50 for 50 Rides, Helen's Night, 50th Kit Reorders, Race Camp, Race Reports, and Annual Club Photo
Dear La Grange members, we hope you enjoy this months La Voix.
50 for 50 Rides
All this year La Grange will be leading "50 for 50 Anniversary Rides." These are 50 "mileish" rides that will celebrate our clubs 50th anniversary, and they are meant to be social rides that crisscross the wonderful city that we live in. These rides occur on the last Saturday of each month throughout 2019.
The first ride was lead by Jaycee Cary, who conceived the rides. Here is a video from the ride along with some photos.
The February ride will be held on Saturday, February 23rd. Ride details to be announced.
50th Anniversary Kit Store Reopens
The 50th Anniversary Kits are available....again until Sunday, February 10th at 11:59 pm. All members should have received the custom link to the Castelli store.
We did make one design update, which was to add the "circle 50" logo to the right glove and to move the logo off the left edge so that the full "circle 50" logo is visible, which you can see in the image below. The original design was intentional and some people liked it and some did not. We do listen to you so if you like the updated design, then order new gloves.
Helen's Night
Helen's Night is a special night that La Grange takes over Helen's Cycles. Pizza, pasta, salads, beer, beverages and all included but most importantly you get to see your cycling friends and get amazing deals on Cannondale, Giro, Continental, Cycliq, nutrition, and much much more. Please join us.
Date: Monday, February 11, 2019 at 7 – 9 PM
Location: Helen's Cycles 2501 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Race Camp
Race Camp was...SMF (so much fun). It's amazing to experience how well so many people get along in one place when they have so much in common. It is also amazing to see how much food a group like that consumes. Friday was a ride up Gibraltar. Saturday was a drills for skills led by La Grange member Marc Thomas followed by a crit, which was followed by beers. Sunday was a group ride with some team racing on certain segments of the ride.
Race Reports
January 27th Goleta CA | Carlos Soto Memorial Crit | Sam Selfridge Cat 3 |
The Carlos Soto Memorial Crit - I used to live here and have ridden over 600 laps of this course during summer crit practice, I've never raced here. The Santa Barbara County Road Race was the day before, and I'd ridden 30 miles total in the two weeks leading up to it so I'm still feeling the 60 road race from Saturday in my legs.
My plan from the get-go was to throw out attacks consistently throughout the beginning of the race, get the leaders used to seeing me off the front and expecting they can catch me. Looking at the field Serious Cycling and Fig Mtn both have 6+ riders in the pack. I have one teammate who lives up north and I hadn't met until yesterday, Frank and a friendly agreement with Manuel Aguilar AKA BreakAwayManny. It's going to be a tough race.
I told Manny before we got started, with 2 to go I'm going to be off. Either off the front or off the back, but I'm going to try to break away, surprise surprise - BreakAwayManny was up for the plan.
Started off by taking a solo flyer right out of the gate and leading the first two laps about 50 yards off the pack. Let my legs warm up, said hi to a few of my friends working the race and yelling "I'M WINNING THE RACE" to whoever would listen. After that settled back into the pack. The course is basically a capital D with only two corners. The trick with these is to read the riders in front and control speed so you're not braking and then forced to sprint to stay in the draft. Good to have that jump every now and then but doing it 40 times will get to you. Serious to their credit had some good team tactics going on. If a serious rider was up the road, another would sprint up to 2nd wheel of the chase group, then either gap that wheel or just not pull hard when that rider pulled off. They never got a solid team breakaway going.
I made moves off the front a couple times, one bigger one at lap 36 then settled in till lap 26 which came up faster than I realized, went out again and was caught. When the lap cards said 18 I jumped off the front again, I think I was chasing down a rider up ahead I don't remember, but when I was about to let off and drift back the pack I hear "Sam lets go!" from behind me. It was Manny and he had friends. No one had joined me in my other attacks, but now there were 4 of us, me, Manny, Travis from Hit Squad and Madison from Fig Mtn. Finally, I had people to play with! We set up a rotating paceline, each of us taking about 1/4 of a lap then peeling off. The laps that had gone by so quickly before seemed to drag on forever. It wasn't until 10 to go that I felt we had a good chance of making this stick.
We had 2 things going for us.
Everyone was all in. While some took slightly longer pulls and some shorter we all put in our time at the front and kept the pace up - no one was skipping pulls or too gassed to help out.
Madison's Fig Teammates behind us were making any organized chase difficult. With 5 riders the Fig team was in a great position to interrupt any pack organization to chase us down.
The laps ticked by and we stayed away. Derin Stockton was on the mic and when he announced we had a 12-second gap on the pack with 6 to go I knew we could make it. To sure things up I announced that I didn't mind taking 4th. I'd never been a part of a break like this before and didn't want it to fall apart until it had too. With 2 to go we started to see the pack ahead of us - unless there was a strong breakaway chasing us we had this in the bag. With 1/2 lap to go I made good on my promise and jumped to the front to take one last big pull through the corner then build up speed for the sprint. It was 200m from corner to finish line and the other 3 guys all came around me before the end.
Madison won, Travis 2nd and Manny got 3rd and I took 4th as planned. Best breakaway I've been a part of and a great race.
Looking forward to coming back next year!
Cheers
-Sam Selfridge
P123 Women's CBR
La Grange made a strong showing in the women's P123 race at the season's first CBR event, our backyard crit series in Dominguez Hills. Daniela Garcia finished fourth with support from teammates Catherine Guentert and Danie Monahan in a fast field of 18. After this race, the team talked about the importance of attacking right when it's hurting the worst - because everyone else will be hurting too! CBR1 was also an energizing debut for new-to-LG racers Kim Kopenhaver and Michael Barraclough. Welcome!
Annual Club Photo
The annual La Grange club photo will be held Saturday, February 16th at 7:30 am at San Vicente and Ocean Avenue. Members are encouraged to wear their 50th Anniversary Kits. If you have extras, please bring them to the shoot. If you don't have a 50th kit, we want you in the photo but members with the kit will be in the front. The photo is followed by an easy spin around the Marina. Peet's coffee will be served.
