Ironclad Cycling

Howard the Shitty Red Goat put on a sprinting display at PIR last night, winning all the hot spots as well as the final sprint to score a maximum point value of 24 pts to take the race and solidify his 2nd place on the month series, and creeping closer to the top spot but the point differential was too great to overcome.

Help came in the form of Crawfy, Rob, and Robbie.

In the ladies affair, the top spot for the month was wrested away as a break containing one of two danger women went up the road. The tactical oversight cost the ladies the jersey for June, but it was still a good race and every week we’re starting to see more and more women support the open race. Let’s keep that up!

Tonight’s affair at PIR looks to be a soggy one….but the weather dicks say this weekend we’ll see 70′s and that that trend should continue. I trust the weather dicks about as much as I trust bankers, lawyers, and used car salesmen, but I’ll bet on it this time, for sanity’s sake.

I don’t remember shit about my crash a few weeks ago that broke a tooth and detached a retina. But I do remember the reason we have this 3 day weekend coming up, and we hope you do too.

We’ve been on planes and shit lately, so the updates have sucked and we apologize. Let’s see where we are….hmmmm…yes….right here.

1. Mon/Tue PIR looked like fun. And hey, everyone stayed upright, isn’t that a kick in the pants? Seems like our boys and girls did an ok job of doing the racing, too.

2. Coming up this weekend we have the Bike Tires Direct TT on Monday, to be followed by regular racing Monday night. A great chance to double dip and get the extra workout in.

3. Brianna went down to the Tour of California for Yakima and saw some things and had a few laughs.

4. Soon the Mt. Hood Classic is upon us, and it’s our first year sending Cat 2 squads for both men and women. We’ll also feature some Mens 3 and 4 riders, as well as women’s 4 riders! We’re pretty stoked to see how we stack up in this grueling race.

5. For those of us who are a not hillclimbers (or masochists) there’s a nifty new crit on the line offered by the fine folks over at Hammer Velo, including a single speed crit. Should be pretty cool, and you can see all that info about that race right here. There’s a champion of the universe title on the line, that sounds pretty good to us.

6. We’ll talk more about this in a bit, but have you tried Orbana yet? Pretty good stuff, and free samples are available at PIR on Tuesday nights. Look for the hot chicks with the orange buckets by registration.

Finally, we’re pleased to announce some new ponies in the stable thanks to our longtime sponsor, Mark Duff at Veloforma. Thanks to him, he made it easy for our ladies program to pick up some bikes at a deep discount that will stay in the team and be passed down to other female riders as they come through the Ironclad program, when and if our current ladies move on to greener pastures. Custom paint jobs on a new fleet of F1R framesets are just what the doctor ordered going in to stage racing and crit season. We sure will look good! Thank you Mark! We snapped a bunch of extra pictures of the frame party, and you can see those here.

Hot, no?

boners up!

The mighty volcano Taboris Maximus Kickus Youis Inis The Ballsis has awakened this year with the annual circuit race, and ol’ Ironclad had a nice ride.

Congrats to Jon “Bones” McCoy on his fine 3rd place ride in the men’s 1/2. Well done you long haired bearded weirdo…you sure are quick and we’re happy to have you!

Congrats to our other podium finisher, Sharon Sandoval, who got 3rd in her race too. What improvement this year!

Our other riders and squads did well too, with Daniel FUZZYSTINKY Penner 5th in the 3′s, and good rides by Anono, Ace, Mark Koller, and Drewsie. More later! Hotels and flights for this guy still…

MK47 sent in some shots…here’s ol Fuzzystinky straightening the curves…

Double victory night at PIR, with a win in the 4/5 AND the 1/2/3 as well, with Conley and Harwood respectively. Hooray! Can’t say we’ve ever done the double like that before on one night…..

The win was assisted by Crawfy and Thompson, who did the spadework on rain bikes and loaned wheels to set up Howard the Shitty Red Goat, who delivered the goods in the final sprint to take the overall.

Mention must be made of Conley’s win – his first, as well as one of his goals of the year. Shaun’s been a stalwart worker for the team, handling leadouts and riding all kinds of hard yards for the team, and tonight he got his win all on his own, riding solo in a large field. Well done, Shaun!

In the ladies race, bad luck bit the new kid with a touch of wheels in the final sprint and a bit of a crash. Our Schultzy hit the deck and Sorella’s Tisdale got tangled up in it as well. Bikes a bit dinged, but we’re all thankful everyone got up and walked off with just a few scratches. Walle, Cuhna, and Croy were in her stead and shepherding Schultz in the hopes of gathering points and solidifying the month’s lead. A little bad luck there, no doubt.

Before that, the women’s race was a right cracker with lots of attacking and good sprints for the hot spots. The crash was in the final sprint but where it was situated, it wouldn’t have effected VanValkenberg’s eventual fine victory. But it was certainly good to see some top quality ladies in a larger than average field for a Monday. We’d love nothing more than to see more of that.

We got nothing in the pictures department, though. Zip. Zero. Nada. But we did see Leonard from Hotfootphoto.com out there, bet he’s got the goods.

Today was a really nice day. A nice day that included the veritable boot to the balls that is the Silverton RR course, which today was also the battleground for OBRA Category supremacy as the Championship race. Jerseys were on the line today, as well as tomorrow for the Masters.

For us, it was a good day. Brianna Walle scored 4th in the 1/2′s, with Anona 5th (we think UO) and Shellypants having done some lap one spadework finishing well in a later chase group. In the men’s 1/2 we think we got ol’ Bones McCoy up in the top group…with Willis deciding cured meats made way more sense back at the team tent. In the 3′s a valiant effort by Dan Penner was quashed with one more lap around the hilly 17 mile circuit after a stint featuring in the day’s breakaway. A gutty ride by the particularly fuzzy and stinky man. Joel Crouch helped out for a bit and then figured it out that hills were stupid and rolled in with a later group. And our newborn Alexandria Schultz hung on in her first official road race with the squad to deliver our only podium placing on the day with a fine 3rd place in the women’s 4′s. Well done, kid.

every road race championship should start with fuzzy stinky chicken head and some shitters

The cardboard tells her she’s 3rd

Willis endorses the salami and the provolone

Our thoughts of speedy recovery go to our friend Larry Hiday (Close 2myArt Cycling Team) as well as the others injured in a total of 3 separate crashes in the 3/4 race last night at PIR. It seems to odd; all year we’ve had nary a “holy shit” moment in the 3/4 and last night racked up 3, including a silly one in the finishing straight.

Not sure what the allure is of sprinting at the back of the pack, but things like this happen. Maybe OBRA scores to 20 and that’s it, so if you’re not in the mix, you sit up or at least ride consistently and safely. Just hate to see folks hitting the deck out there. Anyhow, hope everyone heals up ok. We saw some Team O guys in each crash, but the fellow in the last wreck seemed particularly in pain and we wish him the very best in recovering, as with the other injured riders. Ironclad’s resident EMT – Brian Barker, was able to assist emergency personnel on site, thanks Brian!

In the end we did get the win with Crawfy in the 3/4, after Danny Penner damn near held off the field for the final four laps, just to be swamped unfortunately at the line. Hell of an effort by the young man.

The 1/2/3 race was neutralized with a few laps to go since we had ambulances on course for the injured riders, but sounds like our cats were doing ok for themselves up until the unfortunate end.

Let’s hope for speedy recoveries, and let our memories be jogged that it could be any of us at any time regardless of team or category. Let’s be safe for ourselves and each other out there and get down to some clean racing.

Jose and Pat each took their usual shots, and here’s one Jose got of our pre-race huddle before the bloodletting….

We’ve been remiss in lots of news, so let’s catch up shall we?

1. First, join us in welcoming Alexandria Schultz to Ironclad! The scrappy sprinter comes to us after her first season at PSU racing for the Vikings, where she ascended to the rank of “A” before the season ended. She opened the gates at PIR last week, and last night took a fine win in front of a big field. She’ll bolster our already impressive women’s program. Welcome, Alexandria!

2. Jeff Harwood won the 3rd and final As the Raven Flies TT on Saturday, sweeping 3 wins in as many weeks, and also securing the series win. Shitty red goat comes good again for the team! Jon McCoy also raced the TT and placed well.

3. Trevor Spahr and Anna “Ace” Christiansen took to the Gator Grinder triathalon this past weekend, where Ace won the overall women’s title, and Trevor Spahr set a new course record for the bike portion of the race. Congrats you two!

4. Our thoughts are with the family and team of Wouter Weylandt.

5. Monday PIR came and went last night and along with Schultz’s win in the ladies, we had a squad in the 1/2/3 race with Rob Thompson scoring a fine 6th place, with Howard the Goat scoring 16th. Dave took some pulls, sold some red hots, and finished near the back with the main group. Jose as usual got some great shots right here.

6. Our dear Eva Van Deusen is attending medical school in Israel, and sent along a nice picture of riding along there.

Sunday saw some black and yellow hit Alpenrose for our own little track clinic with help from the estimable Mr’s Blackwelder and Beardsley, but the rain stepped in to ruin everything after only a handful of laps. The effort was there, as was the everpresent laughter….

As usual, Jose was there with some cool camera thing-a-ma-jigs and took some awesome photos. Including this one:

Levo, Brody, and KMac want to go in circles, but Ma Nature says no

What a night! Beautiful skies, agreeable temps and winds, and DRY! Hence, huge fields showed up and took to the fray.

In the 3/4 we had a real humdinger with squads showing up in numbers and really putting on a great show. Good racing, good attacks and blocking, and high pace made for a fun night. Good to see the Bike Tires Direct boys show up with numbers, as well as the usual horde of Team O guys, and we managed to bring a good number as well. Lana, Dave, Stephanie, Shaun, Barker and Penner all made it interesting, with Penner scoring 6 points out in the breakaway of the race to notch highest at 8th out of 7 million and 42.

In that 3/4 field we got our first look at the new JVA kits – very sleek and stylish. And their site cracks us up. If you haven’t swung by there, you can go get a good laugh right here, and be sure to visit the Jens Voigt Soundboard listed under “projects” up top because it’s fucking funny.

In the 1/2/3 we had Rob “Fupa” Thompson, Crawfy, Harwood, Willis, Dizzy, and McCoy out there in a field consisting of the populace of the entire western hemisphere of earth. Boys done nicely and notched two top 20 placings after what sounded like a non-stop attack fest. Nice work. We’d like to also extended get well wishes to James who had a bit of a tumble in the closing laps. Get well dude. Heal up fast.

The usual photographic evidence will be at Pat’s site, and Jose shot a ton of pics as well.

Today looks to be a great day, hope you all get a ride in.

A shot from Jose from last week:

Master’s racing at PIR as well as the ladies categories took to the track under nice, dry skies. Remember this time of year last year? Holy shit. That sucked. This is much better.

In the ladies affair, Sharon Sandoval and Stephanie Croy took to the Women’s Open race, notching field finishes after a solid race. Congrats to Alex Schultz for her first ever PIR, and her 3rd place. Nice way to start, kid.

In the 4/5 Conley narrowly missed that elusive first win with 2nd place, but that’s a good start for the series for the month, most excellent.

In the 1/2/3 Howard the Shitty Red Goat snared 3rd in a snappy race. Probably the best of the year. Dave snuck in the top 20.

Onward to another Tuesday.  No pics of tonight, but here’s an image of days soon to come…..a peek into the future of the greatness of Portland summers.