Team Race Blog

This week-end was a “fun” adventure…for all of us.  NO, *I* did not race a UCI PRO race, but some of our Artemis Elite guys did.  Five Artemis/IMI guys (Ramon, David Oh!, Nate, Mike, Mark) and Rick Norton (who was riding pick-up for IMI) decided that they would give UNIVEST Grand Prix (http://www.spartacycling.com/univestgp/) a try against the pros.  Although Mark Warno did the pre-event entry work, I was kind of the race-day Director Sportif/Caravan driver for the 100-mile road race on Saturday.  As a driver, I was required to arrive in Friday afternoon for the Manager/Driver’s meeting.  Admittedly, I was a bit nervous thinking about sitting there in a room with big team directors like Ed Beamon of Team Type 1, Jittery Joe’s, and Chipotle.  I was relieved when I saw all of the familiar faces of the event Officials (Kirk Leidy, Lew Strader, Judy Miller, Stephen, Kevin Long, and others, plus my old pals from SRAM support) when I entered the room.  After all logistics were in order, they did the draw for car placement in the caravan.  We got 17 out of 20.  Good.  Hanging out near the back was OK with me, as I did not want to get in any pro team’s way!

The host hotel was great.  Pretty new and nice, and the rooms were suites with a full kitchen.  A full breakfast was served each morning, too.  Can’t beat that for $99!  Nate, Rick Norton, Mark, and Ramon were there on Friday, and David and Mike would be coming up in the morning.  Also part of the team was Dori and Mark’s wife, Nickie, who were our feed zone staff.

Did I mention that Hurricane Hanna was expected to join us?  Significant rain and high winds were predicted for later in the afternoon.  We woke up to cloudy skies, but no rain in the morning.  It HAD rained during the night.  I was a bit anxious (me?) to arrive at the race start with plenty of time to be sure to get lined up in the caravan without hassle and not be stressed.  The rest of the team was parked near-by and we had time to prepare the car, get pinned and bikes ready, and hydrate and whatever else.  While hanging out by the car near the staging area, the word must have gotten out that a woman was going to be driving a car AND it was her first time driving!  Three guys involved with race organization came up to me to make sure that I was OK with driving.  Humph.  I asked them:  “Are you asking me this because I’m a GIRL???”  ?  *I* was OK with driving, and like I said, happy to be in the back.

This was a big deal.  There were TV cameras all around, and even helicopters were filming!  A new sports station was filming and broadcasting the races live: www.universalsports.com  The race got underway to a rolling neutral start.  In the early part of the race I must have seen at least a dozen guys get flats.  What a shame…their race was over.  I saw 2 Harley guys (one was Chris Hong riding pick up…and BTW, Matt Cooke didn’t race) out of the race by then.  Even with a tire change & a push from SRAM, catching back on was almost impossible…the leaders were pushing 40 mph!  The weather was still holding out.  Not much rain or wind.

Our first casualty was Mike.  I saw that he had crashed after a turn, but was back on his bike.  I was going to leave him, but saw in my rear-view mirror that he was pulling off of the road and the ambulance had stopped for him.  I quickly pulled out of the caravan and turned around to pick him up.  While loading Mike into the car, another rider came up and asked for a lift.  Turned out that it was Nick Friesen, who rode for Kelly Benefits last year.  Both Mike and Nick were pretty bummed, obviously.  Well, at least I had company for the next 80 miles!  Because I had left the caravan, I had to do my own racing to catch back on to the race.  It seemed like we would never get back because we had to stop for traffic lights, etc., but I was driving like Mike’s water broke and was having contractions and needed to get to the hospital!  ?  I figured that I had to drive 50 mph on these narrow wet roads with lots of race course turns to make up time over their 40 mph pace. We eventually did get back on.  Thank goodness for steep climbs.

Around mile 40, it started to rain more steadily, but not hurricane-like.  The feed-zone was at mile 40.  Only Rick and Nate were still in the peloton. We had already passed David, and then Ramon and Mark on one of the KOM climbs.  It was nice to have the race radio, as we were able to hear the race updates in the car.  This was a hard race in the BEST of conditions, but this weather made it brutal.  There were lots of narrow, winding roads and turns that went into climbs; fast descents that went into turns. While the front of the race was able to maintain speed, everyone else had to slow down, and then lose momentum for the climb, causing the race to shred.  One KOM climb had a sign at the bottom that said “oily surface with loose gravel”.  Yikes.

Rick and Nate made it into the 11-lap circuit.  Because their group was father back, their race got shortened.  They had made it and done well!  By now, it was raining hard and we pulled out of the caravan and parked.  My job was done.   The 2 race leaders and a chase group continued to battle out the rain and each other…*flying* around that circuit course.  Lucas Euser (Garmon/Chipotle) won the race; his 1st pro win.  He had bridged up to the lead break, oh, about 70 miles ago!

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day!  We headed to Doylestown for the criterium.  About
45 minutes before race time, Rick realized that he didn’t have his shoes.  He had left them at the hotel near the car to dry out.  Surely, someone saw the shoes and picked them up, but who and how would we find them?  The hotel was 30 minutes away.  So, here I go again: I get to race back to the hotel burning fossil fuel thinking what I’m going to tell the cop when he pulls me over.  I was near the hotel, but was never going to make it back.  I called Dori and was told that the shoes HAD been picked up and take to Neutral.  Hooray!  What luck?

When I got back, Dori & I walked around the course.  It had a very FAST and long back side that was a downhill into a right turn.  They were barreling single file through that stretch.  It was chicane-like at either end of the course, and uphill to the finish.  The race had a lot of TV coverage, as well as a Jumbo-tron TV, which was kewl.  The neighborhood was small-town and friendly.  One guy offered us a martini…it was 11:50am, so I declined because it was before noon.

Rick, Mark, and Ramon were left in the race.  Rick was in good position for most of the race.  Towards the end, all 3 were near the back, and Ramon was lookin’ like pain!  But all 3 finished.  During the race, we saw Brian Butts (Harley) in a 2-man break for a few laps.  Also, Tom Solliday (now TIME, formerly LSV) was in a good break near the end with another teammate & 2 other riders.  It was a fun race, well-organized, and had lots of fan support.  Read more here: http://velonews.com/article/82880

When I got home, I turned on the TV and found the crit on!  What fun to see our guys out there on TV.  And, today, I watched the rainy road race on-line with official commentary and it pulled it all together for me.

Filed under: Univest by artemis