July 19, 2006 - A win, China, and Fitchburg

Matt White writes about his recent crit win, Buck Miller has some funny comments from racing with the Canadian National Team in China, and Josh Dillon checks in with a race report from Fitchburg.

White Wins Northampton Criterium, July 4

The downtown Northampton July Fourth Criterium was a hop, skip and jump from my front door. Cody and I were off to the races on a stormy July 4th afternoon. Needing no warm up still "hot" from the Fitchburg Crit, we rolled straight from the house to the start line.

I told my team mates Chris Peck and Ben Zawacki that I was going to win today and before I knew it I was on the attack soloing away from the field. I was then joined by Greg Wolf and we rotated for while, eventually getting caught after a cash prime which I craftily snagged.

Peck and Zawacki hit the front for the final 15 laps of the race as if they were setting up to lead out Cody. But with 3 laps to go I jumped, bridging to the then solo Steve Roszko, and barely out sprinted him to line, I mean barely! I learned 2 valuable lessons today, when in doubt, announce while other sprinters are listening that you will be leading it out for Mike Cody, then attack. Lesson two, never celebrate too early.

Miller Suffers at Tour of Quinghai Lake, China, July 15-23

So, China. Where do I start. I just finished the 5th stage, and to be honest, I don't know how any of us Canucks have managed to get this far. The organizers made it tough to start the race off on the right foot as we arrived at the race hotel at 3am the morning of the first stage. That was sweeeeeet. Then we had a 3 hour transfer through mountain towns that you see on World Vision TV shows. Then the stage was in the gutter from the gun.

Anyway, everyday has a crazy amount of climbing, like 30-45k climbs that take you up to 12-13,000 feet.

Our Manager Jacky Hardy, a frenchman that rode the Tour a few times, and drove in the team car for 12 Tours has us sitting up every single day just before we red-line, and riding in the grupetto, so we can save our legs. Not that our results would be that much better, but that’s why we're off the back everyday.

Tomorrow is a "flat" day, with still 1.6km in elevation gain, and 210k, so he's hoping all our time in the grupetto is going to pay off and we can get a stage result, or at least represent in the day long early break.

The average elevation here is 3000m, after walking up the stairs you are cracked, and trying to catch your breath. We all get headaches in the middle of the night. But it's getting better.

This is the hardest race I've ever done. Pray for me dudes, I gotta get to that finish line on Sunday, on the bike, not the Broom wagon.

Cody Takes Green Jersey for a Day at the Fitchburg Longsjo Stage Race, June 29-July 2

So we had to start this race a man down due to residual Beauce trauma. Josh Gewirtz nearly had his liver removed in Hungary because of the stomach infection he got in Quebec and the language barrier with the Hungarian doctors. Josh did make it to Fitchburg (with his liver) and man'ed the feed zone in the road race for Fiordifrutta. I must say, that it was hands down the most dependable feed I have had in a race, but mostly I was just glad he was there and relatively healthy.

On the topic of health, Timmerman had just finished up his antibiotics from Beauce strept throat and had to pull out of theFitchburg circuit race. Hopefully this means we will all be healthy for elite nationals this upcoming weekend, so we can storm that race like we did at Shenandoah when we were all healthy. So Fitchburg went ok, with Cody taking the green jersey (again) for a day and we placed one rider in the top 20 overall. Not a dream come true for us, but the field was a lot deeper this year with ~70 pro's and ~50 cat 1's. (We were third placed for amateur teams)