Murder and Mayhem in California: Poor College Kids' Road Race

The Poor College Kids Road Race was, ahem, an interesting experience.  I drove down to Redondo Beach to stay with my friends the Steeles on Friday afternoon after work.  We headed up to Buellton, California for the late afternoon slot given the 55/60+ field.  It was cool at 57 or so degrees and the clouds were coming in.  Our race was delayed quite a bit due to some serious crashes at the finish of the field before us.  Not a good omen.  In fact, serious crashes marred the day, pretty much all day.  It is held on a very narrow two lane road through the southern end of the California wine country, and there was a lot of drunken traffic on the road with tourists visiting various wineries' wine tasting events.  It's an out and back course with a nastily tight turn around, one sharp climb before the finish, with a long, fast down hill leading to the finish with way too little room on the road for the field sizes that were on it.  A disaster not waiting to happen; it happened nearly every race.  So the geezers were the last off the line, nearly twenty minutes late.  I was jokingly calling this the moonlight ride, because we were going to finish not much before sundown at the rate the wait was taking us.  Approximately 47 riders took the line (although the actual number is disputed, given the large number of walk ups).  The field was so tight on the way out that it was impossible to move up without knocking someone over.  The pace was moderate going out with at least one serious crash averted by adept bike handling by all around; a rider hit another's wheel, went nearly sideways on a high speed descent, but no one freaked out and the race went on.  At the turn around, I went in tight around the cone, unclipping my foot from the pedal, and then jamming out from there to catch the leaders.  We shed quite a few riders there, and the pace picked up considerably on the now gradual uphill back.  When the mile and a half climb finally appeared, the race started breaking up and I was able to move through the splintering pack to reach what was going to be the winning break before the crest of the hill.  A really good rider in the 55+ group, Gary Shuey, shot off the front and ultimately soloed to victory out ahead of the rest of the break, which now technically was a chase group.  Our speed over the top and down was in excess of forty miles an hour.  The road is rough with a large number of pot holes.  I was glad to be riding my R3 with my thirty two spoke hand made wheels with Continental Sprinter tubulars.  They performed exceptionally well.  As we approached the finish we were warned that the finish line had been moved up because of a crash.  This caused some confusion in the group.  Some rider in a green jersey (not a racing kit, I don't think) decided to cut across the road from the right to the left within the last couple hundred meters and nearly took me down.  I saw him coming and had to hit the brakes a touch, which wrecked my momentum.  We were sprinting at 40 miles per hour and this was not a welcomed move, and since all it did was break up the group into two groups (every one behind or near him had to slow to avoid hitting him) and did nothing to improve Mr. Greenguy's position, I have to scratch my head as to why he did it.  I had words with him afterwards, and got pretty much a blank look in response.  Which brings up the idiot factor one has to deal with in racing...  I took second in the 60+ field.  For another write up of the race, see John McKee's blog:  55/60+ Bike Racing

Sunday was the Peninsula Cliff Climb TT, a six mile climb with some 1200' of climbing on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.  Sunday's forecast had rain in the picture, but the hour by hour indicated it might not hit until some time in the afternoon.  The day was clouded over; cool bordering on chilly.  Bruce and I rode to the start and took some warm up trips up the bottom of the climb.  I took off on the climb and rode as close to the edge as I felt my form would allow.  I've done the climb before, in fact, I've done it several times over the decades.  It was one of my training rides back in the 70s when I lived in SoCal.  I did an unofficial 22 minutes and some unknown number of seconds back in '09 while out visiting the Steeles.  On this occasion I did it in 23:27.  All of the times were on the slow side, I'm guessing because of the cold and damp.  Not much after I finished it started to rain, so my hopes of a post race training ride were dashed as none of us was really dressed for the rain, thinking it wouldn't start, if it did at all, until the afternoon.  So my time was good enough for 7th overall out of everyone there, and 2nd in the 60+ field.  The legendary Herb Johnson was a walk up, and he took 23 seconds out of me.  Herb is a notorious climber from the San Diego area.  Being retired he rides in excess of 350 miles a week, most of which is done climbing Soledad Mountain in San Diego County.  Herb took 6th overall.  Since the results aren't posted yet, I can't really speak about anyone else, other than Bruce took 3rd. Full results for the 55/60 Poor College Kids Road Race are below.






Race Results for
UCSB Poor College Kids Road Race
Los Olivos, CA(Event Information)

Road Race on 01/29/2011
Men - Cat 1/2/3/4 - Master - 55-59
Place	Points	Name	City, State	Time	License	Bib	Team
1	10	Gary Shuey (1 - Cat4)	Lake Arrowhead, CA		44197	818	Swami's Cycling Club
2	9	Michael Birditt (1 - Cat3)	Escondido, CA		47255	801	Swami's Cycling Club
3	Exp	Kalman Szkalak	Capistrano Beach, CA		54522	820
4	7	Fred Hoblit (1 - Cat2)	Valencia, CA		16360	809	Santa Clarita Velo
5	6	Albert Shorts (2 - Cat3)	Long Beach, CA		230085	817	Velo Allegro
6	5	Richard Barron (3 - Cat3)	Glendora, CA		2734	828	Cycles Veloce
7	4	Witold Czulak (4 - Cat3)	Encino, CA		276778	807	Breakaway-UBS Elite Masters
8	3	Jim Parkhurst (2 - Cat4)	Capistrano Beach, CA		162650	814	Cycles Veloce
9	2	Kim Bleth	Santa Barbara, CA		49191	802	Swami's Cycling Club
10	1	Kirk Freeman (3 - Cat4)	Santa Clarita, CA		12354	808	Santa Clarita Velo
11	0	John LaGrandeur (4 - Cat4)	Irwindale, CA		302695	811	Pasadena Athletic Assoc (PAA)
12	Exp	Rory O'Reilly	Santa Ynez, CA		45744	831	Echelon Santa Barbara
13	0	Robert Willcox (5 - Cat3)	San Diego, CA		69952	822	Sun Coast Velo
14	0	Cameron Phillips	Huntington Beach, CA		204365	824	Cycles Veloce
15	0	Howard Miller (6 - Cat3)	Long Beach, CA		49424	827	OCW/Paramount Racing
16	0	Ricky Shorts (7 - Cat3)	Long Beach, CA		52251	816	Velo Allegro
17	0	Alex Collins (2 - Cat2)	Orange, CA		46255	806	Sun Coast Velo
18	0	Richard Roberson (8 - Cat3)	Spring Valley, CA		50765	815	Sun Coast Velo
19	0	Kenneth Neumeyer (5 - Cat4)	Thousand Oaks, CA		195285	813
20	0	John Luke (6 - Cat4)	Simi Valley, CA		21803	826
21	0	John Huber (9 - Cat3)	Pasadena, CA		206734	810	Velo Avanti Cycling Team
22	0	Ken Burns (7 - Cat4)	Upland, CA		95649	803	Southern California Velo
23	0	Ronald Carlson (8 - Cat4)	Ventura, CA		288193	804	METALMTN Cycling
Men - Cat 1/2/3/4 - Master - 60-99
Place	Points	Name	City, State	Time	License	Bib	Team
1	10	Bob Wright (1 - Cat4)	Castaic, CA		39024	865	Santa Clarita Velo
2	9	James Morehouse (2 - Cat4)	Lasvegas, NV		283640	859	Velosport Racing
3	Exp	Harold Schneider	N Tustin, CA		171763	862	OCW/Paramount Racing
4	7	Jean Villiot (3 - Cat4)	Murrieta, CA		59805	864	CA Pools Racing
5	6	John McKee (1 - Cat3)	Westminster, CA		180386	858	OCW/Paramount Racing
6	5	Richard Stahlberg (2 - Cat3)	Redondo Beach, CA		50911	874	Ironfly
7	4	Phillip Richards (4 - Cat4)	Beaumont, CA		238828	861	Citrus Valley Velo
8	3	Randy Drusen (5 - Cat4)	Ventura, CA		287291	853	Judgement Velo/ TBOV
9	2	Bruce Steele (6 - Cat4)	Redondo Beach, CA		236498	863	South Bay Wheelmen
10	1	Leo Longo (3 - Cat3)	Lomita, CA		189814	857	South Bay Wheelmen
11	0	Robert Paganini (4 - Cat3)	Los Angeles, CA		45763	860	Pasadena Athletic Assoc (PAA)
12	0	David Lang (5 - Cat3)	Upland, CA		107852	856	Pacific Sunset Velo/Pac Sun Velo
13	0	Robert Elmore	Santa Barbara, CA		336626	855	Echelon Santa Barbara
14	0	Cary Alpert (7 - Cat4)	Redondo Beach, CA		203244	850	South Bay Wheelmen
15	0	Alexander Blake	Los Angeles, CA		330200	852	Velo Club LaGrange

January ReCap:

Miles: 1142 (1839 KM)
Longest ride: 94.4 miles (151 KM)
Lifetime miles now up to 418,939 (674,449 KM)