With school letting out I kind of needed a little motivation to clean my room.  With most kids parents would take away XBox, or the Internet.  My family is a little bit different.  They take away track time.  If we didn’t get our rooms clean this week we where not going to be able to ride at Marymoor. 

What an awesome trip! All the Rad racers raced their butts off against tough competition and oven roasting heat. Our riders rode aggressive and were always in the mix.

In Gabe’s cat 4 crit win, he rode a tactically smart race, letting the old guys go for the primes and always staying right near the front.  When it came down to the time you really want to cross the line first, Gabe  stomped  on the gas and took the win.

Next we watched IT and Sean drilling it in the cat 3 crit. Sean set a super high pace at the front from the gun and was just a hair off winning a prime on one of the laps. IT stayed tucked in the front end of the main group all race and sprinted it out at the front of the pack taking an awesome 2nd over the line.

Then in the cat 2 crit, Steve and a Carter rider went off the front from the gun. The two kept a super fast pace that after several laps finally made the pack nervous and riders started to try to bridge up. Another 2 or 3 riders did make it up. Their team mates behind slowed and controlled the pace of the pack and the break went on. On the last lap Steve and the Carter rider got through the final turn first and hit the gas hard, leaving the other break riders behind. These two drag raced it to the line with Steve taking the win.

To top off the weekend, Sean drilled it on the climbs of the 67 mile circuit race on Sunday, stayed near the front, and out sprinted the rest of the pack to take an awesome 2nd place in the cat 3’s (with an injured shoulder!)

Rad Racing showed up in Bend ready to rumble and showed everyone we were there to race. Awesome, awesome racing this weekend by all of our riders! And of course thanks to Mike for having all the bikes dialed in and to our new star Director: David Fleischhauer for motivating these guys to race like pros.

Left Seattle right on schedule; 10am, left Oly at 11:45am…should have been in Bend by about 5:30pm, nope. A huge brush fire about 60 miles outside of Bend had our highway shut down for several hours.  We had to back track and take a detour that added another 2 hours to the trip through a no man’s land with no towns for about 60 miles. For a while I thought we may run out of gas out there, it was way too close. We did end up pulling into some podunk town finally with the gas gauge one notch above E. So after 10 hours and one hub -cap loss later we final pulled into Bend to our killer rental house.

The boys kick off the weekend this morning with a TT followed by an afternoon crit. Stay tuned for rider reports today and tonight!

DS

The past week at Camp Orkila was a great experience. Challenging trails, tough terrain, riding up Mt. Constitution, Anacortes, and getting to know my team mates a lot better. The tough trails in Anacortes and Moran State Park really helped me improve with my technical skills. I was able to go over big ruts, roots, logs and go down steep hills without hesitating. The Mt. Constitution climb was challenging.  Daniel and I stuck together the whole wayup. Going up was hard, but once I got to the top I felt really proud of myself. Going down Mount Constitution was the funnest part.  I had a really cool counselor named Hannah who I got know well.  I’m looking forward to next years camp.

Stay tuned to follow how Steve Fisher, Ian Terry, Sean Worsech, Kosta Psaltis, Gabe Watson, Ben Corwin and Jordan Campbell’s trip to Bend Oregon for the Cascade Classic goes.

Forget about watching those small time riders like Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner and Santiago Botero…the Rad Racers are the ones who are going to light Bend on fire!

Coming this Friday through Sunday.

We had an excellent first day of camp riding with the campers. 15 campers, including 9 Rad Racers, rode the trails on camp and did a quick TT to determine how we group them up for the rest of camp. It’s a strong group with most of the riders pretty close in strength and skill.

All of our new coaches are awesome with the kids, and all of the counselors are eager to ride (first year THAT’S happened!).

Unfortunately, I had to go home yesterday and will miss the rest of camp…just in time for the rain. Jim took over the wheel and will be leading the program the rest of the week.

The trails in Moran State Park are looking good!

Much better than many of our coaches did after Jim took them out and trashed them with about 4k ft of climbing and descending in the heat! He led them through all of the trails the campers will be riding this week…in one ride! At least they won’t get lost now.