Friday, May 23, 2008

Plan B for the Weekend

I came home from work today to find poor gunnar down and out with a cold. Don't ask me how he got so miserable and snuffly in just a few short hours. :o( Poor guy.
Anyhow, much to Goose's chagrin, it looks like we will not be making the 4 hour trek over to Baltimore to kick some arse in the Kelly Cup. :o( We may subscribe to the CycleDumb Training plan, but that doesn't mean we're completely stupid. Besides, we have some serious CycleDumb events planned in the next couple of weeks.

Jackie is worried about poor Nars. Get well soon!


Meanwhile, I have some precious moments of extra time on my hands and decided to do something girly. SCARY!



P.S. It's official-- gunnar feels like crap. He doesn't even want to go to the Talbot's party! If you know gunnar, you know he's not one to pass up FREE BEER.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Cooper's Rock & Road, Final Stuff


Well JR is MIA.

His internet connection has been flakely (or so he says) and one ofthose dawgs ate his phone charger on Sunday so his voice mailbox is full.
And he can't find *any* pictures that he took of me on Saturday or Sunday!!

First off, thanks to all that did our races this past w/e-
Road details
Road results
Rock details
Rock coverage
Rock results

Coops "flyer" at fiendracing.com!
Don't forget to click on the skull...

Even though the weather didn't totally cooperate we still had good
times and some really good racing.

Here's the course for the Sports/Experts XC, me racing. You can see kind of where my drivetrain finally exploded right near the end and "time bombed" (as Ben Ortt put it) me into third-
Coops GPS Route

Post Rock Race, trying to bend my stupid outside ring back, like I was going to ride some more... cool down... not like I had the race to finish up... These are the only pics I have, thanks Mom!-



Of course Mammie got some shots of Betsy too, as did iPlay and lord baby bi-atch only knows who else. She looks a bit happier than I though, and look it's big-boy Matt K. who threw his backpack thingie away early on then flatted later on-

Ryan lost the times for some of the road race (USAC hacks...) and JR's been in no-where-land to compile a decent combined list for me.
So I did as best as I could, I can't wait any longer, life *must* go on.

You'll have to wade through my other stuff here first though.

I found out that holding a race on Mother's Day, let alone any day, is kind of hard.
It's nice to make special note of mothers supporting and mothers racing, but a lot of folks had mothers that needed some time and such, and I sure do understand that.

Special thanks-
* Steve Harouff for doing some marshaling, then manning a really important place where some nice hiker folks had torn the markers all up, instead of racing.
* Mark Rosso for heading up the Sports/Expert cutoff loop marshaling, helping w/ setup and tear down and for not getting bent when Betsy dinged his Mitsu. Zero.
* Dan Casdorph for taking my Pa out to his water station, directing us all to Day Use then manning the Beginners Cutoff and Sports/Expert turn.
* Traci Hulderman and Josh Ives for directing folks through the McCollum Camping Area and Hiking Trails and having nice parties that we hardly ever get out to.
* Evan (Cortney's b/f) for taking the helm at the Tipping Rock Road Crossing and not complaining one bit.
* Pa Shogren and my old friend Scott Benson for manning the Steady Fred Memorial Water Station.
Also Scotty for making sure the EMS was there.
* JR, Gina, Diane Clothier, and Don Parks for dealing w/ all the registration stuff and timing and the really slow printing of the lists.
* Same folks for answering all my stupid questions, watch me running around before the race and being there when something really needed to be done and getting it done, making these two races a reality.
* Ryan Post for pushing his USAC agenda yet being a good official and dealing w/ me during the road course finding.
* Team Bi-atch members Chris M. and Betsy for checking a few sections of the trail Sunday morning, Chris for helping mark on Friday and Betsy for checking/cleaning up on Monday.
* Marc Glass. for marking on Friday, getting the water station setup and torn down, being an encouraging factor, and for being so darn good looking.
* Bobbie Vernon for marking on Friday, checking on Sat., getting fruit, helping Mark R. and for his skillz w/ the numbers.
* Gary Rodosta for dealing w/ my "vision" of the T-shirt and putting those ethereal ideas onto bits and bytes, black & white, time after time...
* Mike Goss at Sirianni's, for whatever reason, wanting to supply really good Pizza and Pasta Salad to a race that's not close to where they are. I'm still eating (at least one bowl daily!) Pasta Salad...
* Big Rob Voorhees for giving me the race in the first place, for supporting we racers (pains that we are sometimes), for being a big lug since 1980, checking the course w/ Bob on Sat. and for some clean up duties post race (after the rains left. Again).
* J.L. Brown and son, for cheering us all on, along the Road Side Trail. J.L. and Mike Yoder were the first "real" cyclists that I met when we first moved to Motown in March of 1980.
* Crystal Spreng, for having such an enthusiastic and hard-charing-far-traveling family, and for taking care of the starting duties in fine fashion.
* Al Kerns and the folks at Cooper's Rock State Forest for letting us play since... well my first real mtb ride was there in 1984 or 85? and for getting those big logs out w/o much notice.
* Mark Schooley for lending me arrows, guidance and giving us a nice place for the road race to start.
* Some nice folks for pretty much tearing down the course, completely unbeknowst to me. All but about 5 arrows, a small handful of ribbons and two signs. Of course Mark did want those arrows back...
* The whole WVMBA crew, for giving us the opportunity to race.
* JR again, for being for being so freaking happy, trying hard for the sake of us all, and LOLing. :)
* There's gotta be someone I've missed. Thank you too.

Special thanks to my sponsors, for making the prizes worth while, for making the T-shirts a reality, for lending support when asked-
* Cannondale
* Pathfinder
* Custom Contracting
* WVU Healthcare
* Cira & Associates Consulting
* Sirianni's Pizza Cafe
* Michael Miller, DDS
* Old Shawn Withers
* Betsy
* Mom
* and you the racer.

So in the 1-2-3/Expert Rock & Road, 76 mile RR and 20 mile XC-
1st g00nba Shogren, 3rd & 3rd
2nd Jeremy Rowand, 4th & 6th (great race in the RR, really)
3rd Chrissy McGill, 6th & 9th (overall, 1st in SS)

Open Women/Women's Expert Rock & Road, 38 mile RR and whatever XC-
1st Betsy Shogren, 1st & 1st
2nd Laura Kelly, 2nd & 1st (Beginner women)

In the 4-5/Expert Rock & Road, 38 mile RR and 20 mile XC-
1st Justin Pokrivka, 7th & 4th
2nd Jonny Martin, 10th & 11th (overall, 2nd SS)
3rd Josh Chapman, 8th & 16th (overall, 14th Exp)
4th Robbie Loehr, 26th (blew!) & 13th (overall, 11th Exp. (kept it
together nicely!))
5th Andrew Wiedrich, 3rd & ~20th (overall, 17th Exp. (bad tyre day))
6th Chris Phillips, 20th & ~17th (overall, 7th SS)

In the 4-5/Sport Rock & Road, 38 mile RR, 17 mile XC-
1st Chad Howard, 11th & 4th

Highly contested 40+/Sport Vet Rock & Road, 38 mile RR and 17 mile XC-
1st Jay Downs, 3rd (in race (they raced w/ Open Women!), 2nd 40+) & 11th
2nd Fritz Kessler, 4th (3rd 40+) & 12th
(Fritz gets bonus points for making fun of Chris Baker for NOT showing up to the RR so they really tied for the 40+/Sport Vet class)

A few others did both but DNFed on one of the days, it was a tough w/e to race...
Marc Glass
Gerry Phlug
Brian Talbott
Wes Rhoads
Steve Rowand
Matt Kettering

Whew.
Post Road Race. I'm pretty sure I aged an additional 3.5 years on that one.