It Has Begun

It’s time for two things around the Ironclad camp in the months of December and January, along with the holidays.

This:

Which, when cold and windy as we’ve had since we started riding a few weeks ago, always ends with this:

Warm and cold, yin and yang, long rides and whiskey chasers. Yup, it has BEGUN.

Merry Christmas To All, And To All A Good Ride

Enjoy it, everyone!

Portland Design Works Signs On As 2010 Sponsor!

The Ironclad Performance Wear Cycling Team is very proud to announce a sponsorship agreement has been struck with the fine folks at Portland Design Works for the 2010 road season.

The team will sport PDW’s products and lights and will be featuring their logo on the team kits. Ironclad is very proud to welcome the fine folks at PDW into our family of sponsors!

Check out all of their offerings at their website, www.ridepdw.com

The Year In Review

We suppose it’s that time of year, no? Let us reflect on the year, with nary a mention of dead celebrities, political scandal, or sports stars reaffirming that a man is only as faithful as his options, shall we?

For our humble developmental team, the end results are pretty damn good and we’re happy with them. BAR results by OBRA standards are a curious thing as they can be heavily influenced by masters, juniors, and of course, sandbagging. Some teams or folks do well by firstly hard work, some by circumstance or for whatever reason, as do some teams, so the “rankings” are a bit subjective, but we’re happy with how everything shook out.

Of course, we had our horrific luck come to port in the shape of Kristin’s horrible crash, and Kira’s cancer, but as a team we persevered through all that bad luck and turned in some great results in the face of great physical and emotional adversity. By the way, on both fronts our girls are still making massive strides towards full recovery. Amazing as well is that you’ll find both of these women still listed in the overall for various disciplines in Cat 4, considering both their seasons ended abruptly in June, and that’s a testament to their efforts prior to the calamities.

We’re small, and we’re mostly a developmental squad. We keep hearing that we’re a big team, and that’s just not true. We have just under 30 riders both men and women – it’s just that we show up, en masse, a lot. We have very few masters, and no juniors. So to end up 17th on the Team BAR, out of 76 registered teams is a placing we’re happy with. For our Cat 4 women, we’re right up there in almost all categories, same goes for our Cat 4 men and our Cat 3 men as well. In all three of our categories, you’ll find top 3 or top 5 placings mostly. So again, to be 17th with no masters, no juniors, a limited amount of track racing, and no 1′s or 2′s, men or women – speaks volumes.

Big wins at Vancouver Courthouse Crit and Swan Island put us firmly on the map as a good crit team. High placings in Elkhorn and Cherry Blossom marked us as having some climbers in stage races.  Regular attendance at PIR let us hone our team skills and strategies. And with so many good riders and some good teams out there beating up on us, we clearly had our work cut out for us to earn these results.

So it is now that we begin to recharge the batteries from long road and cross seasons. Our team will gather in January to begin team rides, with a training camp to follow in an undisclosed (but fun!) location in February or March, and then we’ll begin our assault on the 2010 road season in earnest. For 2009, it was like any other year in that it was full of ups and downs, but in the end it was a season we as a team can look back on with a great degree of pride. All of it is captured right here in these two pictorial volumes, with almost every race of the schedule featured.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we’ll be back on the air in a few weeks. Until then, au revoir!

The Lights, The Lights

A special night, December 7th was, at PIR. Normally we hurtle around this 2 mile track in the summers on our Monday and Tuesday night championships, but this night was chasing sea monsters (?) and old St. Nick in frigid temps. Hey, why not? They put on a bike night, so we took our bikes up there to support the event, with hot toddies in thermoses, we bundled and descended. Hey, you gotta stay warm on nights like that, and whiskey and hot cider did the trick.

Looks a little different than usual, eh?

And as we look towards warmer things to wear as we dust off the road bikes and prepare for base miles, you should all realize that we have some awesome stuff for sale at Ironclad’s online store. Most notable among them, compression socks. Why the hell would you spend 40 or 50 bucks when you can spend $9.99 for the same damn thing? Ask anyone who’s worn them on any one of our 6 sponsored teams – these things are the shit! Just sayin’

Happy holidaze, yo…….

Natz And OUT

The USGP has come and gone, and Natz are on tap next weekend in Bend, and then, to put your bicycle life in perspective, please notice that Cherry Pie is in about 10 weeks. Yes, and by that I mean the first road race of the year.

There is really no rest for the wicked then, is there?

But back to more recent events, we saw just a few of the last standing cyclocrossers out kicking it at PIR this weekend. Dizzy, Boeger, and Voytilla – who was racing his last race for the team after 3 years of stellar service – took to the icy sheen of PIR’s mud and batttled valiantly. Results as of now are unknown but we know everyone is ok.

Sounds like the Crusades party was a hoot, and every one had a grand ol’ time. We’re digging around for imagery and such, we hope to find some for you.

Portland The Laughing Stock

It just keeps coming. This is perfect, we laughed our asses off.