NorCal Cycling News – Cycling and Racing in Northern California

Editors Note: This is a new feature written by guest writer Cat3 Bloggity covering action in the Cat3 world.  He thinks nobody cares about his world, but i disagree, so I’m leaving out his tag line of …. “Races that nobody cares about and results that don’t matter.”   He’s like an amateur Big Pink. which is appropriate considering the topics and races he is covering. If Rand didn’t have such a distate for all things Cat 3 I think he should pick this guy up.

Oh crap, did I really just tell Hernando that I would blog about Cat3 racing?  Yes I did…  Well before you get mad and wonder if I know what the hell I’m talking about, just know that this is for fun and I definitely don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.  So we’re already near our second weekend of racing in June and the shit-talking is in full swing, but before we get into it let’s jump in the hindsight mobile and figure out what the hell happened this year.  I’ll post a couple of these so I don’t bore you to death right now.

One important note about this blog:  I don’t like hills and they don’t like me.  It’s an issue that goes way back.  They know what they did.  So I don’t really know what goes on at those Road Races.  Whenever I show up at a road race, I don’t recognize most of the skinny bastards lining up next to me.  Which is fine because we don’t hang out very long after the racing starts (I get dropped).

January – I’m pretty sure there was some racing.  Some people attacked and they got caught.  Some other people sprinted and won…

February – Ronde Van Brisbeen started off the racing season.  Instead of the usual rain it was a sunny and warm.  This course is better in rain.  Staying up front is always an issue at this one and the good spots are usually taken by the familiar blue jerseys of Fusion Sport.  The pack was slowly whittled down due to the accelerations of those who got through the 180 near the front.  Tyron Hooper took the win with a massive sprint at the end.

March – March is always been about Merco.  The altered course for the criterium was pretty sucky.  Here’s hoping the downtown construction is complete and the course is back to normal next year.  The racing however was good.  There were lots and lots of attacks and fairly high pace the whole time.  The young guns came to win and looking at the top 10, they succeeded.  William Myers won and most of the guys at the front of that race cannot legally drink booze.

The road race was the following day and it boasted some epic weather.  It rained all night and into Sunday.  It was cold, wet and pretty miserable.  Perfect racing conditions.  It is strange that the same dudes who can corner at 30 mph in a crit, get off their bikes and tip-toe through each corner in a road race.  There was a lot of attacking in the second lap.  It was fun, I like attacking…  I’m told Eliot Logan from Webcor took the win, but I was already on the way home.

It was another day of rain and only eleven hearty souls decided to truck on down to Ft Ord for some windy fun.  Bay 101 always shows up ready to race and they sent Big Mike Holt off the front very early on.  There was lots of yelling at people to get up and chase.  Mike’s Bay 101 teammate and good Italian lad, Nick Della Maggiore, did a good job of disrupting the chase.  As the pack chased, Allen Wulczynski from SJBC would get the front and slow us down.  This was confusing because Allen doesn’t ride for Bay 101.  I’m calling shenanigans on that one.   Big Mike would have stayed away anyway.  He came in for a solo win and landed himself on the ‘marked rider’ list for the remainder of the season.

So that’s it for now, I’ll post something early next week on the April, May and June races and the racing this weekend.