NRO at Elkhorn

Both Shaun Radley and Brian Williams showed up in good form this past weekend at Elkhorn. This isn't surprising as both of them have been cycling strong this year. Here are a few pictures to prove it! Way to go guys!

Brian Williams Wins at Elkhorn!!!

Brian was in a break of 15 along with GAS's John Curry in the 1st stage of the Elkhorn Classic in Oregon and took the win!! Absolutely incredible! More details as they come. All of you make me proud to be part of Montana cycling.

Get to know Steve Zellmer, NRO rider of the month

Steve Zellmer is killing it this year! Here are a few things that make him tick... Glad you're riding for us, Steve!

First time you knew you had bike fever?
Back in Madison in about 1982 a college buddy of mine who was a racer talked me into doing a crit around the Capitol- I had no idea what a crit was. I wore two tee shirts, soccer cleats strapped as hard to the pedals as I could get them and a hockey helmet. It was awesome, I finished second and was hopelessly hooked.
Most memorable ride:
My most memorable ride was the Bob Cook Memorial Hill Climb in Colorado. Its a 28 mile, 7,000 foot climb that ends at 14,250 feet on Mount Evans on the highest paved road in North America. The scenery was awesome but it was one of the most gruesome rides I've ever done.
Favorite ride:
Boulder/Lyons/ Estes Park/ Ward/ Left Hand Canyon, hands down.
Favorite bike:
That's a tough call, my 3Rensho and I have been through a lot together. I had this Raleigh Super Course in college, bar-end shifters, it was sick.
Who and/or what inspires you?:
I draw inspiration from a lot of sources but I wouldn't be on the bike right now if it wasn't for my son, Willy. I'm in awe of his perseverance and committment; his passion for all things cycling just blows me away.
What is something that people don't know about you?
I once had my picture in Rolling Stone magazine.

A Team Victory

Don't have time to write a full race report but want to give a quick but sincere thanks to my team for the incredible work they did for me on Sunday to help me with the 6 seconds I needed for the Womens's 1/2/3 overall "W". They kept the pace high and set me up for the time bonus sprints. I feel so honored to have had Kara, Kellie, Joey and Lindsy totally committed doing whatever I needed for the win.

Kara - Wow....basically her first NRO race as a Cat 4 and she killed it!. She is not only strong - but teachable and willing to do work for the team. Kara chased down breaks and helped set pace the entire race. She has a future in cycling for sure. We are so lucky to have her.

Kellie C. - Took the Overall win for the Cat 4 women and rode very strong. I think an upgrade is in the works. Kellie, too, helped chase and set pace at the front the entire race.

Joey - I can't give her enough credit. Joey did more work at the front than anyone in the race. She was my saving grace on several attempts from Delphine to break away. With about 18 miles to go I realized that what i was speculating was in deed happening....a flat front. I pulled Joey to the back and told her. Her first comment was "take my bike Tam". So giving!!! We decided not a good idea. She then spread the word to the NRO girls. I was able to finish with about 25lbs of pressure....sheesh!!

Lindsy - She made me feel like Cavandish. Our plan was to have her lead out...and that she did....PERFECT!! We were both given lots of rest by our teammates. Lindsy is incredible. Her cycling career is bright.

Thank you Joey, Lindsy, Kellie and Kara. I love you all!!!!

-Tamara

MT hood report

As you may have seen on the “Blogosphere”, I (BW) just returned from the Mt Hood Cycling Classic. Thought I would try to give a little snapshot of what it was like.

It was just days before the race when Shaun informed me, during a Gchat conversation, that the organizers were including the Cat 2 field at Mt Hood with the Pro-1. Needless to say, I was pretty concerned. I was fresh off two good weeks of training, finally, but the 6 weeks before I had been struggling to recover, working nights, rarely getting more than 12 hours a week. My “sensations” at Wenatchee were nothing other than poor. It also meant that upgrade points would only be awarded for GC, unless you could out-sprint or out-climb the professionals at the front of the race, and that the chance of spending a large portion of the road stages “O-T-B” were astronomical. However, it also meant that I had extra motivation, in the 4 days after our conversation leading up to the race, to trim another pound or two off the old spare tire, ride 12 hours (there's nothing like some good crash training), and psyche myself up for 6 days of racing with, as Linsey Corbin put it last night at Bessetto's birthday party, about as much tactics as a Triathlon: ride the Pro-train as long as possible. Last man standing wins the Cat 2 GC.

Bissell and their defending champion Mach were there with a small team, United Healthcare brought a large team including NW favorite Morgan Schmitt, and most other western American and Canuckan (see http://ryanalexanderpayne.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-gladly-stand-up-next-to-you-and.html) elite amateur teams were in attendance, like HR Block, Total Restoration, Hagens Berman, Yahoo, California Giant Strawberries, and RideClean. Quite a few dirt riding professionals were there too, Ryan Trebon, Sid Taberlay, Carl Decker. (If you're wondering how tall Treefarm really is, let me just say that when I'm riding next to him and we're both in the hoods, his hips as high as my shoulders, give or take an inch. And I have a 34” inseam.) Hood is the biggest race I'd ever started, and would be a great chance to evaluate my fitness. After a week of good days and bad days, you get a pretty refined idea of how you stack up. Unfortunately, when I had good legs on the first RR, I missed a split for being caught slacking in the back, which ironically still produced my best stage placing at 32^nd, after dragging the first chase group around for 20 miles with only the help of pro mtb'er Carl Decker and some other cat 2 who was high on GC. But by the end of the week I had found the rhythm of the race, and with pain as the only sensation coming from lower extremities, was able to time my efforts well, and hung with the yellow jersey group on the queen climbing stage until 5k to go, something like half way or more up the final ski resort climb. So while good results eluded me, I also avoided bad ones too. I'm not enough of a stage racer to love that, but I'll take it.

The biggest surprise was that I didn't finish either criterium, my loathsome but historical specialty. You read about the crash in the first one on Shaun's blog, no big deal I was just pushed to the outside where the shoulder slopes down to a gutter, so once my front wheel met mossy, wet, off camber pavement, I hit the deck like an OPRFer follows a lonesome text message... Just a little road rash but a broken derailleur hanger only 3 laps in kept me from continuing; I received a 13 minute time penalty so I could avoid disqualification, a pretty good compromise. I had a spare hanger in the toolbox and was ready to go the next day. In Sunday's final, rainy criterium I was riding complacently in the bunch, happy to have avoided further crashes, like when Sam Johnson for some reason lost it around the downhill corner a couple inches in front of me. I had traction enough left to dodge to the inside at 30mph and avoid him, along with the guy directly behind me, later my mom told me the 25 riders behind us piled into Johnson. But with 2.5 laps to go my rear tire blew out. This time I got a pro-rated time with the peloton. 6^th place cat 2 GC got dropped so I took that spot, in the money and a few upgrade points, which was pretty sweet after finding myself D-F-L at the start of stage 2.

The most memorable hours of the week were the early miles of Saturday's queen climbing stage, which starts and finishes at the Mt Hood Meadows ski area. The weather had finally lightened up and the day was set to be crystal clear and sweaty. Once you paid your dues in a long line for the bathroom (yes, ladies, a line out the door for the men's) and sauntered over to the sign in, trying to listen in on UHC's tactical discussions (word on the street was that they were going to let things go until the second climb), heard the head commissaire scolding the Yahoos about bottles jettisoned outside the feed zones, checked your brakes five times wile shivering in the refrigerated morning air, spent ten minutes puzzling over why, since the chairlifts in front of you were running, you were riding bikes today, and then thoroughly soaked in Mt Hood's snow-white grandeur, you threw a leg over the bike and coasted down a hill for something like 15 miles. A large part of the descent was neutralized, which as you can imagine meant the smell of burning carbon brake pads was particularly pungent. At one point early in the wide open, fast descent I saw Hagens Berman rider and former WWU teammate of mine Chris Parrish going backwards, his bike bucking six inches side to side in one of the nastiest speed shimmies I've seen. I yelled “Knees on the top tube!” and hoped he was alright. He was. After reaching the bottom not a few goosebumps later, I was trying to reconstruct the elevation profile in my head, and all I could remember was a sharp dip, the first climb coming immediately at the bottom of the descent. So I was very suspicious when we were happily rolling along on the flats, but I let my guard down and tried to enjoy it for a minute, and warm up my legs. Which is when I saw the lead car make a right turn. No other way to interpret that. It's hard straight from the bottom, Category 1 climb. In a couple minutes Mach and some others are attacking, now we're all on the rivet. 150 riders are strung out two or three wide: a snake winding up the mountain. The arm warmers are hastily shoved down and the jersey is all the way open, “rise and shine legs” its still morning, oh god, how long is this going to be, 30 minutes, 45? Pushing through the lead in my veins I'm trying to remember that cranks move in circles, and wondering why they won't do that any faster. Around a corner I saw a huge split open and had nightmares of the first road race, but this time the split was further back, I was about mid pack, just behind it. A casual observer could tell, this one wasn't closing. I passed a few riders then sprinted hard up the left to cross it, knowing that going into the red is an acceptable compromise because this race is blowing up, just as it started. I was the last rider to bridge the gap, 70^th about, and each person behind me never saw the leaders again, until the parking lot 80 miles later. The last 20 miles of that race were touch-and-go, as I moved to the front to drift back on climbs, and even got dropped and chased back with a Bissell rider. Without a doubt, the rudest warm-up of my life, but who cares when you make it!

It was a great experience and I'll probably go back. The first crit course was a little ridiculous, with a hairpin 180 degree turn in a 150 rider field and the slick-as-snot sloping shoulders that ended my race, and I was definitely not happy that the technical prologue course was closed to pre-ride over 3 hours before my start time, which was after dark in the pouring rain. But once out of Portland, the courses and scenery were tremendous, and the competition high but not impossible. The climbs, while long, are all fairly moderate grades so a regular guy like me can hang.

I'm already looking forward to the next big race I can get into, maybe elite nationals, Cascade, or somehow the Tour of Utah, but I was certainly missing the NRO family while at the race, and am very happy to be back home. Thanks for reading-

Brian

Cow Country...another suffer fest!

Report by Tamara Bessette

Cow Country......

One of the toughest courses I have ever raced on. The first year I raced it was in 1990 (maybe 91) ....soloed in for the win. Soloed in yesterday too...but for 2nd behind an incredibly worthy opponent...Amy Frykman.

The womens race was well attended including NRO riders Joey Lenaburg, Kellie Carim, new rider Megan Fisher, Lindsy Campbell, and myself. GAS team looked strong including Lisa Curry, Amy C., Anna Dingman, Julie Z. Pro triathlete Jen Leubke had us all worried. There were several new women in the field - great to see them out there. And of course, the one we all were marking, Team Delphine's Amy Frykman.

Lindsy, Joey and I all had a plan for this year......to do better than last year. I placed last in the 1/2/3's ; Lindsy and Joey both suffered alone for most of the 49 miles and did not place as well as they wanted.

Unlike the Men's race, our race was pretty quiet for the first 8 miles. The hill started and so did the suffering. Amy Frykman and Jen crested first, 50m back was me, another 100m was Lisa Curry and Lindsy Campbell. I chased but could not close. Saw Amy ride Jen off and knew it was time to let the two behind catch so we could work together to at least catch Jen. We did.

Our next goal was to catch Amy. We kept her in sight - but with the tail wind and the motor that Amy has got going right now, i knew it probalby wasn't going to happen. It did not.

With about 7 miles to go I found myself with Lisa and Jen. I did not want to roll the dice on a sprint so took my chances and pressed hard on a hill. It worked and I soloed in for second......good enough...I'll take it!!!! Jen 3rd, Lisa Curry 4th, Lindsy 5th, Amy C 6th, Anna 7th.

Next up was the 4's finish. At about the 1k Kellie Carim took a flier to get the W. Joey sprinted with Julie Z for a very close 3rd place finish. Nice job to both NRO women.

The word on the street is that the Men 1/2/3 87 mile race was lightning fast right out of the gates! Both Elliot and Josh Tack rode strong and placed high in the standings!

Our NRO Master Men also rode incredibly strong. Steve Zellmer placed 1st and found himself riding in solo with 17 miles left in the race! Mike Longmire found himself in a pack sprint to the finish line, and taking a commendable second place.

As far as the Men Cat 4 race is concerned, they raced hard as well. Joshua Phillips rode with Karl V., and Jesse Vernon for most of the race and end up finishing in a very respectable third place. Scott Lenaburg found himself riding into 4th place, and Blair Fischer taking 5th.

Congrats to all our new Cat 5 men as well: Jason Harding, Joe Oldenburg, Josh Martell, and Peter Young who won the cat 5 race.

Seth Phillips at Hood

Oops. Got my info confused....sorry.

So - it is NRO rider Seth Phillips that is 2:42 behind the leader.

Incredible result for the new cat 3 rider.

Two stages to go...I bet both Seth and Brian continue to move up.

Montana cyclist are just tough.

B. Williams update....

He is moving up !!! He has made up all but 2:42 on his time penalty from the crash in the crit.

His message was: "Sitting 14th overall today. 2:42 behind the leader. 13th in the TT and 19th in yesterdays RR after two crashes".

Nice job Brian. Not surprised...very proud of you!!!

-Tamara

Williams at Hood

NRO Rider Brian Williams made the photo cut.

Looks like he is seated 3rd in the cat2 men only 5 seconds off first.

Blazing time for the 4mile prologue. His time: 7:36.295

D.E.A.T.H Ride

Tuesday Hell Ride.....D.E.A.T.H.

Sawmill

Lincoln

Marshall

Pattee

Mansion Heights

Come warm up your legs for Cow Country!!!

5:50 Big Sky Bikes....ride leaves at 6pm sharp.