Pie Anyone?! How about some Cherry!!

After some great racing out at Echo on our Mountain Bikes, we had a couple weeks to keep building fitness before racing resumed, this time on the road!

Clear blue skies in the Valley, looking out at the fields (and graveyard)!

The first one, happened on March 23rd in the nice little town of Adair Village, just north of Corvallis in the Willamette Valley. Cory, Sam, Jon and myself (Shane) donning the brand new iteration of our checkered jerseys! The order in which the waves of races went off, allowed me to finally offer some support to my teammates as they prepped to take off on the fun course in the beautiful weather!



Jon and Cory lined up for the CAT 5 race, with this being Jon's very first road race! They were definitely on top of their game during the short, intense race! Jon put together a stellar effort up the final climb, snagging 5th place while Cory was right behind in 13th position! Both of them were stoked on their efforts, especially for such an early race! Heck yeah!

Jon and Cory looking sharp in the new kits on the starting line!

You couldn't tell it was Sam's
first Road Race....nerves of steel!

Sam raced in the Women's CAT 4/5 race, this being her first road race as well! She rode really strong as well, sticking it out with the peloton all the way to the final 200m where an extremely unfortunate mis-shift took her out of a minimum Top 10 finish! ARGHHH! She took it right in stride, immediately looking towards redeeming herself at the next road race opportunity! With my teammates all wrapped up, I continued getting my legs warmed up for my afternoon race departure. I still couldn't believe the epic weather we were enjoying, clear skies and beautiful sunshine!!

Before I knew it, I was cruising out of the staging area in the peloton for my first road race of the 2014 season! I was really excited to test out if my training had been prepping me properly for the coming efforts! The first of our two lap race was pretty mellow, and surprisingly slow, with nobody really making any solid moves or efforts. (This is due to the course being quite open and flat, making it hard to try and escape away from the main group.)  It wasn't until about halfway into the second lap that some action finally began to happen! One of my good friends, Adam DeMarzo from the Bike Newport Team, was tired of sitting around, so he launched a quick attack. I immediately matched it, to try and go away with him or at least keep him close. The latter happened as I drug the rest of the peloton right up to him. A few minutes later, a more solid solo attack took place. There were a few of us that bridged up to the solo rider, but we weren't able to coordinate a proper paceline in time to get away and were quickly swallowed up. That was about it for the day, until about 2 miles left when a single rider took off after a sharp corner. I foolishly followed suit, caught him and busted my butt to stay away as we approached the final climb. The reason I say foolish, is that I blew up my legs for this effort, to only be caught at the last hill with legs screaming in pain. Dang! I grimaced as I was overtaken with less than 1K to go, but I re-focused to try and salvage as much as possible out of my silly error. When we hit the very last grade, my legs were coming back and I punished myself as I powered up the climb, out of the saddle, trying to catch and pass anyone I possibly could. I was very happy to at least get a couple passes, breaking into the Top 20, stealing 16th place from Adam right at the line!

Shane cruising along in the peloton.
PHOTO - KENJI SUGAHARA

This counts as recovery
food right?!

It's always a trip to race for two and half hours to only have it come down to 6 or so minutes of racing! Although a bit saddened by my result, it felt good to really put out some heavy efforts on the bike. The real thing that kept me going though, was the thought of the cherry pie that my stepdad had picked up the evening before in celebration of the race! I said my 'Hi's' and 'Good-Byes' around the finish line and took off on my cool-down back to the house. I invited Adam over as I felt it only fair to share the sugary goodness after our little battle!

With the first road race in the books, it was back to the High Desert for us as we began looking forward to next weekend's battle.....the Gorge Roubaix!!





-Shane Johnson