancel the swim even though there were 3-4 footers rollin' in. Once you swam a little way out of the surf it really wasn't all that bad. It was bad I guess if you breathe to the side that the waves were coming at you, which was to the right. That's why it always pays to practice bi-lateral breathing!
It rained on and off for most of the race, which is fine because I LOVE to run in the rain and it kept things cool. The race length was a .35 swim / 13.5 bike / 3.5 run.

I'm very happy with my race today, but I honestly wasn't expecting very much from it, just some good fast work to get ready for cross. I was strong on the bike, (1st. a.g, 4th. o.a) 26.7 mph. and felt good on the run (6:20's) to finish 7th. overall and 2nd. in my age group in the open tri division which had 277 racers. There were another 72 racers in the Team competition.

Tony had a good race but was a little disapointed. He wasn't able to get out on the bike very much this past week and had a very light week of training but a heavy week of studying and a few days of work. He said the legs were not responding the way he would have liked. I say he did pretty good though with a 15th. overall finish and 1st. in his 16-19 age group! Tony and Doug Sedivy battled it out with Doug besting Tony by 10 seconds, nice job you guys. Doug was 3rd. in the 45-49 age group and was running on a sore knee today to take 14th. overall.

Brian Stern won our age group and was 5th overall. Brian and I had 33 in our age group. Once again Kevin Park was the Overall winner. Kevin has had a great season this year and seems to be getting stronger. Nice work Kevin.

Next season I will advance to the 45-49 age group....I don't know if that's good or bad, kind of bittersweet I guess. I do know that I won't have to contend with Brian and Kevin anymore as far as age groups go and have to settle for 3rd.s all the time. I just might have a chance to get a few age group win's next year if I'm lucky.....

Good Luck to those racing at Camp Manatoc and the Presque Isle TT tomorrow.

Presque Isle

Triathlon this Saturday. This will be the last tri this year because we're really itchin' to get some more cross practice in and it's cross season for cripes sake, not triathlon season anymore! We figured it out that we'll have 15+ cross races on the calendar this Fall. Starting with a Spin race or two before the Michigan Double Cross on the 20th. and 21st. of this month, that's quite a bit of racing coming up in the next 3 1/2 months. I wanted to go last night but it wasn't in the plan with the tri this weekend, seemed pretty hot for a cross race last night though, wasn't it?

I haven't been in the water since the Greater Cleveland Tri, so I'm not really expecting very much from this race, just some good fast work. The weathermen and women are calling for rain on Saturday which suits me fine, I love swimming and running in the rain, not real excited about racing my bike in the rain, but at least it's not a crit.

Anyway, to get in the spirit of cross season and to go along with the other bloggers out here I posted a nice picture of my trusty Cannondale Optimo CAAD 9 Cross rig for my background, Fine Lookin' bike she is!

Gotta go.