'Cup'dates

Yep - there's been lots goin' on. Lot's o'ridin. And it's still early Spring! Gunna be a busy summer!! Here's what we've missed this past month:

From Mr. Shockey: (starting with # 6, then 4 and finally #5)

#6 Metric;
hey dave,

cirrem actually made metric #6 for me this year and was hands down the most difficult by far. anyone who was there knows, anyone who wasn't might be able to sympathize with past experiences of their own but we all know that's not the same. huge congrats to anyone willing to start that thing. i think my face is still stinging from the driving hail/sleet/whatever that was coming out of the sky. might still have the write-ups from metrics 4 and 5 and i'll try to send those over. hope everyone's enjoying this slap-in-the-face reminder that its still winter out there.

#4 Metric:

took advantage of sunday's warm temps to get in another metric. headed straight west into the wind and passed just north of ridgeway then just south of cresco. turned back eventually and paused at vernon springs for a quick snack then flew with the tailwind just south of ridgeway and back to town. highlight of the trip: scaring up a herd of buffalo and watching them run. just over 62 miles when i was done. gravels were just starting to get sloppy from the thaw as i was getting done so timing was good.

#5 Metric:
headed out sunday with scotty who used to live here in decorah and is now just visiting from the milwaukee area. a year and a half ago he was my main training partner for my first attempt at transiowa. his visit and some warm temps made the decision to do a metric on sunday a no-brainer. headed out of town kinda northish up through bluffton then headed east through locust and sattre, dipped into allamakee county just a bit and circled back around to town. somewhere around 64 miles with gravel conditions far less sloppy than the day before and a pretty mild wind made for a great day of riding.

shockey

Nick Wethington & Co. have been busy too:

Dave,

Well, February turned out to be a great month for Matt, Paul and I. A
few weeks ago, Matt Maxwell and I both got a metric century in. We
rode with Paul Jacobson and a couple of other guys for a while, but
our ride up to Gilbert and back rounded it off to a complete 62. Two
weeks ago Sunday I did 20 miles in the morning, met up with Matt and
Paul and did about 60 miles with them (they both got a metric, which
puts Matt at 2 for the year and Paul at 1). After riding with them I
did another 20 to round it off to a complete century, putting me at 2
full and 3 metric (after completing Cirrem) for the year and leaving
me in a good place to get 12 apiece! It's supposed to be kinda nice
this Sunday, so I might try to get my full in for March and possibly
another to start up my Cup o Mississippi Mud chasing. Dennis Grelk
has inspired me to try for all three, but we'll see how good I feel
about that come December.

I hope you had fun at Cirrem yesterday, and got all dried off and
picked the gravel bits out of your teeth. It was a great ride, if not
a little sloppy.

Cheers,
~Nick Wethington

And Buckshot Blackford is in the chase;

Dave,



Throw me in for a metric as of yesterday.



Regardless of the suffering throughout the course, the real fun was the last half hour. Kurt Benson (aka Kyle’s Uncle) and I duked it out for a semi-climactic finish. I caught him a couple miles out of town and rather than attempt to kill each other pushing the pace we reached a gentleman’s agreement to find a suitable sprint point close to town and go from there. Kurt, ever the showman, decided to make it more interesting by wiping out hard not once, but twice inside the last 3 miles. He dropped a wheel off into a crack on a nasty wooden bridge flipping over the bars and apparently didn’t think he’d done enough damage at that point and opted to have me roll over a couple various body parts as I attempted to miss him. Holding to the agreement, I waited while he got himself back together and we let that sneaky Ben Shockey slide past us. From there we determined the turn onto 25th street would be the start of the sprint (if you can call 7 tenths of a mile a “sprint”). I did my best to drop him off my wheel as we headed up a slight incline since that seemed to be my strong point of the day. Alas, I had nothing left in the tank and he gritted his teeth determined we would be sprinting it out across the Cumming Highway to the tap. As we both stood up to hammer the last hundred yards he later told me he was attempting to give me the old slide job and cut me off. A slight miscalculation on his part (only by 5 feet or so) had him bouncing off my back wheel and skidding across the highway leaving me to finish out the sprint wondering what the hell just happened. We finished close enough to DFL to taste it, but alas, we weren’t quite that lucky.

Thanks,

Rick Blackford (www.buckshotsblog.com)

As is Tim Bierbaum:

Hi Dave. I was able to take advantage of the nice weather we had back on Feb 8th. I headed south past Bevington until road construction forced me west. Then I just wandered around a while until heading back. I ended up with 105 km for the

Thanks,
Tim

I know the Cedar Falls crew has been riding - send me a note at dave@bikeworldiowa.com and I'll get it all updated!

Happy riding!
Peace -Dave