Check out the road racing adventures your fellow Team members are having in their spare time!

From Nick Newcomb:

So we headed out to the Davis start of the Tour of California in the pouring rain and freezing wind. There were thousands of people everywhere cheering for Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, and the rest of the Tour of Cali racers. After finding Riley, Roman, and Coach Dario, we went over tactics and who to watch out for in the race.

Seeing Roman and the 15-16 guys race was awesome, and Roman’s perfect tactics got him a strong 5th place. After trying to warm up in the cold rain, Riley and I lined up at the start line. Heading off I had a good 3rd position behind the two kids on team USA. After some hard sprinting they were able to break away and I unfortunately spent a good 5 five laps trying to bridge up to them. Killing myself, I finally caught the break away and then sat back to recover a little mid-pack. I barley knew what was going on in the thundering rain. Riley and I stayed together for a while, and Riley’s strong riding kept us towards the front. As the last few laps came around I worked my way back to the front and whipped around to the last lap. Apparently I was in a break away, but I was so focused I never looked back to see we had left the pelaton. While I was sprinting to the line with the guy next to me, he suddenly nailed the metal side-fence and went flying. (he had to get evacuated out). After getting over the shock of hearing the guy next to me grind his bones with the metal fence, I realized I had finished 6th. Standing up on the Tour of Cali podium was awesome and I won 15 bucks.

This race was one of the coldest and wettest I’ve ever been in, but it was all worth it finishing with the team USA kids and having a fun time. Anyone interested in a great experience should definitely add this race to their schedule next year.

From Riley Predum:

Finally, my first real criterium race that I stand a chance in. We went and got rolled out, then ran to the starting line. We took a preview lap (the same course as the tour of california’s little warmup lap!) took it really easy, learned the turns, and got ready to race. By the time I made it back to the starting line however, I had a worse position than before. Oh well…

The race began, and I exploded out of  the saddle, dodging a couple of guys and getting up a few lines before
the first turn. I was trying to get up to Nick so I could hold anyone back who tried to chase him if he went up to the break. There was rarely a real breakaway, just many many splits in the field. It just got cut in half, cut in half, cut in half, until it was just me, Nick and a whole bunch of Specialized riders. I started dropping back, to let Nick have some fun at the top and to draft anyone that chased down Nick’s wheel.

By the end of the 20th lap I had these turns down. They were etched into my brain and I knew the perfect places in the turns, where I would 1. begin the turn. 2. apex the center. 3. get out of the turn. 4. accelerate up to the next wheel. I was only gaining positions because of my true understanding of the fastest line through turns.

But by the time there were 3 laps to go, I was tired (went too hard from the beginning) and I was about 1/2 lap away from the break/ final split that had Nick and 5 other guys in it (those were the medalists right there). I was drafting a guy who broke away from the peloton to catch the break, but there were only two laps left, and, just realizing this guy was tired (I had not noticed he wasn’t catching up to the break so it was dragging me back down), I burst away and in front of him and had to solo time trial it back up to the break, but they were already 100 yards from the finish doing their sprint by the time I caught up with no energy left to participate in the sprint.

There were 28 riders in the field, all very fast and strong. It was a brutal field with all those lil’ “pro” Specialized guys, and for my first 17-18 of the season, I’d say I got top 10…no one is really sure yet, but top ten sounds great to me for a season opener race!

From Roman Brockley:

On February the 15, 2009 I went up to Davis and  raced in the 15-16 Junior Davis Criterium. I was the only one from Whole Athlete in the Juniors 15-16 category, and I was racing against many other competitive teams like Specialized, AC, Davis and many more. We all had to race in extremely hard conditions, it was windy, wet and freezing.

When the race started the field immediately split, and through out the race everyone was pretty spread out. There were a bunch of early breakaways done by the Davis bike Club but eventually they got tired and fell back. I stayed in the front attacking groups the whole race and took 5th place!