This past Saturday Chris and I represented the Panther / Competitive Cyclist squad in the Meijer Grand Classic NRC crit in Grand Rapids. This race seems to change courses every year, but it always features a few brick sections, which make it hard and keep things interesting. It has always been one of my favorite crit races ever since it’s first edition in 2007.  A small (for an NRC race) but very strong field lined up, with the Bissel Pro squad, whose sponsor is based in Grand Rapids, being the team to watch. They brought so many riders that one of them had to sit out as they were over the limit for number of riders allowed to enter a race.  The race started off fast and was basically full gas all the time. About halfway through I attacked, got a decent gap, and Bissel rider bridged up just as I was realizing that my rear tire was flat. I went to the pits to get a wheel and was unfortunately put back into the field instead of back off the front. A few laps later I attacked again and bridged up to the lone Bissel rider, taking one of his teammates with me. Not long after that we dropped one of the Bissel riders (not sure whether it was the original rider or the one who followed me up), so it was just Patrick Bevin, Bissel, and me off the front. We killed it for a few laps and built up a nice gap, and then I started to hurt, bad. I tried sitting on for a few laps to recover, but he was having none of that, jumped hard going into a corner and I wasn’t able to hold onto his wheel. He went on to take a well deserved solo victory, and needless to say I was pretty disappointed to get dropped from the move.  In any case, I merged with a chase group of 8 or so and rode the remainder of the race with them until we got caught with around one lap to go. I was completely toasted for the finish and couldn’t do much. Chris said he was pretty tired too but still managed to get up there for the sprint, finishing 16th, and thanks to attrition in the field I was able to place in the money as well.

After the race I made a spur of the moment decision to follow Chris to Sunday’s Superweek race in Homewood.  Again the field was small for a Superweek race but high quality nonetheless.  It started sprinkling at the start, barely enough to get wet, but just enough to make things slick in the corners for the first 30 laps or so.  This caused a good bit of carnage/attrition, but both Chris and I were able to avoid the crashes and stay it in front of the splits. Chris was riding great and made the break of seven that took a lap on the field about halfway through the race.  After that we split our time between watching things at the front to prevent any of the riders a lap up from getting away again and looking at the lap counter and asking ourselves if there was any way we could really have so many laps left. You always forget just how long these 100k crits are when you haven’t done one in a while.  They did actually end up shortening the race by a few laps due to impending thunderstorms, and with three to go a rider from the Garneau team (who was a lap up) attacked.  There didn’t seem to be much of a chase going on, so with two to go I went to the front with Chris on my wheel in hopes of bringing him back and keeping Chris up front for the sprint. It didn’t quite work out, and I started to run out of gas with three corners to go. The Garneau rider stayed away to win, and Chris stayed up front for the sprint to finish 4th.  Once again thanks to attrition I was able to sneak into a money spot despite being blown and soft pedaling the last 500 meters or so of the race.

-Greg Christian

Panther p/b Competitive Cyclist notched another victory this past weekend as Kirk Albers won the 75-mile road race. You can read the full article and interview by John Bassetti at Vindy.com.

(Paul Martin takes 3rd at the Tour of the Valley time trial. )

(Kirk Albers claimed the top spot of the podium after the 75-mile road race.)

Tour of Lawrence, I was flying solo for this one. I was worried about this at first, but the P/1/2 fields were pretty small. Mostly it was just team Hotel San Jose, that Trek VW team and Mercy in attendance. The road race course wove around the campus of the University of Kansas. The course was sweet, two long climbs and a bunch of twisty decent dictated the four mile circuit. Unfortunately it was raining hard and the roads were very slick.

There was a large pile up in the first half mile of the race on a straight downhill section. I managed to weave my way around everyone sprawled across the road and dudes putting out the tripod in the turns. I channeled my Purdue Regional crit cornering skills and attacked and put nearly a minute into the field. As the course dried up we were brought back by what was left of the field, about 12 guys. We dicked around for a little while until 4 to go. I attacked on one of the uphills by a group of drunk KU students that were cheering for me because I gave them a thumbs up while I was in the breakaway after they offered me a free beer.

I spent a lap alone until Adam Bergman bridged up and we were riding really hard but were caught with 1 to go by three riders. There were some little attacks but it came down to the final uphill sprint, I had nothing left in the tank and ended up 4th.

Sunday was a repeat of the 2008 Collegiate Nationals Criterium course. However there was more rain. Another wet day, and I knew Hotel San Jose would be riding for Josh Carter. So I sat in and spent most of the day in my Endurance zone. With a few laps to go I took off my glasses that were fogging up pretty bad. Then it started raining, so I pretty much couldn’t see at all. I got a little sketched out with the whole wet roads and not being able to see so got caught out a little far back in the sprint and ended up 12th.

-Chris Uberti

After a tough week of racing up in Minnesoooooooota I took some rest for a couple days back home before it was off again to Cincinnati for some big team races, including the USACrits race Hyde Park Blast on Saturday.

Friday was the first year race in Madeira, Ohio. This was the first twilight crit of the year for myself and the course ran along the main boulevard of Madeira. Pretty much the entire Panther team was in attendance, so we had some high expectations. The course was very much on the technical side, with two 180 turns and a technical back side of the course the entire pack was single file for a majority of the race.

Our Panthers were on the attack the entire race, causing the field to shrink considerably until the race was neutralized halfway through for a nasty crash caused by a deflating finishing banner. Since the race was so technical the powers that be, namely Aerocat and Mountain Khakis’, kept a pretty tight lid on any potential escapee’s. With about 10 to go Vince and our Andy Clarke drilled really hard at the front to bring back the breakaway at about 4 to go. From then on it was sticking your neck out and risking life and limb for 8 more hairpin turns. Paul brought me up to the front with 2 to go, in the final hairpin we got swarmed, but I slotted in at 6^th wheel which seemed like a good place to be for the final 500 meters or so. However, those last 500 meters were pretty much spent cornering and I only managed to pass one lead-out man in the second to last finishing straight for 5^th place.

Saturday was going to be another dark race, not starting until 8:30 and running for an hour and a half. The Hyde Park race was also a USA Crits series race, which meant big money. The weekend of hairpins continued with a not so dramatic 180 just after the Start/Finish. Aside from that the course was basically two long drags with a trip up a dark narrow alleyway. To start off, the race was hot, and fast. Within a few minutes there was  a large field split with an elite group at the front, which thankfully contained nearly the entire Panther team. We were again very very aggressive, present in every move, or at least chasing it. Attacks and counter attacks went all race, until Andy Moskal got into a large group late in the race that got a good 20 seconds. However, as the sun went down and the dark alleyway got to be completely pitch black, the margin began to shrink. The Panther train got to the front with 3 to go, just as the breakaway was getting caught, and totally smashed it, keeping the other teams off until the final straight. My sprinting confidence was a little low and I waited to follow some wheels on the long finishing stretch. With about 100 meters to go two guys ahead of me just smashed into each other taking each other down, I did a little drifting and only managed to get tagged in the shin. I managed to sneak through and roll in 3^rd, Paul also avoided the crash to come in 5^th. Continue Reading »

The first three stages of Nature Valley are in the books and let me say, all two or so hours of racing we’ve done have been “epic.” The first stage was Wednesday morning, a 6-mile time-trial.  The course went out for about 2.5 miles on a flat road, looped back, then finished at the top of a hill a little over a half-mile in length.  Having the hill at the end made the race a little tricky, I think the key to a fast time was making sure you had enough gas left to storm the hill because that was where you could potentially lose the most time if you blew up.  Paul Martin put in an impressive ride for 21^st place, earning him the green jersey for the best amateur rider.

An interesting feature of this time-trial was that only mass-start-legal or “regular” road bikes were allowed – no aero bars and no disc wheels allowed.  The goal, according to the promoters, was to keep the logistics reasonable for the smaller teams.  For our small team having to transport 6 extra bikes to the race would have been an expensive nightmare so I’m certainly glad for the rule, I hope it catches on!  Somewhat surprisingly the winning time was only 24 seconds slower than last year.  A few guys made small pads on the tops of their bars to rest their forearms on, I saw the officials ask a guy to remove a shoelace connecting his brake hoods that he was apparently going to hold on to, and the KBS team rode TT bikes refitted with standard road bars and shifters.  United Healthcare was apparently complaining about this (mostly because Scott Zwizanski of Kelly beat Rory Southerland of UHC) but I don’t really see a problem with it.  Really as long as the bikes follow the rules – which they did – it’s not any different than riding a Ridley Noah or an aero Cervelo road bike.  Remember Ivan Dominguez riding a Fuji TT frame when he was on Toyota-United?  In fact, it could have even been a slight disadvantage to the Kelly riders as they effectively ended up riding road bikes with heavier frames and extra-low handlebars.  This of course brought up an interesting debate on weather or not time-trial-specific bikes should exist at all in road racing.  Not all of us agreed on this one so all I’ll say here is that I think they shouldn’t.

The second stage was on Wednesday night, a crit in downtown St. Paul.  It’s difficult to describe how hard a crit like this is, with such a big and strong field, but I will say that I was unceremoniously dropped with about 10 laps to go.  On the bright side, Paul defended his jersey and as a spectator for the last 10 laps I got to see some great riding by Ryan Knapp.  Ryan was held up by a crash in the  penultimate lap and denied a chance at a really good finish but was mixing it up at the front when it mattered the most and really looked like he belonged there.

Stage three was an evening road race starting in the rural town of Cannon Falls, scheduled to be 66 miles.  However, after around 18 miles of windy racing were were waved to the side of the road by the officials and sent back to town because of a tornado warning!  Not very many people took this very seriously, especially since heading back into town meant heading directly into black skies and what appeared to be a storm.  We later found out that a record number of tornadoes (35!!!) touched down across Minnesota so it was definitely a good thing the race was canceled.  On the way into town we passed the United Healthcare team RV, a stark contrast to our arrangements which included my old VW Jetta that I had driven all the way from Ohio:

You may be wondering what else we’ve been up to, what with only about 2:15 of total racing in the books for the first half of the race.  Well, for starters the six of us are split into pairs and staying in host housing: I personally may never understand why people invite bike racers into their homes but we’re very grateful to Sarah, Tara, and “Skibby” for their hospitality.  Host housing is great because it allows us to meet interesting people, learn a little bit about the area we’re visiting, and it means that we don’t have to get up early and scramble off to try to get to McDonalds before breakfast closes.

While not racing, popular activities have included sitting by the pool and excessive use of the social networking service “Twitter.”  We’ve also gotten to see some of the local sites, including a bike shop/cafe called One on One Studios (http://www.oneononebike.com/ ) which was highly recommended by a number of people.  It was definitely worth the trip and if you’re ever in Minneapolis we highly recommend stopping by.  The shop has some cool bikes on display (including a lot of single-speed mountain bikes) and a great cafe but perhaps the coolest part is a huge “bike junkyard” in the basement:

There’s everything down there from POS dumpster bikes in heaps to vintage Eddy Merckx frames, most for sale on some kind of barter system where you can apparently build your own bike and attempt to name your own price.

It’s not all fun and games though, I would compare down time during a stage race to procrastinating on big projects in college:  You can distract yourself temporarily but the race always looms in the background.  We’ve got another evening crit coming up and then a 95-mile road race that’s supposed to be full of steep climbs so it’ll be back to business soon enough.

-Dan Campbell

This past Sunday (6/13) was the Ohio state road racing championship.  The race is typically held on a course near Dayton that isn’t particularly exciting but typifies riding in Ohio in the summer:  Flat and narrow farm roads, excessive humidity, one minor hill, and a somewhat sketchy descent. The race was 7 laps for a total of 90 miles so at least the heat and humidity would be a factor.   A good group of Panther riders showed up (we are after all technically based in Ohio) so our chances for a result looked good.  I was worried that with such a strong Panther presence the field would race negatively so I started things off right by attacking as soon as the race started.  Two riders joined me and we were off:

We were out of sight quickly and then not a whole lot happened.  Lisa Martin did a nice job in the feed zone, I probably wouldn’t have finished at all if she hadn’t been there every lap.  Eventually the Huntington Bank rider succumbed to the humidity, and with around two laps to go and a 4 or 5 minute gap Paul Martin bridged up all by himself.  This would be a big deal if Paul didn’t do it so often, I think he’s bridged a giant gap solo in just about every Ohio race I’ve done with him.  That sealed up the top two spots and left the rest of our team to fight for the remaining places.  Kirk Albers stormed away with a late-race attack for 4^th and Andy Moskal outsprinted what was left of the field for 5^th.  Reigning Ohio time trial champion Andy Clarke (have to plug the sponsor, right?) was an impressive 12^th.  All in all a successful day for the team.  Also, as you can see from this great podium picture, Paul and I look ridiculous and apparently have really gross veins on our shins:

-Dan Campbell

Chris, Greg, I were up in Mount Pleasant, MI for the criterium on Saturday. Greg experienced some bad luck with his seatpost early in the race, so Chris and I shared the workload of covering threatening moves. Racing in Michigan seems a bit different than other states… tentative and Cat 3-esque (if that makes sense), which can become very frustrating when you only have 1 or 2 teammates. Anyway, there were several moves with either me or Chris in it that looked good but always came back. It came down to a field sprint and I had Chris on my wheel with 1 to go (in the top 5). After the last corner there was some bunching and Chris couldn’t open up his sprint. I think he ended up 6th.

Greg and I started the 104 mile RR on Sunday. The two of us were heavily marked which made things quite difficult on the 2 of us. Greg put it some big efforts early on to bring back a fairly threatening break but his bad luck continued with a crash in the feed zone (due to some rider who couldn’t handle his musette bag) Greg was stranded by the wheel car and his race was over. I eventually got into a good break with 4 and 2 bridged up to make it 6 (maybe 45 miles from the line?). The Bissell rider who won sat on the whole time. I was in the hurt locker for the last 20 miles because of a missed feed. Ended up 4th, which was bittersweet considering the win was certainly within reach. Hopefully a good build up to success in WI and at Hyde Park.

-Vince Roberge

I am still not quite sure why anyone would want to get to Oklahoma sooner than anybody else,   except maybe to leave sooner. That is of course unless you have set your sites on the city of Tulsa. This past weekend we traveled there for a weekend of America’s finest crit racing, they are not playing around. Being such a big money filled prize list and so close to our Arkansas domain, not going really would have been a huge mistake.

Race one, I was feeling up to the challenge of competing with some of our nation’s top amateurs but like many big races the nerves were in over drive. After the first lap and seeing how much room the corners had I was able to calm down enough and get to racing. This figure 8 course however did not provide much in the way of places to move through the bunch. I took a few shots at pushing by the field but my freshly glued tubular was putting me on edge too much for any extreme chances to be taken while diving into a corner. I finished in mid bunch with few impressive moments to report.

Race two, after spending a day in wonderfully warm weather either having breakfast at a café or spinning out the legs on a wonderful trail along the Arkansas River race time was 2030. The course today was Continue Reading »

Despite talk the week before of staying home, getting some rest, etc.,
a good chunk of Panther’s northern contingent headed to Kentucky for
the Tour of Red Red Gorge Omnium, consisting of a Time Trial on Friday
(which only Ryan did); a rolling 50-something mile RR on Saturday; and
a 91 mile RR on Sunday which featured four good-sized climbs.
Saturday’s road race was fairly aggressive, but given the short
distance and nature of the course it took a while for anything to get
away.  With a little over 10k to go I found myself in a group of 9 or
10 riders.  I was the only Panther representation in the group, which
contained a couple fast sprinters, and I wasn’t feeling particularly
great at that moment, so I didn’t contribute much to the pace making.
Team Nuvo, however, had three riders in the move, and apparently liked
it’s makeup. They were successful (barely) in driving it to the
finish, despite the strong efforts of our riders back in the field to
reel it in.  I figured my only chance to win was by attacking, so I
gave it a go from around 3k out; the move was unsuccessful, and I
ended up finishing 4th in the sprint.

As expected, Sunday’s race started out fairly slow, save for a couple
of riders going off on “suicide” breaks, as everyone knew that the
real action was going to take place on the climbs.  Each time we went
up a hard climb, a group of 10 or so would form at the front, then
eventually get caught by the dwindling field. Each time we had nearly
the whole team making the selections on the climbs, so it was obvious
that it was going to be a good day for the Panther boys.  About
halfway through it started to rain, which led to Dan and Chris being
taken out of the race as a result of crashes whilst descending.  Chris
gets the team hardman award for dislocating his shoulder, then
immediately popping it back into place himself. After the final major
climb, the front group was established for good. Ryan and I were both
there, and after a few miles we went to work attacking the break.
Ryan made a nice solo move that lasted for a few miles, and after he
came back I was able to counter and solo the last 6k to victory.  We
narrowly missed out on going 1-2 with Ryan finishing 2nd in the group
sprint for 3rd overall.

-Greg Christian

Tulsa Tough may be the greatest overall weekend of Pro/Am racing in the USA. Tulsa is an absolute gem in the rough, the rough being Oklahoma. From the onset, the promoters did a fantastic job, starting with host-housing applications on the race website. Host housing is much more than just a way to save a few bucks, but a way to be part of the community and to live with another person or family for a few days. In my experiences, they have always been good and the hosts are always very interested in racing, diets, training and the overall lifestyle. Our host for the weekend was a gentleman named Bob, an avid cyclist and outdoorsman living in the coolest part of town.  Lucky us.

The race is a three day series setup omnium style, meaning you can start one day without finishing the previous day. Also, each day is scored separately, although at the end of the series points are added from the three days to determine the overall winner.

Friday- 9:15pm. Starting well after dark we had a 70 minute, figure eight course through the Blue Dome District. The longest section was two city blocks, making for a very technical crit that averaged 28mph. Everyone was on par in terms of fitness within such a tight course, but it was technique that made the difference. Also, you had to skip the heart attack when a massive fireworks show started about halfway through, to the surprise of everyone. With 7 laps to go in the 40+ lap race I crashed with three others. I think I was hit from behind, but not sure. Regardless, I hit the pavement at 35mph on a slight downhill, to the excitement of about 500 onlookers. I did a full 360 then laid there for a few seconds, waiting for a tire to run over my face. That Never happened. I jumped up to the applause of the crowd and made it back to the SRAM pit to get back in on the very next lap, about 60 seconds later. Zach, Wade and I all finished in the pack, while Brad Huff (Jelly Belly) sprinted to the win.

Saturday- 8:30pm. 80 minute crit. Another night crit, but this one started in dusk so our eyes had some transition period midrace.  This race was in the Brady Arts District, and even more people showed up to cheer us on. Soundpony, the greatest bar outside of Durango, CO, had beer on tap to lubricate the throats of its majorly awesome hooligan crowd. Mega-phones in tow, they lined the streets spewing beer and yelling at every single rider.  Just as in the night before, Dave Towle announced the entire race while having access to live TV coverage from his booth. Also, there were two huge jumbo-trons on course to spectators could see about 80% of the race at all times. All three of us kept it upright this time, finishing in the pack, again behind eventual winner Brad Huff. Continue Reading »