Around 20 riders took the start on this fine May day.  By the end of the first lap, the selection had been made and it appeared this would be the group fighting out for the finish.  LITESPEED-BMW had two riders in the group of four – Charles Rossignol and Colby Millen.  Colby took charge and led the group for the next several laps, setting a fierce pace on the front.  This allowed Charles to sit on the back of the group, save energy, and keep his eyes on the other two riders in the break, Brady Rogers and Bob Kuhn.  On the 5th lap, Colby ended up having a flat tire on the dirt section.  Game over for him.  With one of the strongest guys in the group now gone, Brady decided it was time to put in an attack of his own.  This attack blew the group apart.  As they came through the start/finish line, Brady had a 10 second gap on Bob Kuhn, with Charles another 5 seconds behind Bob.  Well, they say bad luck comes in pairs, and the next rider to experience it was Brady.  A dropped chain (which would later come off again) sent Brady from 1st to 3rd in a matter of seconds.  Now, with two laps to go, this race was going to come down to Bob vs Charles.  Bob still had that few second gap on Charles, and Charles knew if he could be with Bob at the finish, he could unleash his ferocious track sprint to take the win.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite catch him and Charles had to settle for 2nd place.  Not bad for a guy who has taken the last two years off of racing!  Although we just missed out on the top step of the podium, it was a great day for the team at a race that benefits a great cause!

A little bit about the East Atlanta Kids Club – East Atlanta Kids Club is a nonprofit, out-of-school -time mentoring and enrichment program for under-resourced girls and boys ages 7 to 17. The club was formed in 1998 by local residents hoping to give youth who otherwise have limited after-school and summertime options a safe and stimulating place to play, to learn and to express themselves under the supervision of caring adults. Our program began with a dozen youth and a handful of community volunteers. We now offer a rich variety of educational and recreational activities and mentoring opportunities to more than 100 youth each year, free of charge.  If you would like to help out, more information can be found at www.eastatlantakids.org.

First up was the category 2 crit.  The guy’s lined up with around 50 other racers and were ready to contest the 45 minute race.  The plan was to get Colby, Wes, or Matt into a breakaway and to save Hank and Charles for the sprint.  As soon as the whistle blew, Matt and Wes went straight to the front to keep an eye on things while the rest of the team was able to save their energy for later in the race.  As is typical, there were many attacks in the first 15 minutes of the race.  We tried to watch the strong riders in the race and not just go with anybody.  Both Matt and Wes made it into a couple early breakaway attempts, but the rest of the field wasn’t letting anything get away.  This was pretty much how the race would go for the next 20 minutes – constant breakaway attempts that would be chased down almost immediately.  With 10 laps to go it was time for LITESPEED-BMW to switch to Plan B and keep Hank in position for a good sprint.  Six laps to go and danger-man Philip O’Donnel was off the front with a small gap.  While the other teams looked at each other, Matt got on the front, took matters into his own hands, and by the end of the lap the field was all back together.  Immediately, Dave Gearhart put in an attack and had a gap of several seconds.  Dave had won races each of the last two weekends, so he was a rider we knew couldn’t be given any freedom with only a few laps to go.  Knowing this was a dangerous move, Wes went straight to the front of the field and was able to bring back that dangerous move to have the field “gruppo compatto” with a couple laps remaining.  Colby and Hank were able to position themselves well for the sprint with one lap to go.  The typical craziness ensued on the last lap and both, unfortunately, lost a little bit of position for the sprint.  Hank was able to pull out a 9th place finish while Colby was not too far behind just inside the top 15.  Great work by the team in the race.  We’ve been knocking on the door all month and a podium is not too far away!

Later on that evening, Chris Brown lined up in the PRO/1 criterium.  Chris was fresh off his win last weekend at the Aaron Shafer Memorial Road Race, he knew he was riding well and was ready to mix it up with the big boys.  There were around 90 racers on the start line, and all of the pro teams were in attendance – Team Mountain Khaki’s, Kenda/5 Hour Energy, United Healthcare, etc, so Chris would be able to just sit back and let them do all the work and save himself for the finish.  That’s exactly what he did until about 18 laps to go.  At that point in the race Chris knew he needed to get up near the front and get ready for the field sprint.  In the crazy sprint finish, Chris came across the line in 13th place!  A quick look at the results and we were hard-pressed to find anybody else on there that held down a 40 hour/week job!  The average speed for the 42 mile criterium was just over 28mph and only 42 riders finished!!!  Way to go Chris!  Chris got his and the teams name on some major cycling website such as Cyclingnews and Velonews!  Chris is also now ranked 32nd in the season long National Criterium Calendar after only doing 1 of the 3 races so far this season. 

This coming weekend is the Twilight Criterium in Athens, GA followed by the Historic Roswell Criterium on Sunday in Roswell, GA.  If you make it out to Roswell be sure to stop by the BMW demo area to say hello.  They are a big sponsor of the race!

Later that afternoon was a 7.3 mile time trial.  Chris had a bit of bad luck in the TT but was still able to finish 2nd!  In the TT, Chris first had a car get in his way on a fast downhill corner in the first mile, then Chris was going so hard at the turn around that he turned around at the spray paint turn around markings on the road, and not the cone where he was supposed to go to turn around!  Come on Chris, don’t go quite so hard so you can see straight!  So he got yelled at by an official, had to turn back around, go down to the cone, then get going again.  Needless to say without Chris’s bonehead move he would have won the time trial but that is all part of racing!

 A bit about this race, Aaron Shafer was an avid cyclist who desired to put on a premier cycling race in his area.  Aaron had everything set up to put on the 1st annual race three years ago but was tragically killed in a car wreck months before the first race.  Instead of the race folding, the people in the community of Sparta Tennessee rallied together to continue Aaron’s passion and have successfully promoted this race now for the 3rd year in a row.  Thanks to all the volunteers and people of Sparta for making this race so much fun and continuing Aaron’s passion for cycling.

After throwing on the spare (with inches to spare from the semi’s and  buses buzzing by at 80mph), the three were back on the road and running late for the start of the race.  Arrived, dressed, and pinned with 40 mins before the start, the team squeezed in a bit of a warm up and were soon called to the line.   After a glance over the group, it was quickly determined that the flat technical course coupled with the hard winds and 40 person field meant that the next 70 minutes were not going to be easy.  We knew the 3 professionals from the Kenda/5 Hour Energy team would make the race hard for the rest of us “amateurs”.  The team had a plan and they were sticking to it.  After their last crit where they perhaps were too active, it was decided to sit back for a wait and see strategy then mix things up in the back half of the race.

Wrong decision.  The key moves went within 15 minutes of the race and suddenly Wes, Hank and Matt found themselves racing for 11th.  50 some odd minutes later it would be Hank and Wes coming across 14th and 15th respectively.  Not a terrible day but not the day we had hoped for.  Similar to the tire, the race blew apart quickly and the team was just poorly positioned when the stuff hit the fan. 

Coming into April and the bigger races on these next few weeks, the team is still working out some kinks but we all know they will be firing on all cylinders in time for Anniston, Athens, and Roswell.

We knew this would be a fast race and that Phil Gaimon would be the guy to watch.  Attacks started from the gun!  Everybody did their best to be in all the moves.  Somehow Phil Gaimon got away on his own and that would be the last the field would see of him (until he lapped us with 10 minutes to go).  Around 15 minutes in, Hank was able to get himself into a 6 man chase group that would try and get up to Phil.  Shortly after, Wes latched on to a rider from the Aerocat team and was able to take a free ride across the gap to Hank’s group.  Just as they were about to make contact, Wes could tell the group wasn’t cooperating too well.  After a quarter lap of no cooperation, the break was doomed and the field caught them.   

There was immediately a counter-attack by Daniel Holt and A.J. Meyer (BMC Devo) that took about 8 other riders with them.  Sadly, none from LITESPEED-BMW.  Clay and Colby immediately started to chase, but with no help from the rest of the group, there’s only so much two riders can do against ten.  With the end of the race approaching, we got Hank near the front of the group to try and salvage something out of the race.  In the sprint for 12th place, Hank got a little boxed in on the extremely narrow road we were given for the finish and would come across the line in 14th place.  Not the result we had hoped for coming into the race, but its a long season and there will be plenty more opportunities the rest of the year. 

With some sting still lingering in the legs from the previous night’s crit, Hank Beaver and Chris Brown would be representing LITESPEED-BMW in the chilly morning road race over the rolling and twisting back roads of Dalton, GA.  The 80 mile road race consisted of 4 laps over some large rolling hills with roads that twisted in all directions that provided the prefect scenario for a break-away.  The course was hard enough to separate the men from the boys and with the limited slight visibility, the mental carrot needed to successfully chase down a break would not be there.

The race was fast from the gun, analogous to the start of a crit with many of the team trying to make a separation.  Hank and Chris took turns covering attacks to ensure LITESPEED-BMW was represented in any threatening move until Chris followed an attack by Phil Gaimon(last night’s crit winner) to form a 10 man break with 2.5 laps to go.

Hank settled in the main group and conserved energy in case the break was brought back by the teams without a rider represented, while Chris cohesively contributed his share of the work to ensure the break was successful.  That was until they were a few miles from the finish when risk of being caught was no more.  Chris did his best to attack the break for the win but the group proved to be too strong for him to create a significant gap.  Amazingly enough, he was able to quickly recover and still pull off a solid 5th. 

As for Hank, he kept things in check until he mixed it up in the group sprint for 18th.

These races in February and March serve for good opportunities for get the rust off the legs from the winter and for the guys to get used to racing with each other again after a few months off.  No doubt Chris and Hank’s 2012 season will be a good one as they get more racing days under their belts.  The big races in the Southeast are coming up in the month of April and LITESPEED-BMW will be ready!

Game Face.

With the narrow South Carolina roads, strong wind, and the hills coming in the first half of each lap a good start was important given the number of riders in our race.  Positioning would be crucial during the whole race.  The race was fast and aggressive from the start.  We all did our best to stay up front and out of the wind.  There were numerous attacks on the first lap, but the pace was so high that none of them ever gained more than a few seconds.  On the final 5 mile section of each lap, the wind was blowing from the left and had the entire field in the gutter and fighting each other to stay in the draft of the rider in front of them.  This combination of attacking, fighting other riders for position, and battling the wind would go on for the first three laps.  We all held our own during those laps, while many other riders had already been dropped out of the race.

At the beginning of lap four, George Hincapie decided to test out his legs with an attack off the front of the group.  The previous three times through this section, the group had stayed pretty bunched up going up the climb.  On this lap, we were all single file and most riders were at their limit.  We won’t bore you with the details, but between bad positioning behind gapped riders, which resulted in bad positioning behind crashes, and a flat tire due to a large pothole in the road, the LITESPEED-BMW team lost a couple riders out of the race.  It was truly the result of being “in the wrong place at the wrong time” for a few of us!

The last lap was just as crazy as the fourth, but Tim Henry was up front doing his best to get a good finish for the team.  In the end, he wasn’t able to match his 12th place finish from 2011, but he was able to be in the mix right up until the last few hundred meters.  It was another weekend of hard racing and hopefully we were able to get some bad luck out of the way in this early season training race.  The racing will really be starting to heat up in the next few weekends, so stay tuned for some more racing and some good results from LITESPEED-BMW!

The BMW is ready for the drive.

After a quick warmup it was time to get down to business.  We lined up along with 120 other anxious cyclists.  Besides LITESPEED-BMW, there were also several other powerhouse teams on the starting line – BMC Development Team, Team Type 1 Development Team, Global Bike, and even the man himself, Greenville resident George Hincapie.  Although these races are called the Greenville Spring Training Series, they are usually raced just as hard as any other race in the Southeast.  Being that there were only 3 of us there, we knew the other larger teams would take control of the race, so we could just sit back, get in some great training, and wait for the right move. 

The first half of the race was full of attacks, but nothing seemed to stick.  We all stayed attentive, but only Tim was able to make his away into a move of any significance.  Tim managed to fly the LITESPEED-BMW colors in a 6-man breakaway for a couple of miles.  Unfortunately (for us), BMC missed the move and George Hincapie himself single-handedly brought it back.  Things stayed calm for the next 10 miles until the current Points Race National Champion, Daniel Holt (Team Type 1), initiated a move that would stay clear for a lap-and-a-half.  As soon as the BMC-led peloton finally managed to bring this move back, there was a crash in the field.  Tim was in front of it, but Wes and Chris were behind, so they had to chase with about 40 other riders to close the gap that had been created.  Due to the fact that the finish was only 7 miles away, the field was now flying down the road single-file.  Although everything came back together, neither Wes nor Chris were able to get back to the front to assist Tim for the upcoming field sprint.  Tim did his best in the chaotic sprint, but after dodging several near-crashes, he decided he wanted to go to work Monday with all the skin on his body and sat up to roll across the line in 36th place.  Wes and Chris both finished safely behind.  Although we didn’t come home with a podium, we all met our goal if getting in some great training and not crashing!  A quick check of the computer post-race showed an average speed of 27.1mph – pretty fast for a road race! 

Next weekend is the third race of the spring series, the Fork Shoals Road Race.  There should be 6-8 riders from LITESPEED-BMW lining up for that one, so we plan on being aggressive and bringing home some results!  Stay tuned!