Meeting Monday, Feb 1!

2010-01-27

There is less than 5 weeks till the first race! Hopefully your training has been going well. Let us know how you've been staying active in the offseason and getting readty to race. Monday, our new coach Colby Pearce will introduce himself and really wants to get to know the team. So definitely come to introduce yourself, ask some questions, and take some notes. Also, if you haven't filled out a Club Sports Waiver, you can do that at the meeting, as well as pay dues if you plan on racing. As a reminder, you MUST fill out a waiver to participate in anything CU Cycling related, and you must pay dues in order to race. Additionally, renew your USA Cycling license now to have it in time for the first race. If you have any questions on how to do that, come to the meeting or shoot us an email.

Lately we've been working on expanding the CU Cycling name in Colorado. We're looking at getting some interest-articles out in papers. We're currently collaborating with 303Cycling.com, a new site that covers everything cycling around here. Currently we have one news item up discussing our thoughts on the upcoming season. Check it out and let us know if there are any cycling news or pieces you'd like to write about.

See you at the meeting on Monday.

CU takes 2nd at Nationals!

2009-10-20

The large squad from CU at Collegiate Mountain Nationals had very consistent performances in every event this weekend in Truckeey, California, leading the team to a great 2nd overall! Nationals racing started on Friday with a 30-mile Cross Country race, where Blake Harlan took 8th and Kevin Kane took 12th in a field of nearly 60 men, and Mia Wilhelm, Katie Sodergren and Deidre York took 13th, 14th and 15th of 45 women. Short track on Saturday went better for CU. Blake Harlan finished 5th and Kevin Kane finished 13th of over 60 men, and Matt Wiebe also finished in the top 20. Flora Duffy pulled off an 8th place finish, while Wilhelm, York and Sodegren also finished in the top 20 of the Women's race.

The CU gravity team then attacked 4-cross on Saturday, where Joey Schusler podiumed with 3rd, Mike Duckworth took 9th and Michael Larsen finished 10th. For the Women, a tired Diedre York still took 10th, while teammate Neven Steinmetz grabbed a silver medal. Sunday closed out Nationals with Downhill. Schusler posted a blazing time of 4 minutes, a full 11 seconds ahead of 2nd place. Larsen took 4th, making for a good podium picture for CU. York competed in her 4th event, taking 4th place, with Steinmetz finishing 7th. All of these results led to both Harlan and York with 4th place over all, and CU with 2nd place in the team omnium. Congratulations to all the racers for their outstanding performances!

On the home front, the weather on Saturday was a sunny 60 degrees. It couldn't be bette for the more than 30 riders participating in the CU Ride-A-Thon. About 15 went for the full century route, supported by Lisa Pallagi and Phoebe Erdman, with the rest doing the half-century supported by Greg Wilken. Aside from some surprise road construction in a few places, the riding was great and the food and snacks were delicious. Thanks for coming out to raise money for the team!

Last Minute Ride-A-Thon details

2009-10-08

Everyone: Our Ride-A-Thon has been rescheduled to Saturday, Oct 17. We meet at the Buffalo at Folsom Field at 10am. Dress warm, bring plenty of food and drinks for the rides, bring tools and spare tubes and a minipump or CO2. Bring your camera too for some great scenery, team shots, action pics, etc. Any last-second questions or concerns - email Matt, Jamie, or the list.

Mountain Riders: Bring a towel or something to wrap your bike in. It will be transported by trailer to Hall Ranch. Those that can also drive bikers to Hall Ranch - do, as per Matt's instructions.

Road Riders: There's both a century and a half-century route. The 100 mile route heads North to Carter Lake, east to nothingness, south to some of my favorite roads in Superior, and back to campus. It has a few decent hills and one LONG flat section, great for working on your time trialing and pacelining. It ends coming from the southwest through campus. The 50 mile route does the same first 12 miles, then has a lot of turning on a sort-of tour of Boulder County - grazing Longmont, going through the heart of Niwot, touching Erie, and going through both Lafayette and Louisville before returning to campus the same as the full route.

The routes are on mapmyride.com, for both the Full Century and the Half Century. Download cue sheets and such here: 100 mile, and 50 mile.

Bring spare equipment, clothing, and bottles if you like for support cars to carry. We should have at least 2, maybe even 4 support vehicles for the ride. Also note that the roads are not closed for this event, so be cautions about other cars. As you already do, obey traffic lights and signs.

Have fun, be safe, and see you at 10am.

CU wins the Conference again!

2009-10-05

Following our win of the conference during road season, the Mountain Bike team continues our trend. Mesa State hosted a messy set of races, as the rain would not drain. This led to many mud-covered cleats with no way to clip in well. That only added dramatic ambience to our conference victory.

The racing started off with fast rocky double track for short track. Blake Harlen, Matt Weibe and Kevin Kane took 3rd through 5th in the Men's A's. Diedre took 6th in Women's A's, with Flora and Mia not far behind. Brittany Bohannon blew away from everyone, winning by nearly 5 minutes in the Women's B's, with Merilee Linfield taking 2nd over everyone else. The afternoon's Dual Slalom course started out steep and loose, before splitting into the trees and then rejoining at the finish. Joey Shusler won the Men's A's, with Nick Caron close behind in 5th. Deidre York recovered from short track to finish 3rd in DS.

Sunday was where the rain really hit, adding insult to the technical course with steep climbs and challenging descents. Kevin Kane took 8th in the Men's A's, with Chris Petersen and Blake Harlen taking 11th and 12th in one of the larger fields of the season with 35 racers. In the women's A's, Deidre York, Katie Sodergren and Mia Wilhelm took 5th through 7th, and Claire Bensard just sqeezed into the top top 10 as well. The big story was Brittany Bohannon following on her Short Track domination the day before by winning XC with a 15 minute margin! The two wins in one weekend pushed her to the top as Women's B's Champion!

Mike Kane's support of the team continued this week too, with photos at http://www.summitshots.com/Collegiate-Mountain-Bike/. Congratulations and great job to all the racers, bringing home the conference win again. Keep the momentum going, Nationals is a week and a half away.

Another big thanks goes out to our President, Jamie Emerson, as well as Abi Carroll and Peter O'Donnell for all of their help in organizing, setting things up, helping out the conference directors, making sure the racers were prepared and motivated (that megaphone is awesome!) and all of the other little tasks that made this season a huge success. Our Travel Coordinator, Claire Bensard also did a great job organizing transportation, tents, hotels, directions, and everything else that allowed the team to get to the races. When you see them around, be sure to thank them graciously.

Two final notes: Valmont Bike Park is having their Ground breaking Friday, Oct 16 and Saturday Oct 17th. Much help is needed to set up the cross course, build jumps, and other general tasks. If you can volunteer, contact Lauren Sullivan. Finally, we have our major fundraising Ride-A-Thon this Saturday! The destinations appear to be Hall Ranch (mountain riders) and Carter Lake (roadies). Both rides start from the Buffalo on Campus at 10am Saturday. Mountain riders will drive to Hall ranch for an epic and fun day of riding, while roadies will have support vehicles follow them for their 50/100 mile routes. Let Matt know you're coming, which ride you're doing, and if you can drive (people to Hall Ranch or supporting the road ride). If you would like, you can also donate to the team. Matt can handle that too, so let him know. See you Saturday!

Thanks to everyone for making our race a great success!

2009-09-30

A HUGE thanks goes out to everyone on the CU team for helping out at the race, and representing CU in an uplifiting and responsible way. The entire weekend went very well, and the Winter Park administrators will be very pleased to have us host there again next year.

Saturday, to recap, had the Cross Country race at WP, with Short Track that afternoon at Snow Mountain Ranch. The 11-mile XC Course was apparently to our team's liking, with Sam Brown hitting the top 10 in Men's C's, and 5 top 10's in the Men's A's (including Blake Harlan in 2nd). Flora Duffy won in the Women's B's, followed 5 others in the top 7 spots! The Women's A team folllowed the same trend, bringing in another 4 top 10's. Short track was the same story, aside from no representation in the Men's B or C's. Matt Wiebe and Blake Harlan finished 2nd and 3rd, with Braden Kappius and Kevin Kane in 6th and 7th. Tess Amer, Phoebe Erdman and Merilee Linfield swept the podium for Women's B's. And after upgrading to A's, Flora Duffy won, with Katie Sodergren and Mia Wilhelm in 4th and 5th. That's some serious domination on Saturday alone!

Sunday was the Conference Downhill Championships, where CU's domination continued. Brave Claire Bensard was the only Women's B racer to brave the course, naturally taking her spot atop the podium. Deidre York and Neven Steinmetz took 5th and 6th in the Women's A's in a very tough field. Mason Lacy, Will Schwabacher and Clayton Haskins swept the Men's B's with blazing times, 10 seconds ahead of 4th and 20 ahead of 5th! Joey Schusler won the A's, with Jack Kelly taking 3rd.

Mike Kane was around again taking pictures. You can find them here, with 3 galleries of great racing. One week is left in the conference, and CU's strength thus far has the team sitting in the lead, though Fort Lewis is nipping at our heals. We'll keep up the performance Mesa State.

Strong competition in Sol Vista

2009-09-23

This past weekend, the Colorado School of Mines hosted Cross Country, Mountain Cross, Short Track and Downhill at Sol Vista. With the season changing, the fall foliage provided a beautiful backdrop for the races. The Short Track and Downhill on Sunday were fairly tame, but the Mountain Cross and Cross Country courses were top-notch. The XC course was the same 4.5 mile loop as the Nationals Pro Race, loose switchbacks up the mountain, beautiful overlook of the backside of the mountain, very steep decent that soon tapered off and opened up for tons of speed to the finish. Rotem Ishay of Ft. Lewis College fresh off his trip from the world championships ran away off the front while the battle for the remaining podium spots continued. Blake Harlan and Kevin Kane took turns commanding the remaining front position throughout the 4 lap race. At the end it was Kevin coming across the line in 3rd with Blake coming in for 5th place. In the women's race Eszter Horonyi, CU's secret weapon took off from the gun never to be seen again in a uncontested victory. Diedre York and Katie Sodergren continued their strong riding for 4th and 5th place respectively. Jesse Goodrich laid down the power in the Men's B taking the win, his first of the season. In the afternoon, Chris Peterson, Blake, Eszter, and Diedre York attempted mountain cross. Diedre took the win in Women's B's.

Sundays STXC and DH were both lucky enough to have nice weather while the storms continued to build along the mountains. In the STXC, Katie Sodergren and Clair Bensard took 2nd and 3rd place in the Women's A while Matt Weibe and Blake Harlan took 3rd and 4th place in the Men's A. In terms of results, the weekend began with most of CU's results coming from the endurance squad, however the gravity team made up for it in Sundays downhill competition. In the Men's B CU took 5 of the top 6 including 1st, 2nd and 3rd from Ethan Evans, Karl Buck and Zach Geller. That trend continued in the Women's B race as CU once again swept the podium with great riding from Diedre York, Elaine Brogna and Clair Bensard. In the Men's A race, Joey Schusler was unstoppable turning in a winning time of 3:38 smoking the next best time of 3:58. Michael Larsen and Nick Caron also had great rides bringing home 4th and 5th place respectively. Check out many great pictures taken by Mike Kane here.

With Nationals just around the corner and next weekend being the gravity finals hoted by CU in Winter Park, things are looking good for both the CU endurance and gravity teams. With the season's end in sight, the conference team omnium is heating up with only 3 more weekends to race, CU is the front runner for the lead.

Brief Update

2009-09-16

Many CU racers stormed Fort Collins last weekend and continued to controll the RMCCC. Throughout Short Track, Downhill and Crosscountry, we had 19 top 10 finishes! which include 4 wins and many podiums.. The season continues this weekend with an enthusiastic 37 CU racers heading to Sol Vista foro the Colorado School of Mines races.

In other news, the team keeps things social with a BBQ Thursday night. We're also having a huge fundraiser on October 10th - the CU Ride-A-Thon. Mountain bikers will be doing some epic trail riding, while the roadies ride a supported Century (metric century allowed only if you have a good excuse). After the rides, the team will be hosting a dinner/party to thank all our gracious donors and sponsors. More details will be provided on the Events page as the event nears. To find out more info, or to sponsor a rider, contact us at cucyclingteam [at] gmail [dot] com.

Elsewhere around the world...

2009-09-13

While most of the mountain team controlled Wyoming and Sol Vista, CU had a good presence at other races around the world. Close to home, 6 CU racers took to the road in Steamboat Springs. The Labor Day Weekend race was 4 stages: a very technical time trial, a long circuit with rolling hills, a longer T-shaped road race with bigger hills, and a final wide and fast 4-corner crit. Brett Peters, Isaac Karson and Greg Wilkin were in the Men's 4's.

Brett finished 8th in the crit, while Greg had top 10s in each of the other stages for 7th overall. Stefan had a good weekend in the 3's, with a 9th in the TT, 10th in the Circuit, and 7th in the crit for 13th in the Overall. Natalie was the sole woman to represent CU in the P123 field, up against tough competition, and came in 16th in the overall. Flora was unrivaled in the 4's while still waiting for an upgrade, finishing 3rd in the TT and sweeping the rest of the races to claim her spot at the top of the podium.

Across the country, Nora Olson and Jamie Emerson were in Vermont for the Green Mountain Stage Race, similar to Steamboat with a TT, circuit, road race with painful climbs, and a final crit. Nora has been battling some back issues, and after lasting well through two stages in the 4's, had to drop out. With some more physical therapy and massages, she's hoping to race even stronger next spring. Jamie had decent performance against a very strong field in the Men's 3's, finishing most stages in the top 3rd of the field for a GC of 27th out of 105, and 8th in the KOM.

At the more elite level, Kiel Reijnen was at the Tour of Missouri, racing for Jelly Belly. He got plenty of camera time on Tuesday, as he helped form the main break with a Garmin and a Planet Energy rider. The trio was away for over 100km in the hot Missouri sun before being caught in the final 25km. Throughout the etire tour, Kiel came up with some great finishes, 10th in one sprint stage as well as two 18th's out of about 115.

Half the world away, Joey Schusler was competing downhill at the UCI World Championships in Canberra, Australia. The weather was great, leaving the technical 2.1km course dry and fast. The competition was extremely fast, and Shusler finished within 10 seconds of the winner, finishing 32 out of about 60 elite competitors.

Meanwhile, the CU football team got embarrased by CSU at home, with Ram fans stormed Folsom Field in celebration of their victory. This weekend, the CU cycling team avenges the football team, racing in Fort Collins.

First race of the season sets the stage for another year of Rocky Mountain domination

2009-09-09, by Blake Harlan

Endurance and Gravity racers kicked off their respective seasons in Laramie, Wyoming and Sol Vista, Colorado. Usually greeted by light frost on the ground and frigid temperatures, the CU endurance squad raced short track, cross country and even a little super d in prime racing conditions at the Happy Jack trails just outside of Laramie, WY. CU took to the races full steam with Merilee Linfield and Lauren Sullivan taking 3rd and 4th in the Women's B short track while Katie Sodergren took the win in the Women's A race. In the Men's A race, CU went 1,3,5 with Matt Wiebe taking the win, closely followed by Chris Hurst and Blake Harlan respectively. Some CU racers opted for the double race day, taking on the super d race. Once again CU showed force taking 3rd in Women's B, 3rd in Men's C, and 2nd in Men's A.

CU racers called in reinforcement for Sunday's cross country race which proved to be beneficial. Racers tackled the short 5.5 mi, power climb packed course with intensity that could only be matched by a select few. In the Women's B race, CU racers opted to stick together. Led by Katie O'Block and Brittany Bohannon, CU racers took places 5-8. In the Men's A race, CU racers took 4 of the top 8 spots with incoming freshman Kevin Kane taking the 2nd spot on the podium, just off the winning pace. CU's Women's A racers set the highest mark to beat taking the top 2 spots, with Katie Sodergren taking her second win of the weekend while another CU freshman, Diedre York, took 2nd in her first collegiate race.

On the other side of the border the CU gravity team was hucking drops in Sol Vista. Even with teammate Joey Schusler in the land down under competing for the World Championships the CU racers held their ground with ease. Elaine Brogna, DH rider newly turned racer took the win in the Women's B race while Neven Steinmetz followed the medal seeking trend taking bronze in the Women's A race. In the Men's A race, Scott McLamb also took the bronze medal in a closely heated battle for 2nd while Jack Kelly took 8th.

So it's not surprising if you lost count. CU racers came out strong in their respective disciplines taking home 4 wins, including 13 top 3's and over 30 top 10's! Needless to say, CU has set a high precedent for the racing to come and it will be enjoyable to watch the domination continue through the Fall 2009 season.