The Kickoff was a great success! Despite temperatures in the low to mid 20s 35 people showed up. I don’t have any details about the B pace ride. If that ride was unorganized then I apologize, in retrospect I should have lined up a ride leader ahead of time. Sorry about that. If someone could send me the high and low points of that ride I would really appreciate it.
The 25 rider strong A pace ride rolled out pretty civil. We had a few attacks just past Severance and a pretty solid pace over the top of the Windsor Wall but nothing crazy. Allen Kroughoff of Team Rio Grande Racing took the Berthoud Town Sprint winning a free massage from GTS Therapeutics. Steve Shepard of Echelon Health won a set of Bar Mitts for winning the KOM and got himself a GTS massage for taking the overall sprint as well. Nice job guys.
Thanks to everyone that showed for the rides and thanks to GTS, Mountain Flyer Magazine and Bar Mitts for supplying all the free stuff.
The New Site
As some of you may recall I am working on a new group ride website. Its coming along pretty well but slow. Who knew designing a website would be so freaking complicated.
The new platform will have several new features:
An events calendar, in house forum, local weather, more group rides, road routes, mtb trails, mtb group rides, much more advertising options.
I am also going to be adding more content in the form of pictutes, video, local rider/sponsor/team director interviews……
The site will also promote more events, speakers, races, maybe even a get together or two.
If you have an idea of something else I should add, let me know. I’m open to suggestions as long as they’re not too stupid. thegroupride@hotmail.com
First things first I have to get the friggin thing done.
If anyone is interested in helping me plot some routes on mapmyride.com I would really really appreciate it.
Georgia
If you missed it ,Velo News had a great interview with Georgia Gould. Here is part of it, you’ll have to go to http://velonews.com/ for the whole thing. I’m trying to cut down on my blatant copyright infringement.
Last month Olympic mountain biker Georgia Gould headed to Northern Europe with a small band of American cyclocross racers to tackle the busy two weeks of ’cross racing that book-end Christmas.
Gould and her compatriots Katie Compton and Rachel Lloyd scored some big-time results: Compton won the December 21 round of the UCI World Cup in Nommay, France, and was fourth a week later at the World Cup in Zolder, Belgium and second at the UCI C1 Azencross Loenhout on December 30. Lloyd was fifth at Loehout, eighth in Nommay and seventh in Zolder, and finished fourth at theUCI C1 race in Teruven. Gould was third in Nommay and won the small C2 GP Hotel Threeland on January 1.
Results aside, Gould said the experience was invaluable in her preparation for her first crack at the Cyclocross World Championships later this month. And the two-week foray gave her a first view at the racing style and culture that permeates the world’s premier cyclocross scene.
VeloNews caught up with Gould Thursday to talk about her experience.
VeloNews: Was it a surprise to finish on the podium in your first ever World Cup?
Georgia Gould: I was definitely surprised that I felt that good in Nommay, because I arrived in Europe on Friday and raced on Sunday. I wasn’t expecting to have great legs, so I wasn’t so shocked I made a World Cup podium because I knew I was capable, but I just wasn’t expecting to get it there. I was happy with the race,
VN: Was it a surprise to not have as good of success at the following two races in Zolder and Lenhout?
GG: I was definitely disappointed in Zolder. I wasn’t aggressive enough at the start. It was just a small mistake but I lost a minute on the first alp because I got swamped and ended up in the back and had to run every little section where (the other riders) would get off their bikes. That was definitely frustrating. After that race I looked back at lap times, and I wasn’t having my best race but I was consistently putting in the sixth fastest lap times, so I know I could have been higher up if I hadn’t botched the start.
VN: What were the differences in racing style you saw between European and North American cyclocross races?
GG: People were more aggressive in Europe, and yeah, there are some more fast people there. I couldn’t just try and ride away from people, I had to be more tactical. Yeah, it was frustrating that something little like a bad start could put me so far behind for the whole race. Because it’s so tactical, people don’t really want to work together to bring other people back. In Lenhout I had good legs and I didn’t want to just stay in 15th place, I wanted to catch the leaders, so I would take big pulls on the pavement and the other girls would just sit on me and then jump around me at some random point. But it wasn’t like they were attacking me to try and bring the leaders back, they were just trying to get ahead of me to be one place ahead. After a while I would stop letting them go by. I’m not used to trying to chop people in corners or block them in the middle. I don’t personally like to race like that. But over there you kind of have to.
