How do you beat an old woman in a sign sprint?
Don’t ask Mark or Tony, cause they can’t.
July 5th Ride
It has been 10 years since our friend and teammate Carl Zach passed away. Every year around this time the team tries to get out and do a social ride to honor the memory of Carl. This year we’ll be leaving from Crank Daddy’s at 8am and riding north through Grafton. The route will take about 3 hours as we’ll be doing a fairly leisurely (17mph or so) pace. Feel free to join us.
The Long and Winding ToAD
Oh man, that’s clever.
What a great series. Hats off to Big Man, Billy O and the rest of their crew for a flabulous 11 days of racing. Every race starts at or near the scheduled time. Good courses. Simple touches like letting us know what side to pin our numbers on in advance. This is the best race series in America and it’s right here within an hour and a half of Milwaukee every day.
Nice results for the team over the weekend. Mark and Juice finished the Pro 1/2 race at Downer Ave. Denny dusts off the cobwebs, starts the winning break at Waukesha and takes 3rd, and then Mark is among 34 finishers in the Pro 1/2 race.
The team had a solid series with a couple of podium finishes in the Masters. Not too shabby for a bunch of old men.
ToAD Day 6 – Sheboygan
ToAD continues to set the standard for raw bossness. You couldn’t ask for a more well run series.
This is the third year of the Sheboygan crit in it’s current location. Pretty flat, decent corners. Always fast.
Masters 4/5 – Eric Shimano continues his comeback with 9th.
Masters 1/2/3 – Gene was 9th as well, mounting a serious challenge in the overall with his podium place in the previous day’s road race. You’ll have to read about it elsewhere since none of our resident social media wieners had time to write anything about it.
TJ, Kramer and Tyson finished in the bunch.
Pro 1/2 – Juice, Mark and I lined up with about 100 other starters. I’ve always liked this race. The pavement leaves a bit to be desired, especially on the back side, but the corners are good (4 is a bit tight with the curb coming in, but I’ve never seen anyone have any problems there) and the straights are nice and wide. This year’s edition started out pretty tame but by about 20 minutes in I was fighting for my life. Let me just say that no one in that race did more work than I did yesterday. Eventually I was dead last in the field using every old man trick in the book to stay in. About half way through a break finally rolled off and things let up just a bit. Once I knew that I was safe, the CZ Velo gamesmanship began. I waited until about 15 to go to show my face to Juice and Mark. They had looked fine all race, and since I was suffering, I knew that I’d have to pull something special out of the bag to get the top CZ Velo spot. With 2 to go, I got right behing Mark, and going into 1 to go, I buried myself and got a few spots on him. I knew that gaps would start opening and that I couldn’t close them, so I needed to put some riders between us. I thought that the day was mine, but coming into corner 3 for the last time, the battery in my in bike motor ran out and I knew I was cooked. I looked back and sure enough there was Juice with Mark right behind him. Coming out of 4, Mark blew by me and Juice to take Most Hated Team in America honors.
We are such dorks.
Try as they might…
The pros couldn’t drop us. Juice, El Marko and I finished a pretty fast Sheboygan crit tonight. Those pros should be ashamed of themselves. If you can’t drop my tired old can it should be back to the drawing board.
OK, that’s not fair. They did drop me 3 times. I managed to chase back on all 3 times. So they should be super embarrassed.
ToAD Day 4 – Appleton
Perfect weather, a 4 corner course 6 lanes wide on the front side and 4 on every other side. What could go wrong?
Nice job again, Eric Shimano, on 15th in the Masters 4/5 race. Both Big Man and Shimano are on the board in the overall.
Masters 1/2/3 was an amazing crash fest with two (that I know of) crashes on the front side (did I mention it was 6 lanes wide?) and one in corner 3 on the last lap. I’ll chalk it up to 90 rider fields, but so far the Masters are far from masterful.
I am out for tomorrow’s race, so some other goober will have to give an update. Is anyone even reading these things?
ToAD Day 3 – Grafton
Another great day of racing. Big fields, races start on time. Only complaint, two port-a-potties, both without toilet paper.
Masters 4/5 had a field of 76. Big Man bridges to the break and takes 3rd. Eric Shimano grabs 19th.
Cat 3 about 50 starters. Cheepolini was 22nd.
Masters started 90+ guys. Denny, Gene and Juice looked good up front. TJ and I made sure that anyone out of order at the back got yelled at.
A crash on the last lap took Gene, Juice and TJ out of the finish. Denny and I avoided and finished mid pack.
Pro 1/2 had about 150 guys. Mark was our lone starter and survived one crash to finish. Very good.
ToAD Day 2 – Thiensville
80+ starters in the Masters 1/2/3 today. The rain held off until just after the finish.
Scorching fast start. The first 30 minutes of the race were single file.
Gene -15th
Juice – 28th
Tige – 39th
Mark – 40th
ToAD 2010 is underway
130+ in the Pro 1/2 field at Shorewood and great crowds.
Congrats to El Marko who finished a tough race.
Thiensville today. Hopefully the weather calms down.
