Super Squadra

The Fayetteville stage race has always acted as an important benchmark for cyclists in Texas.  It’s not only a great opportunity for riders to race against the clock in the stage 2 time trial but it challenges the individual and the team in their ability to work together over the course of three stages.  Every rider needs to sacrifice their own personal goals for the team in order to help achieve the best result possible.

As we started the stage 1 road race everyone on the team was on the same page.  Dave and I were to be the protected riders due to our time trialing skills and Phil, Ian and Alan were to look for moves that put them up the road.  We obviously didn’t want a good time trialist up the road either so we were very picky in who we wanted to allow in a breakaway.  Little groups would go up the road and then come back.  A couple of times some bigger groups of over ten riders would roll of but we always had someone in the move and were never really caught sleeping.  Half way through the race a group of seven riders attacked and rolled off and Ian marked the group.  I jumped on a wheel that was trying to join the party a little late and I had a hard time getting up to the group.  Ian saw me coming across and dropped off the back to make sure that I made it all the way.  This group didn’t last long off the front but it did make me very nervous as my legs didn’t feel as good as I would have liked.  Luckily, it seemed like that effort was just what I needed to get my legs back on track.

With the group going over the KOM for the last time it was obvious that some riders were looking to make a selection.  Around 10 riders, including Dave, were stringing out the peloton as we headed into the hard cross wind sections.  Riders were attacking every chance they had and through the last headwind section John Korioth/ Team Six and Robbie Robinette/Hotel San Jose rolled off the front.  I was well positioned right in the front and I jumped with them.  The three of us traded pulls for about a minute and then I asked John if we had a gap.  He said we did and that it looked they were letting us go.  I was of course amazed that they would let us go with only around 15 miles left in the race.  Around 2 miles later Chad Haga/Texas A&M University and Carlos Vargas/Hotel San Jose bridged up.  The five of us worked fairly well together even though some members of the break took harder pulls than others.  I didn’t want to necessarily waste too much energy so that I didnt have a chance for a stage victory but I wanted time on the other 95 riders that were behind us chasing.  Also, with time bonuses on the line I knew this was a golden opportunity to get a lead going into the stage 2 time trial.

With the peloton breathing down our necks we held on to a slim 40 second lead heading into the final uphill and the sprint for the finish.  I took my last pull and positioned myself last wheel out of the breakaway.  I knew how long the final uphill section was and that the sprint would be won in the final 50 meters when the road started to even out.  John Korioth jumped first and Carlos Vargas immediately jumped into his draft.  Carlos was the wheel I wanted so I was in perfect position when Carlos jumped John and opened up his sprint.  I bided my time and jumped Carlos on the left and the two of us started our 150 meter drag race.  I ended up having enough power left in the legs to win the sprint by a bike length and ended up with the all important stage victory. With the 15 second bonus for the stage win and the 39 second gap to the field, I was in perfect position heading into the time trial.

On Sunday, team Super Squadra held a secret Fayetteville training camp (so secret, one of our own teammates, Alan Ting, didn’t even know about it). We departed from Progress Coffee at 9 a.m. amid 40-degree temperatures and steady rain. As Austin’s SXSW week is looming, a line of kids and parents wrapped around the Progress Coffee deck, waiting to see and get the autograph of one Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hanna Montana, a.k.a. Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter (disclaimer: that information was provided by Wheeler who sometimes reads Nina’s US Weekly while “taking care of business”).

We headed east toward Bastrop where the sun appeared to be cracking through what seemed like a month-long (OK, three days) deluge of clouds and rain. We were wet, but it’s not often we get the whole Austin based crew—including some obvious impostor who showed up in full team OUCH regalia—together for a long training ride, so sunny attitudes prevailed. We spent a long portion of the ride making fun of the sloping top tube on Phil’s crash replacement HSG. Yes, he claims it’s even better than the standard geometry HSG’s we were aboard, but that didn’t stop us from asking numerous questions about our official new women’s team bike (botta-boom!).



On the way out of town we took respite from half wheeling each other to check out the Moore’s Bridge off Burleson Rd and 973. The bridge, urban legend states, is haunted. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any ghosts while navigating the precipitous, front wheel eating, wooden slats running the length of the bridge. We did take the time to read the historic marker on the other side, however, which claims the bridge was originally built in the late 1800s as a Colorado River crossing for downtown’s Congress Ave. Three of the bridges originally five spans are restored and reside at Richard Moya Park.



Once we got to Bastrop, we opted to explore some supposed roads paralleling the Colorado on its way towards Smithville. Our road of fortune turned out to be a private, gated ranch road, and left us instead pedaling the scenic, little traveled one lane roads towards the historic town of Rockne. Here we took a break to drink hot chocolate and eat re-heated, sulifane wrapped breakfast tacos. Unfazed by our first undoing via the Garmin, we attempted to circumnavigate the FM road heading straight back to Cedar Creek. The teenage convenience store clerk warned us that the road we were about to attempt riding was small, twisty, and dangerous. She did not tell us it was a glorified goat path on private land. After a thirty minute detour riding Roubaix style through rocks and mud puddles, avoiding cattle, and cattle droppings, we arrived at a dead end. Shortly after, Phil flatted three times (by no fault of his own), and an hour later, we rode back by the convenience store we’d just left, hanging our heads in shame.





I won the sprint into Cedar Creek.*

Upon returning to Austin, we’d logged nearly 100-miles, many hours of soggy chamois time, and completed the first annual Super Squadra Super Secret Training Camp.

*Sprint results under review due to everyone being slower than me, not knowing where the sign was, that there even was a sign, and my pointing into the distance and saying “what’s that over there?” before opening up my insanely powerful 1000-watt burst of speed.

Coming off last week’s high with a podium at Walburg and victory at Pacebend, we looked forward to the back to back 80-mile road races at Lago Vista this past weekend with both enthusiasm and apprehension. Lago is one of the Texas season’s most enjoyable, but unpredictable races. That’s not to say that the strongest, most astute cyclist doesn’t usually win, but it’s also a course where a missed move or misplaced energy can leave a fit rider completely off the results list.

On day one an early move took off with both our rival team’s—TX Tough and Metro VW—represented, in addition to solo strongmen Heath Blackgrove of THSJ and perenial Lago Vista runner-up Steve Tilford of HRCC. Our favorite early race antagonist, AustinBikes owner Sol Frost, was in there too. Simply put, they were moving. With the break still in sight we made several individual efforts to bridge across, but were stymied as the gap quickly blossomed to a minute or so. Wheeler and I blew ourselves with several unsuccessful efforts to form a chase group, while Phil and Dave managed to pick up the scraps in the finale, finishing 8th and 11th respectively. Our post race meeting was heated as we were all a bit disappointed with the result. However, in the end, we hugged it out. With top tier domestic pro-squad Kelly Benefit Strategies (KBS) arriving for Sunday’s race, we retreated home for a good nights rest

On Sunday the green and yellow pro guys arrived with a squad of 10, doubling our meager numbers. We knew it’d be tough from the start and made a point of following each and every move from lap one. Wheeler was the first to go up the road with three other KBS riders. As he came back I went with the next group, and remained in varying groups of riders off the front of the peloton for the remainder of the day. With five laps to go, a larger group containing both Dave and I, Stefan Rothe and Chad Cagle of TX Tough, Heath Blackgrove, Travis Burandt of Colavita-New Mexico, and probably half a dozen KBS riders, came apart on the hill that continuously pitches upward to the top of the course. It was the winning move and the one split I wasn’t able to make all day. A few laps later a good friend and one-time teammate of mine from those former, fondly remembered, years as a $12K dreamer, Scott Zwizanski, soloed up to the winning break. Scott replaced his teammate Andrew Bajadali who’d drifted back to our group after driving the pace up front all day. I saw Scott readying to attack, but just missed catching his wheel. He didn’t wait for me (something he later apologized for via text message) and went on to win solo with his teammate, another former Austin snowbird, Zac Bell, coming in second. Stefan proved he’s of pro-level talent himself by scoring his second podium of the weekend.

As the chase group came apart, I continued to ride hard, hoping to salvage a top ten placing from a long day off the front, but was scooped up by a charging KBS lead pack with only one-kilometer to go. (Jerks.) On the drive home we passed the KBS guys heading out for more miles on the scenic, albeit hilly ride down 1431 toward Marble Falls (something Scott and I had done ourselves six years prior while living the pseudo-pro lifestyle). I found Scott at the front of the two-by-two paceline and handed him a ice cold Miller Light, not even the champagne of beers, but well deserved non-the-less. As a graduate of West Virginia University and blessed with Polish heritage Scott has plenty of experience demonstrating a high tolerance for such celebratory beverages (it was likely consumed on the bike).

Later that evening, I made my own toast to Lago Vista 2010. Bring it KBS!

Photos courtesy Casey B. Gibson.