As the 'cross bikes are getting pulled out of the basement and riders are reluctantly doing some running to make sure they remember how to do it, let's do a quick review of what's happened in the past few weeks.
The WCA season wrapped up with the Attitude Sports criterium in Fond Du Lac on August 21st. Holly Mathews (unattatched) took the Women's 1/2 race with Rachel Roessingh (IS Corp) sinching the Women's WCA Cup overall. Pat Lemieux (Texas Roadhouse) won the men's Pro 1/2 and Ben Anderson (Team Wisconsin/MC2) sealed the WCA Cup overall competition. Thompson Remo (IS Corp) takes the Junior 18 boys overall over Patrick Diamond (Geargrinder) by just 3 points. All the WCA results can be found on their website and the FonDuLac reporter has a few photos.
The FondDuLac criterium was just a warm up for the weekend's big event of course, Midwest Sport's "Race the Lake", a 88.5 mile single lap around Wisconsin's largest lake, Lake Winnebago, on Sunday. Andrew Crater (Aerocat) took the victory check of $2,000 and with the help of a strong field, gets credit for setting a new course record time that comes along with a check for a cool $20,000. (that's no typo folks!) Steve Tilford was there the whole way with the leaders and gives a great blow by blow account of how it all went down. (the only decent photo I've seen of this glorious victory is here but I can't link to it, you'll have to go there and search for it yourself. Looks like I'll have to go next year and shoot some myself!)
The Kenosha track season wrapped up with Chad Hartley taking the 150 lap points race, the Bob Pfarr Classic bike at the Washington Park Velodrome July 27th. The Kenosha News has a nice article on this final night of racing (where this photo was found). The article states: " In his first Pfarr appearance, Hartley accomplished the feat of winning the Pfarr and the Mayor’s Cup, the Velodrome’s two signatures points races, in the same year. The last racer to do that was Jeff Senn, who accomplished the feat in 2001 and also in 1999. “I know I’m definitely one of the better track racers,” said Hartley, 29. “There’s a couple accolades that you can get during the year to really prove that, so I think this year I’ve gotten two.” Collegiate track racers still have the Collegiate Track Nationals in Indianapolis on Sept. 23-25th. 2010 Wisconsin TT Champion Kyle Jacobson states that he's been practicing his head butts, so if you can make it down there, I'm sure there should be some exciting racing to watch!
This past weekend, ToAD organizers (Tour of America's Dairyland) put on a new race southwest of Madison - The Unnamed Epic, which was a 75 mile road/MTB race finishing on southern Wisconsin's highest point, Bluemound State Park. Starting in Mineral Point, the 200 some starters rode a combination of paved roads, bike paths, and private trails to Governor Dodge State Park,where, riders rode a lap on the rolling MTB trails, then it was back on the road, more bike trails, and more private land off to Bluemound State Park where they had to negotiate two laps of the very difficult MTB trails there, before finally summiting on top of the Mound. Roadies such as Pro Chad Hartley and others drove the pace hard early while later on, mountain bikers used their bike handling skills to make up time on the rocky single track.
At the half way point, teammates Adam Bergman and Pat Lemieux (Texas Roadhouse) had about a 2 minute gap over the nearest chasers and even this early in the race, time gaps were in the multi-minute range for the top 25 riders. Half way through their first Bluemound State Park lap, however, they were no longer in the lead, it was Max Anderson who moved up from about 5th to the lead. It turned out that Bergman had flatted at the entrance to the park, and Lemieux waited allowing Anderson to take a commanding lead. It's not over until you cross the line, however, and Anderson himself flatted allowing Lemieux to regain the lead somehow without his knowledge. Halfway through his final lap at Bluemound he quized the spectators: "Am I in the lead???" ... "YES YES! YOU'RE LEADING!"
Lemieux took the win in 4hrs 48 minutes, several minutes over second place Michael Naughton, with Bergman rolling across the line in 3rd, and Max Anderson finishing in 5th. (RESULTS) Note that the overall results also have teams, tandems, and single speeds mixed in. One single speed racer was actually on a FIXED GEAR cross bike, who promptly collapsed onto the grass once he crossed the finish line.Chad Hartley slid out on a gravely road section and did not finish. Many riders probably wished they had a similar fate as they dragged themselves over the final miles of very difficult single track. Women's winner Lindsey Kriete flatted not once but twice, rolling across the finish line on a rim in 6hrs 0mins 26secs. (PHOTOS)
Finally, for this report, Lance Armstrong was in Madison this past Sunday for their Ride the Drive event. Here's a short video of the speech he gave prior to the ride. Skip to 5:30 for Lance.
P.S. My heart felt condolences to the family and friends of Pro racer Laurent Fignon who passed away today from colon cancer (VELONEWS). Certainly one of my cycling heroes as I grew up and raced myself.
At the half way point, teammates Adam Bergman and Pat Lemieux (Texas Roadhouse) had about a 2 minute gap over the nearest chasers and even this early in the race, time gaps were in the multi-minute range for the top 25 riders. Half way through their first Bluemound State Park lap, however, they were no longer in the lead, it was Max Anderson who moved up from about 5th to the lead. It turned out that Bergman had flatted at the entrance to the park, and Lemieux waited allowing Anderson to take a commanding lead. It's not over until you cross the line, however, and Anderson himself flatted allowing Lemieux to regain the lead somehow without his knowledge. Halfway through his final lap at Bluemound he quized the spectators: "Am I in the lead???" ... "YES YES! YOU'RE LEADING!"
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