In early-season racing, the team has been doing very well. Team Chica-D is continuing their dominance in the women’s ranks and the men are keeping it real, with some veterans placing, and a few new faces mixing it up.
Rochelle Schleicher leads the Perry RR series with one race to go. She has swept her masters races so far, and barring disaster, will come out on top for the series. Lynn Wilson took the top spot in Perry #1, but by skipping week 2, has set up a showdown with Santa Fe’s Shawn Morelli for Perry #3. Weather kept a lot of riders away for the second race of the series, and some peeps took advantage of a thinned-out field. “The weather was difficult (for Perry #2), said Schleicher. It was hard to figure out where the wind was coming from. There was a headwind going across the dam, but after you made the turn it felt like it was swirling around on the bottom.”
New Big D rider Joe Kleidosty improved on his performance from week one, with a 4th place finish in the Cat 5’s. Conditions were probably the worst on Sunday for that race, with freezing rain and the lowest temps of the day. Also new to the team are Danielle Lansford and Josie Measures. Lansford rode to a top finish in week 2, to go along with her 4th from the first week. She can grab the overall with a podium placing in the final. Measures got a podium spot in the first women’s masters race. We are very excited to see what these two ladies can accomplish in the remaining race of the series, and the rest of the season.
Paul Aldegeur grabbed a podium spot, with a 3rd place in the 40+ men’s race at Perry #2. Donavon Hottman is sitting in a good spot with a 2nd in week two ,to go along with his 4th from week one.
At Spring Fling, it was a similar story for the women in pink! Wilson has been placing high in her races, and Schleicher is right on the bubble for shot at the overall. Spring Fling continues this weekend, with racing on Saturday. The Perry series concludes on Sunday.
The team held its annual awards dinner at the Point Annex in Westport recently. It’s our time to get together and relive the highlights from the previous season, and to recognize those athletes who turned in great performances throughout the year. We also connected with many of our sponsors, and thanked them for their support.
Keen Wealth Advisors was in attendance and re-committed to Big D and to cycling in general. Keen Wealth Advisors will be donating funds to the KCA to help purchase updated finish line camera gear, and will be presenting the Keen Wealth Cup for the overall KBAT team starting in 2013! Special thanks to Bill Keen, CRPC®, Founder/CEO and the rest of the staff at Keen Wealth Advisors for your continued support of Big D, and cycling in the region.
The award for the most outstanding rider went to Lynn Wilson, for her sheer volume of racing and excellent results. She competed in 28 races and finished on the podium in most of them. Only her husband, Kurt, competed in more road races.
Lynn Wilson accepts the award for top rider of the year.
Rochell Schleicher was recognized as best team rider for her contributions to her teammates and for her outstanding results during the season. Schleicher won three state championships, and was a regular on the podium in important races. She was also recognized for her great results at the World Triathlon Championships in Las Vegas, where she placed seventh in her age group!
Rochelle Schleicher was awarded Best Team Rider
In the Most Improved Rider category, it was Susan Ruettimann taking honors for coming out of nowhere to grab the KBAR Masters 40+. In her first year of racing, Ruettimann went from a recreational fitness rider to a dominant force in regional women’s racing. Her savvy strategizing and determination kept her in the lead for points all season.
Susan Ruettimann accepts the award for Most Improved Rider
Among other awards, Bill Mason was recognized for bouncing back from a crash that left him with a titanium plate holding his collar bone together. Kurt Wilson won for the most racing, and Shawn Knight won the dubious rainbow jersey for his dominance at Tuesday Night Worlds.
Bill Keen of Keen Wealth Advisors also announced support for a race in 2013. This race is in development and will most likely be a late season criterium in the Kansas City area.
Bill Keen re-commits his support for the team.
Look for Big D riders in their Bolle sunglasses again this season. Dwayne Baldwin of Bolle also let the team know that they would be there protecting Big D eyes while helping us look stylish!
Dwayne Baldwin, our man at Bolle
We are all looking forward to even greater accomplishments in 2013! For more images of our festivities, click here.
It’s really starting to feel like CX season as the weather gets a little bit more chilly. Saturday’s conditions at the 360 Cup in Lawrence were overcast and brisk and Ryan Kelley continued his top-performing ways with a fourth place in the single-speed event, despite a crash early in the race. He would go on to match that placing the next day in the same race.
Kelley negotiates one of the many technical turns at 360 Cup.
Paul Aldeguer got a ninth place on day one in the 40+ race and a tenth on day two. In other first-day racing, Randy Martin got 12th in the 50+ race, while Bill Jennings got third in the 60+.
Some great results in early-season cyclocross racing. Paul Aldeguer got 11th and 12th 40+ both days at Manions and Ryan Kelley finished 15th in the Cat3s. Bill Jennings placed 4th in a tough 60+ field.
Paul Aldeguer at Manions
At Boss Cross in Riverside MO, Jennings placed second in the 60+, while Ryan Rochford made up some lost ground in the Cat4 field after an early crash and nearly won his race. It is one of the epic efforts of the season so far. Here is a link to that tumble which really put his Chamois Butt’r to the test. Keep your eye on the left side of the sand pit in the below video.
_
_
Here is his race report:
I have only raced 3 cyclocross races in my life (I think) and even though I did fairly well in all of them, I haven’t raced one this year and figured I might as well just race the 4’s again. I pre-rode the course a few times at about 10am, which was an hour and a half before my race started. The weather was pretty nice, calm winds, and a slight chill in the morning that warmed up significantly by race time. As I pre-rode, I ran the sand pit one way then rode it the other the first time through. After that, I decided to try riding both directions. I rode both sections fine, but didn’t have enough speed to get through since I was going slow for the pre-ride. I decided I would just ride the sand unless I was sitting mid-pack, like was possible on the first lap. If I was mid-pack on the first lap, I was going to run.
Fast forward to 11:30am, we line up for the start and I’m in the 2nd row of riders. There were probably between 20-30 guys lined up overall. The officials went over the rules, made sure everybody was there and right on time, the whistle blew. I clipped in pretty quick and accelerated pretty moderately. I could have pushed it much much harder, but my moderately hard start had me sitting 3rd, which is honestly right where I like to be to start a race. About 5-10 seconds into the race, there is a sweeping left 180-degree turn and then 30ish meters later is the first sand pit. Since I was sitting 3rd and was carrying a fair amount of speed, I decided I’d just ride it. I clicked down two gears to get my legs spinning fast for the eventual bogging down that would happen and sat back on my saddle to get my weight off my front wheel. Right at the edge of the first sand pit is a dirt ramp about the size of a speed-bump. I went over it with the front wheel no problem, but when my back wheel hit it, it sent my wheel instantly airborne with shocking velocity. This, I’m sure, was aided by the fact that it pointed my front wheel straight into the sand, creating a nice pivot point for the rear end to come up and over. It’s really pretty astonishing how fast it happened. I barely had enough time to get my hands out to catch myself. At this point, if you haven’t seen the video, I would recommend watching it. It’s the first link on the front page of www.cxmagazine.com or you can go directly to the youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg9solN8-xw
To be perfectly honest, hitting the sand at 18mph doesn’t hurt much. What does hurt is hitting the sand, coming to a dead stop and then having the bike that is still attached to your feet swing around and punch you straight in the middle of the spine…while your face is buried in sand. Not only did the impact of the saddle hurt, but it completely knocked the wind out of me, which is why I was writhing around a bit and why I took so long to get up. Somehow my leg ended up through the main triangle of my bike, so I was a bit tangled in it, but I really didn’t care. I did notice the bike got pulled off of me by the guys who came over to help. As soon as I could breathe a bit, I tried to blow/spit all the sand out of my mouth and got up to get back on my bike. As I ran off with it, the guys told me my chain was off so I had to put my chain back on which normally takes a long time on that bike. Luckily it only took me a few seconds this time, which was fine since it gave me a little more recovery time. I hopped back on the bike and continued on my way…in last place.
The next two turns are pretty easy to navigate and then comes a more awkward right-hander which I promptly wiped out on. I told myself to calm the f@%* down and just try to get back in a rhythm of some sort. The barriers were the next main obstacle and I did fine on them, but did have a lot of back pain while running with my bike. After that was the same sand pit that I just ate it on, but going in the opposite direction. I don’t remember if I ran it or rode it on the first lap, but the rest of the race, I rode it every time. It’s kind of hard to convince yourself to do something that just nearly killed or paralyzed you, but I knew I could do it so I just went for it and it was fine. After this, I just kept the pedal down and went into CX TT mode, picking off riders one-by-one.
I never looked at the lap counter until 2 to go and I think I had leapfrogged into the top 7 or 8 by then, maybe even higher. I spent the previous few laps spending energy to get to the next group of riders in sight. As soon as I got there, I sat on for a couple minutes and recovered. Once I felt like they were going to slow, I jumped and started heading for the next little group up the course. Eventually it wasn’t groups up the road, but single riders. It took me a while to catch the guy in 4th or 5th place and once I did, I sat on him for a bit which I think pissed him off. Then when we were going up a short little uphill with a U-turn at the top, I decided to pass him there because he didn’t take it quick enough. There was a small amount of contact and rubbing of shoulders and he said “Really man?” I just said “Ohhh yeahhh,” and dropped the crap out of him. For the next minute or two, I kicked myself for not saying something wittier like “welcome to cyclocross” or whatever, but oh well. Those thoughts kept my mind off the burning legs and lungs. I passed one more guy right before the beginning of the final lap and was sitting in 3rd place behind the previous race winner and some guy on a single-speed mountain bike. The SS guy was my next target, but he was moving pretty quick.
It took me about half the lap to catch up to him, but I finally got on his wheel. The first place guy was too far ahead to catch so I was strictly racing for 2nd place at this point. I sat on the guy’s wheel for about 15 seconds and then I clipped a pedal going around a corner, letting a small gap go. I’m pretty sure he heard this and accelerated, but I was able to get back on his wheel pretty quickly. I spent the next minute or two sitting on his wheel and then we came around to where the start line was, which is a wide open grassy straightaway. He tried to accelerate pretty hard, but I was on his wheel easily. I was really nervous because the finish line was about 20 meters after the sand pit where I’d crashed before. This guy had been riding that sand pit pretty quickly (he’s the guy in first in the video) and I was really worried he was going to beat me in the sand pit while I ran it and he rode it. As soon as he stopped accelerating on the starting line straightaway, I jumped him hard to try to get a big gap going into the sand. As I went by, he turned and said “good race” and he couldn’t match my acceleration. I still needed to make it through the sand safely and I did. I remounted and hammered it to the line as best I could, finishing 2nd.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more satisfied with a 2nd place finish in my life…except maybe for Froze Toes this year, which was probably equally satisfying. After the race, my back was killing me. I pretty much couldn’t lift anything over 10-15 lbs and it was torturous just standing up. I couldn’t take full breaths and was pretty miserable, but I wasn’t paralyzed or dead so that was good. I watched James race, snapped some photos, and tried to help him out in the pit whenever necessary.
Today I am feeling lots better. I can lift somewhat heavy objects, like the horse-pill sized ibuprofen I’ve been taking. I’m mildly famous in the cx community for crashing like an idiot, and Joe Fox has offered me free entry to one of the next 2 Boss Cross races which is a really nice gesture. My fitness is not great and my lap times were only ok. I crashed hard. I didn’t win. Most importantly though, I had a really good time racing my bike. It’s hard to complain spending the day doing that.
A few of our team members have a background in triathlon, and compete throughout the season in this discipline as well as road, mountain and cross racing. We don’t usually report on tri events since we are primarily a road cycling team, but one superlative effort deserves special mention.
Shleicher on the bike portion
Rochelle Schleicher, who won three state championships on the road this year, recently competed in the World Ironman 70.3 Championships in Las Vegas. She finished in seventh place in her age division. Conditions were rough, and Rochelle was modest about her perfomance. “My time was slow (5 hrs and 51 min) but it was super hot and humid so everyone’s time was slow. Finished 7th in my age group and was very happy with that.”
That’s a long time to be working so hard in the desert
Awesome accomplishment to simply qualify for this event, let alone take seventh place. Watch out for Rochelle next year as she continues to dominate in the women’s 50+ events
Official Website of the Big D Cycling Team Presented by Keen Wealth Advisors
