Ending With A Bang

With the completion of the Ocala Stage Race, yet another season of Florida bike racing has drawn to a close. Cycle Logic represented itself well with a few podium performances.

Saturday
Our superstar Junior racer, Justin Pfaff, continued his season long domination of his age group by winning the road race. Per usual, Justin's age group was combined with the next older age group. Justin and one of the older age-groupers attacked the field and put about 2 minutes on them by the end. At the line, Justin out sprinted his break partner and took a comanding lead in the overall stage race.

In the Cat.4 Road Race, Anthony Musalo worked tirelessly to deliver teammate Tal Mincey to the front in time for Tal to sprint his way to second place (see photo at top left). Also on Saturday, both Eric Stubbs and Roger Montes (see photo at lower left) finished in the top ten of the Cat.3 field while Eric also finished top 5 in the Time Trial. Rob Robins truly finished the season off with a bang in the Cat.3 road race...Rob crashed hard but will live to race again (his LOOK was okay too).

Cycle Logic has been increasing it's numbers in the Masters 35+ field lately. James Penrod and Ken Sallot once again threw down to help our M35+ team leader, Scott Pfaff out in the race. Scott used the team to position himself and earn enough points to secure his 7th place finish in the season-long Florida Points Series (out of over 200 M35+ racers!)

Sunday
The Forest Road Race was much flatter than the previous day's offering. Once again Roger Montes and Eric Stubbs overcame lack of numbers. With selfless teamwork, Roger placed Eric exactly where he needed to be towards the end of the race. Eric was able to capitalize on Roger's effort and crossed the line for a Cat.3 win!

By placing 6th, 4th and 1st in the weekends individual races, Eric secured yet another podium by placing 2nd in the overall Stage Race.

Our Junior sensation also finished the stage race with the lowest overall time thus giving Justin the podium step that he is most used to, the top one.

An Intense Itinerary

Our out-of-state team member, Rodrigo Sagastegui, completed the Six Gap Century with us this year...but with a travel-laden work schedule, it was anything but easy. We asked Rodrigo to recap his hectic agenda and his obvious love of the bike.

To talk about my Six Gap experience, you need to go back 3 weeks prior to the ride. September was a busy month for me due to the amount of business/communications we normally have with European customers/colleagues. It is a tradition for many Europeans to take long vacations and/or time off during the summer in order to take advantage of the good weather conditions. Everything seems to shut down for a few weeks and as soon as the summer is over (September), everybody is running around trying to catch up.

This year I had some meetings in Sweden (Sandvik's headquarters) on week 37, but left a few days early (Friday 9/5) to look around Stockholm. I go to Sweden a few times a year and it is normally an easy route... a direct overnight flight from Newark to Stockholm (7hrs), and then either 1 hr by train (or 2 hrs by car) to Sandviken. I got back home from this trip late on Friday 9/12, and tried to spend a few hours on the bike both Saturday and Sunday, but the jetlag only allowed me to do a couple of hours each day.

The following week was quite rainy and made it hard to get out and ride, except for the weekend when once again I rode both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday 9/22 I had to fly to Edmonton via Seattle to prepare our exhibit for a trade show. I had packed my bike Sunday night and dropped it by Fedex on my way to the airport. I stayed in Edmonton until Thursday, when I got back home via St. Paul late at night. Friday 9/26 I was in the office all day, and Saturday I flew from Newark to Atlanta for our Six Gap ride.

The problem was that I had a meeting scheduled in Sweden at 8:00 AM on Tuesday 9/30. This meant that If I still wanted to ride Six Gap, I had to find the way to ride all day on Sunday 9/28, and still being able to get to Sweden by Monday night (9/29 - My birthday). As it turned out, the only way to accomplish this was by flying directly after the ride from Atlanta to London (9 hrs), then to Amsterdam (2 hrs) , then to Stockholm (1.5 hrs), and finally a train to Sandviken (1 hr). This put me in my hotel room on Tuesday 9/30 at 3:00 AM, being able to lay down (couldn't sleep due to jet lag) for 3 hrs, take a shower, and go to work.

I know some may think this is insane. I spent $650 between bike shipment, car rental, lodging etc.. Spent my birthday alone & sleepless for 48 hrs, sitting in airplanes with cramping legs (no, I do not fly business class)... But why? Because right below spending time my wife and son, riding my bike is what I love most. My only regret... not being able to spend more time with you guys in Georgia this year. I hope to see you all again for the Tour de Georgia next spring !

Best Regards,
Rodrigo Sagastegui

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Some Images for Six Gap

click on images to view them larger

Eric Stubbs Wins!

Apparently hairy legs improves climbing and sprinting - at least it seemed that way for our Fuzzy Logic teammate Eric Stubbs (henceforth known as "Il Flaco.") at this years cat 3 Dahlonega mountain omnium. He was simply best at everything all weekend long. And to paraphrase Big Carlos (Smith), "the dude doesn't even eat meat!"

Uphill "TT"
The victorious vegan began his winning streak at the Saturday a.m. 7 mile "TT" up the west side of Wolfpen Gap. The "TT" was actually a by-category, mass start, point to point, 7 mile (actually 8.5 mile) road race. The climb itself was about 1.5 miles preceded by 7 miles of rolling hills.

The 43-rider strong peleton surged along (containing a handfull of 30+ masters) until a small break formed by some aggressive bad etiquette blocking and powered by Daniel the cat 1 super master. Eventuality Daniel rolled the hapless posers off his wheel about 1/2 k from the start of the 1.5 mile 8%+ climb to the summit. At this point Il Flaco flew across 500 meter gap and latched onto Daniel's wheel just as the climb started. The Dogg winced and whined at the lunacy of this dubious maneuver but Il Flaco apparently needs only seconds to recover and managed to clamp down hard on Daniels wheel all the way to the top where two polka dot jerseys were waiting patiently.

The Dogg opened his doggy-bag of courage and when the pack exploded half way up, managed to fend off all but two 23 year-olds and take 4th for the 3s - about 20 seconds and tantalizingly close to the winners, sight-wise.

Circuit Race
Three hours and one 30 mile transfer later we all lined up for a 30 mile-3 lap extremely hilly circuit race.

The pace was fast and furious as the jilted power riders and large teams fired off their best motors in an attempt to reclaim lost points from the earlier race. Il Flaco, Dogg and Big Carlos mostly chilled and surfed the back until we moved up 3 miles from the end in anticipation of the 1k 3% grade sprint finish. (Big Carlos was off the back about 2 miles opting to do solo hill drills instead.) The Dogg fought his way to the front at the last corner looking to lead Il Flaco into the headwind but noticed he was being towed around the corner a good 50 feet ahead of us all.

Giving the field the Lance look, he roared away from his faded companion and soloed up a headwind hill long enough to startle spectators with strange and primitive bellows (which he refused to recreate for us) in the final brutal seconds when he was inched out by just one chaser.

The Dogg was in 7th position when the sprint start but had to sette for 12th of 15 point places due to two fading riders who, side by side, simply stopped pedaling at the 200 meter mark and forced many of us to slam on the brakes, zigg-zagg twice and restart our sprint. Ok, yeah. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.


Road Race
The next morning was Il Flaco's 24th birthday, what a present eh? The final epic 40-mile road race started with Il Flaco firmly in the lead - truly a marked man. So where did Cycle Logic position itself in the peleton? At the front? Nope! Gators can climb but we descend like plucked chickens with vertigo. The first 4 miles of the race descended super fast switchbacks that kept us huddled in abject terror at the very back - and sometimes behind that shameful spot.

Several times we wasted valuable energy chasing back on when we should have been coasting happily. Eventually, near the halfway mark, (with Big Carlos doing more OTB hill drills) after a god-awful "The Wall" section, a much thinned peleton wound it's way down a safer feeling but huge-hilled road and we felt "all better now". We felt good enough to go to the front and help chase down a dangerous-looking escape group.

At that point we didn't realize that Super-master Daniel was 1.5 minutes off the front with a zero points Team Florida racer named John Moore. We never saw those two again. Daniel said he towed John the whole way but I'll give him credit for getting in the good break. John also did a spectacular but doomed 10 mile solo breakaway in the circuit race the day before.

Eventually the 30-something pack emerged onto a 3 mile climb up the North side of Neil's gap immediately followed by a 3.5 leg breaking final climb up the East side of Wolfpen Gap. At the start of the climb the two teamates rode side by side grinning at the "epicness" of this stage. One mile later they were locked into a grim, painfully slow dance of death with less than a dozen climbers. Near the top Il Flaco threw down a 2mph "surge" which shattered the pack and allowed him to solo away to stage field and omnium victory.

At the 1 k to go flag, the Dogg decided he could amp up the pain, especially to humiliate rude little snot-nosed junior, and managed to claw around enough of the twenty-something escapees to claim 6th in the stage and 6th overall in the omnium.

Not too shabby for a couple of flatland Crackers who's two man team bested all of the 5-7 man teams.

Kerry Duggan

Swampman Century recap

*Click on photos for larger view. Bottom photo, courtesy of About Bikes

Fast, Fast, Fast!
Can you say sub-4hr. century?!


A large contingent of Cycle Logic members made their way to the start of the 2008 Swampman Century. The lead group kept an average speed of over 26 mph for the entire ride. That pace was pushed in large part by the Orange and Gray. In the bottom photo to the left, the leaders have already knocked out the first 30 miles and at that moment were pushing 30 miles per hour, nine of the top ten cyclists in the paceline were proudly flying the colors of Cycle Logic.

Cycle Logic climbs Mt. Washington

submitted by James Penrod
Coming back from a weeklong vacation is not easy, so pardon the lack of punctuality on this post.

Things I learned in New Hampshire:

• Lake Winnipesaukee is wicked beautiful (and not an ounce of flat roads in the entire area).
• You can never eat too much Lobster.
• If you’re ever on the south coast of Maine, you MUST stop at Brown’s ice cream parlor. I think they have perfected the art of sticking a half gallon of home made ice cream on a single sugar cone (seriously).
• Riding 7.8 miles is no problem. Climbing 4400+ feet in elevation in that same distance, however is no easy feat (the locals say “it’s wicked hard” and “you’re wicked stupid for trying it”).

SO…Mt. Washington!!
I think they said it all before we started:
“Same distance as Alpe d’Huez, but 1,000 feet higher in elevation”
For those that don’t compute hill climbs regularly, that means a much more wicked steep climb than those French hills.

I’m not sure if we planned it right or not, but we arrived the day before the climb on Friday and took a short ride through the rolling roads of The Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and returned home to dine on some excellent baked Ziti courtesy of Ron’s (Baldy-Locks) in-laws, who’s house we stayed at. We figured it would be better to get the climb out of the way before wearing ourselves out over the next week, and it seemed to work out pretty well.

The next morning, we awoke bright and early to make the record-breaking time of one hour to get to the base of Mt. Washington (courtesy of Ron’s father in-law Richard and his chipped pickup truck). Arriving with almost three hours before the start gave us plenty of time to take in the beautiful weather which was a balmy 56˚ and sprinkling. With Mt. Washington being known for ‘the worst recorded weather in the world’ and the highest recorded wind speed of over 250 mph, we were skeptical of the conditions we would encounter on our climb to the heavens. As the time got closer to the start cannon going off, the weather appeared to be clearing toward the top elevations. But still, the weather has been known to change drastically (wicked fast) within a few minutes, so we were still a little hesitant to take off our under shirts, arm warmers, vests, leg warmers, etc. Eventually we did, and I think between the three of us, we shed about 30 lbs.

After the final pee and poop breaks before the start, we sat in our respective start groups with Ron and James in the second group, 5 minutes behind the elite group and Vern 10 minutes behind us in the fourth group. Watching Phil Gaimmon take off and sprint to the front of his group was INSANE! I can’t imagine holding that pace for the duration. I was still hoping to hold my projected 5 mph pace (seriously).
As for the climb, it’s hard to explain. I’m sitting here typing, trying to find the words. Imagine Sugarloaf not leveling off at the top, and extending almost 8 more miles with only about three sections of flat (around 15% grade) road extending about 25 feet each. It’s a little harder than that. Luckily, the weather was probably the warmest and sunniest in the history of the climb.

“How did we do?”, you may ask yourself.
“Did any of us walk?”, you may be hinting at.

Well, Mr. Palsgrove finished in 01:20:34 – 30th in his age-group
Mr. Penrod finished in 01:30:30 (right in line with his projected goal of 1.5 hours) – 51st in his age-group
Ms. Veronica ‘Bronzey’ Geist finished in a very respectable 01:34:23 – 18th out of ALL women, and 3rd in her age-group!!

OK, enough about the ride, now I can talk about MY GIRL!!!
THIRD PLACE BABY!!!
What a ride!!

I think we were all sitting around at the awards ceremony after filling our bellies with the complimentary homemade turkey dinner (with all the fixin’s and all homemade) just waiting for the ice cream to come when they announced Vern’s age group finishers. We all just paused for a second, not thinking any of us had done anything really spectacular by finishing this wicked pissa of a climb. “Did they just say Veronica Geist?”. We all looked at each other in amazement….then let out a huge cheer for our Cycle-Logic, Florida flat-lander, climber!!! What a ride. And to think, she had been asking to leave for the past 30 minutes.

The conversation immediately turned to how we could improve her time for next year. Gears, training, wheels, new bike (of course, a new bike was her first thought). After that day, I think Vern had a little more torque to her cadence during our rides through the rolling hills of New Hampshire. I found myself lagging behind while Vern would stick to Ron’s wheel on even the fastest climbs over the next week. I, of course used the excuse of looking for Moose and Bear as we passed the scattered lakes and ponds, but the truth is, I just couldn’t stick to Bronzey’s wheel.

That girls is WICKED FAST!!

Two Cycle Logicians Become One

From behind the windshield of her car, Rachel Hallum spotted a spandex clad Roger Montes pedaling his bike. The year was 2005 and she knew then that the two of them would "ride" together one day. Rachel approached Roger and invited him on a bike ride and the rest, as they say, is history.

Although Roger has proven to be the better sprinter of the two, Rachel ascends mountains like an angel ascending towards the heavens...unfortunately for Rachel, they are in Florida and she rarely gets the opportunity to spank Roger (on the bike at least).

This relationship has now come full circle and the two have decided to take this union to the next level with...wait for it...wait for it...

AN ENGAGEMENT!!! That's right, young love has blossomed into a fully matured love. The wedding isn't planned until late 2009, so we all have plenty of time to save our pennies for that tandem bike we're gunna get them.

Felicitaciones from the Cycle Logic family!

Cycle Logic crosses the pond!

Dana and I returned Sunday a.m. from a Team goodwill tour of the French Alpes. Highlighted climbs include The Telegraph, Galibier and Alpe d' Huez.

While our group consisted of mostly fit club riders we did have an incredible 74 year old woman from Miami who has been racing all her life. Her name is Joan Paul and she knows more about domestic and international racing than anybody I've met.

Dana and I were the only group members that race ( except for a mtn. biker from Latvia) so we ended up off the front on most rides, particularly the classic climbs. The roads were incredibly beautiful and challenging but I know most of you motorheads are more interested in the statistics - so here they are:
(Disclaimer: We rode these climbs sight unseen for the first time after several hours of cycling to get to them so we are SURE we could have done better- yada, yada, yada - coulda, woulda, shoulda.)

The Telegraph - 12 k long - average grade 7.3 up to 9.8.
Time K-Dogg 55 minutes. Dana 65 minutes.

The Galibier - 18 k long - average grade 6.9 up to 10.5
This thing kicked our azs because of wind gusts of 40 mph.
Time K-Dogg 1.5 hours. Dana 2.0 hours.

Alpe d' Huez - 14 k long (plus or minus depending who you believe) Average grade 7.9 up to 10.5.
Time K-Dogg 58 minutes. Dana 68 minutes.
Pantani's time 37 minutes. Dude.
Side note: Dana's goal was to beat Sheryl Crow's time of 1hour 37 minutes. All the women in our group beat her except for Joan. Sheryl was no althlete it turns out.



Kerry
**click on images to view larger

Cycle Logic climbs Mt. Evans

G'day trendsetters,

Tal and I are officially the first CL'ers to climb to over 14,000 feet. With that said, Mr Duggan did the Mount Evans race last year although he wasn't a CL member at the time. Kerry's time also eclipsed ours... by a bit ;)

If you're ever out in Colorado, this is a must do ride. Elevation above 10,000 - 14,000 feet makes breathing difficult and speaking for myself, dizzy in the noggin. However, the suffering was all worth it for the photo :) and the hour long descent.

Tal and I were both a little under-dressed and froze our arses off but made it down
unscathed. Gloves are recommended above 11,000 feet - I ignored Kerry's advice :(

Ta ta from Vail, CO.

Jayson

Team Video

Rider Profile: Justin Pfaff

Leading at the break...
Making it all the way to the "Seventh Inning Stretch" of the Florida racing season, Cycle Logic team member Justin Pfaff, is currently leading the Florida Points Series for his age group.

Justin's eleven 1st place finishes have helped towards achieving his goal of winning the FPS at the end of the season. As a bonus, Justin's knack for winning races has also helped with his lead in the Florida Cup as well.

The awards for the Florida Points Series and the Florida Cup will be given out on September 20th at the Season Finale FPS Party following the Pinellas Park Circuit Race. The FPS party is also where Justin will officially receive his State Champion jerseys for his wins at the State Road Race and the State Criterium earlier this season.

Stronger than ever and armed with his new SRAM Red component gruppo (that he received for his 12th birthday in May), Justin hopes to continue his run at the title when FPS racing resumes this August in Jacksonville.

Already able to hold onto group rides with much older, faster and more experienced racers, it won't be long before this young gun is riding everyone off his wheel. Cycle Logic is sure to maintain a presence at the top of the podium for years to come thanks to it's youngest teammate, Justin Pfaff.

Stay tuned...

Team Ride Route

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