MARS HILL COLLEGE CYCLING

Poster for Cycling Film Double Feature

Paul Webb crosses the line for 3rd in the RR

We were wondering when the bigger dogs would start coming out to play, and (with the notable absence still of Brevard College) the best of the Southeastern Conference were on the line at Georgia Southern University last weekend.  Lees-McRae showed up in full force, as did Furman University and Cumberland, two of the strongest teams in Div II. Still, at the end of the weekend’s racing, MHC still maintains its overall team omnium lead and Klara Rossouw still leads the women’s A overall rankings, with Paul Webb riding to a superb 3rd place in the road race to maintain his 3rd overall ranking in A men’s individual omnium.

Here’s the rundown on the weekend’s events. In the TTT,  the MHC women’s team of Klara Rossouw, Yolanda Colon, and Melissa Holloway placed 1st in our Div II. The course was fast, and Furman blew everyone away in the Men’s A TTT with MHC finishing a few minutes down but still in 2nd place in our division. While our guys lacked the TT equipment to compete on an even playing field, Furman would still have beat us quite handily. But the MHC boys are improving weekly, and they will have better TT set-ups for the conference and national championships.

The criterium  was held on a very short and fast course with eight corners to negotiate every lap. With horsepower from Lees-McRae and Furman driving the pace from the gun, the starting field of 45 was reduced to less than half soon after the start. The MHC team rode well to start with Matt Willing sitting in 2nd and covering LMC riders for the first five laps, but the effort took its toll, and by the end of the race Paul Webb and Matt Willing barely made it into the top 20 in 19th and 20th respectively, earning valuable points for the team. Zach Felpel of LMC won ahead of Chris Butler from Furman. The women’s race was dominated by the LMC women who had eight of the thirteen starters in the A women’s event. Klara could only follow so many attacks and eventually had to settle for 7th as LMC women took the first six spots. Yolanda Colon wasn’t too far back and earned more points for the team. Rachel Warner won the women’s criterium in a solo effort. Melissa Holloway from MHC placed a strong 5th in the Women’s B event, her first race of the year.

The road race was held on a 22-mile loop that offered wind and rolling hills to break up the fields. In the Men’s A race, a break of six formed on the first lap and included MHC’s Paul Webb, Chris Butler (Furman), two LMC riders, Alejandro Padilla from Cumberland, and a UF rider. With most of the big teams represented, the break stayed away but splintered on the last lap with Chris Butler taking the win ahead of Brad Perley (LMC) and Paul Webb. MHC’s Kyle Knott took the field sprint for the 3rd consecutive race. The women’s A race was a little confusing as many riders were accidentally led off course. In the end it was sorted out and Rachel Warner (LMC) again won and MHC’s Klara Rossouw rolled across the line in 5th. Melissa Holloway (MHC) earned another strong 6th place result in the Women’s B road race and now sits in 11th overall after competing in just two events.

After GSU, Mars Hill continues to lead the Division II team standings:
Mars Hill College: 312
King College: 147
Furman Univ: 126
College of Charleston: 76
Univ of Central FL: 57

In the overall Women’s A standings, MHC’s Klara Rossouw continues to lead:
Klara Rossouw (MHC): 357
Heather Davis (UF): 257
Emily Fancher (UGA): 205
Rachel Warner (LMC): 170
Carla Swart (LMC): 131

The overall Men’s A standings:
Ben Zawacki (Clemson): 365
Shawn Gravois (UF): 251
Paul Webb (MHC): 248
Kyle Rohan (UF): 200
Spencer Bearmer (Furman): 172

Full results can be found at www.collegiatecycling.org/seccc

Thanks to all of our sponsors, supporters, and partners. We expect the level of competition to continue to increase leading up to conference championships. Bring it on!

Leading out Kyle with one lap to go...

Another trip down to sunny Florida last weekend, this time to defend our conference lead at Florida State University. The trip was long but worth it. We arrived in Tallahassee after 11:30pm on Friday and were happy to find our host house–offered up by longtime cycling friends Jason Snow and Will Thompson–and eat a snack and hit the air mattress. After a solid six hours of sleep, we were up, toasting bagels, and getting ramped up for the weekend’s first event, the TTT. It went well: both the women’s and men’s teams claimed first place in Div II. Then after a brief respite of sandwich-making and suntanning, we got ready for the “hilly” 16-mile loop along the Florida and Georgia border.

The first lap for the A men didn’t go so well. Actually, it was a complete disaster. Paul Webb crashed while attempting to follow what would be the winning breakaway and in the effort snapped his chain. He was fortunately rather uninjured, but the accident had caused a disruption in the field that the attacking riders made sure to take advantage of. At the end of the first lap, we only had one rider, Kyle Knott,  in the field and no one in the seven man breakaway. Ouch. By the end of lap two,  Matt Willing had gotten back on terms with the peloton despite having to stop twice to reseat his chain due to a malfunctioning derailler pulley. Francisco Fuster was also back in the group. Nikola Milanovic never made it back after the crash and settled into a nice, long training day in the sun.

As soon a Matt made contact with the field, he recognized the dire situation the team was in and threw down an attack to try to get a group to bridge to the break. But no one followed, and Matt rode the next 45 miles alone, distancing the field but never able to catch the breakaway. By the finish, Matt caught and passed two riders who had been dropped from the break and rode home for an impressive Jens Voigt style finish for 6th place. Kyle won the field sprint for 9th quite handily and Fuster earned enough points for the team in 15th to win the team overall for the road race. Not what we’d planned, but the end result was better than any hopes we’d had after that miserable first lap. Maitland Jones from Tallahassee Community College won the race by outsprinting his breakaway companions, making it look easy in the process.

In the Women’s A road race, the field stayed together despite a number of attacks. Klara Rossouw tried one last attack up the feed zone “hill” with about 2 miles to go but she was quickly covered and decided to wait for the group sprint. Coming down the last 200 meters to the line, it looked like Heather Davis from UF had the edge but Klara came back on her just in time and won by inches in an exciting photo finish, bike throws included.

At Saturday’s criterium, the A women raced before the A men and again the race ended in a group sprint, but this time up a small rise. Klara timed her sprint to perfection and once again came across the line first ahead of Heather Davis from UF. Emily Fancher from UGA was third. Klara’s dominant performance over the weekend catapulted her into the overall omnium lead, just a handful of points ahead of Davis.

The men’s race started fast and furious with lots of attacks, counter-attacks, and attempts to win the sprint primes. A little over halfway through a group of five escaped. Once again, MHC was not represented. Paul Webb attempted to bridge up to the front group with a couple of other riders but got stuck in no man’s land and settled for a strong 7th place finish. Kyle Knott once again, and with the help of a leadout from his teammates over the last three laps, won the field sprint in convincing fashion.

After all the points were tallied, Mars Hill now leads the Div II conference standings by a wider margin. MHC has 282 points in the team standings, King College is second with 84 points, University of Central Florida is third with 57 points,  and Furman and College of Charleston are tied with 56 points each. In addition, Klara Rossouw leads the women’s division and Paul Webb is now in 3rd overall with Kyle Knott in 7th in the mens’ A overall category. Paul and Kyle are in 1st and 3rd in the Div II rankings.

Next stop is Georgia Southern University this weekend, where teams will continue to tackle the TTT, RR, and Crit format. We expect more competition this weekend as more teams seek to gain points for nationals qualification.

As always, we thank our sponsors and supporters for giving us the resources we need to race our bikes. Go Green Team!

Mars Hill College Cycling in conjunction with Citizen Pictures will show the epic documentary “Race Across the Sky” as a fundraising event for the team. This is your chance to see this visually stunning film on the big screen before the DVD release. The film was released very briefly on the big screen in large cities but never made it to Asheville.

Following RATS, we will show “A Ride with George Hincapie” to complete this double feature highlighting two of the USA’s most respected cyclists. Presented in conjunction with Plan A Films and Hincapie Sports. The film was directed by Chusy Jardine, the award winning director, whose film “Anywhere, USA” (based on and filmed in Asheville) won a prestigious Sundance award.

The event will be hosted by Asheville Pizza and Brewing Co. on Thursday, March 11th.

Tickets: $10 donation at the door. Ticket sales will start at 8:30pm, show at 9:30pm. Get there early as we expect to sell out the 150 seat theater.

We will have RATS DVDs for pre-order at the event for $30 and $35 for Blu-ray. Be the first to receive this DVD when released. Pre-order by emailing me quantity and type, and we’ll give you a $5 discount per DVD. Email hamoran@gmail.com for more info on pre-ordering. We will also have autographed copies of “A Ride with George Hincapie” as part of our silent auction.

Ours silent auction this year will again feature gear, goodies, and gifts from local businesses. Items listed below.

For those unfamiliar with the Leadville 100, here’s what it’s all about:

At 10,000+ feet, against the misty backdrop of a former mining town, Leadville, Colorado, 1228 cyclists line the starting line. For many, it will be the most difficult race of their lives. For some, a bragging right to say they raced alongside the best in the world. Some imagine victory. Most hope only to finish. But everyone will count.

The race that started 25 years ago as a running race to drive tourism in Leadville has now grown to a lottery cap of 1000+ competitors, many of them the world’s most elite cyclists. But the Leadville Trail 100 “Race Across the Sky” Mountain Bike Race is not just a race of man against man: it’s man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. elements, man vs. time. A clock set for 12 grueling hours slugs through 100 miles, over 14,000 vertical feet of climbing, some two miles above sea level, through extreme climate changes ranging from heat to hail, from rain to snow. To the racers, the risks of injury, fatigue and mechanical failure pale next to the chance that they will fall behind the 12 hour cut off mark and be eliminated.

Rivalries include six-time defending champion Dave Wiens vs. international star / seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. Inspirational stories of human triumph include a Leadville woman rider who was critically injured by a car while training for last year’s race, another who suffers from multiple sclerosis, and 45+ rider who has raced all 15 years.

Whether they’re international stars of the sport or everyday folks with the will to finish a race whose difficulty is on par with the Ironman, the grit to push to their own physical and emotional limits strikes an elegant symmetry between racer and environment and a struggling former mining town whose very existence now relies on the tourism generated by this race.

And here is the scoop on “A Ride With George Hincapie”:

Spanning his early years as a junior to the disappointment of 2009 Roubaix, this unadorned everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-guy portrait puts a microscope on the silent man of cycling, George Hincapie. Ride along with George as he shares his joys and inspirations, his fears and frustrations, his anger (or lack thereof), his hopes and dreams, his strengths and weaknesses, and his plans for the future as he gives us a unique peak into his private world. A Ride with George Hincapie is a feature-length film that provides an unprecedented look at the man behind the athlete.

SILENT AUCTION ITEMS:
4 autographed DVDs by George, “A Ride with George Hincapie.”
2 Mars Hill College “Green Team” Jerseys, 2010
1 Mars Hill College Team Kit from 2009, size men’s L
Gift Basket from The French Broad Food Coop
HydraPak from Hearn’s Cycling and Fitness
Box of Raw Revolution Energy Bars
T-shirt and Water Bottle from Bio-Wheels Bike Shop
$50 gift certificate to Youngblood Bicycles
A Bontrager Floor Pump from Liberty Bicycles
$25 Gift Certificate and Water Bottle from Ski Country Sports
$25 Gift Certificate from Rosetta’s Kitchen
Bike Lock and F/R Lights from Pro Bikes
2 pair Cycling Shorts and a Beanie from Carolina Fatz
4 $25 Gift Certificates from NEO Burrito
And more… Thanks to those who donated thus far!

Citizen Pictures, LLC. All Rights Reserved
WWW.PLANAFILMS.COM

All for one; one for all...

Cycling is a team sport, a fact demonstrated by the eight members of the MHC Cycling “Green” Team who ventured down to Gainesville, Florida, for the first Southeastern Conference road events of 2010, which were hosted by the University of Florida. When all the points were tabulated Mars Hill came out on top and now leads the Southeastern Conference Division II team standings with 92 points. Furman, last year’s conference champion, earned 56 points and sits in 2nd; in 3rd is the University of Central Florida with 36 points; 4th is the College of Charleston with 23 points; and the University of Alabama-Hunstville and Georgia Southern round out the top 5 tied with 7 points each.

It was a consistent effort by all members on the team that led to the win. The team did, however, end up with several solid individual overall rankings. In the Women’s A events, Klara Rossouw proved that she is indeed a rider to watch. Not only did she claim two 1st places in the Division II time trial and criterium but she also showed that she can compete against some of the best riders in the nation by being competitive with the Division I women, including two current national champions. Klara finished 3rd to them in the time trial and was the only woman able to follow their attacks in the criterium. Alexis Dabroski from UF won the criterium in a solo attack for the second year in a row, which was impressive and the result of smart tactical racing by the UF women. Klara sits in 4th place overall in the combined Div I and II rankings, which is led by UF’s Jackie Crowell. Rossouw, though, has a strong lead in Division II.

In the Men’s A category, Paul Webb and Kyle Knott are now positioned in 2nd and 3rd overall in Division II, but they could not have accomplished this without the hard work and sacrifices of their teammates, namely Matt Willing, Nikola Milanovic, and Francisco Fuster. These latter three took control of Sunday’s criterium race, making sure that no breakaways escaped the field, ensuring that Webb and Knott would have an opportunity to place high in the final group sprint. Spencer Beamer from Furman won the criterium and leads the Division II individual rankings. The Mars Hill men also gained valuable points in the individual time trial on Sunday and also finished 2nd in the team time trial to Furman.

In the Men’s C events, Ryan Levander finished 3rd in the time trial and in a 3-way tie for 2nd in the criterium and now sits in 3rd overall in Division II individual rankings. Teammate Yonatan Arnold rode strongly in a supporting role. Brooks Bostick from the College of Charleston currently leads the C category.

Full results can be found at collegiatecycling.org/seccc.

As always, we are grateful to our team partners who provide us with the support necessary to succeed. This is your win, too. And thanks is also due to a couple of old school UF alumni for hosting us for the weekend. When it’s too hot in FL, you’ve got a place to stay in the WNC mountains.

The team will race in defense of its early season lead at Florida State University on February 20-21.

Come get down with the Mars Hill College Cycling Team for an evening of music, food/drink, and foot-stomping fun. Mark you calendars for Thursday, February 4th, starting at 8pm. We’re kicking off the 2010 season with a stellar line-up of three of Asheville’s most talented and entertaining live bands. Check them out here for a taste, but come see them live for the real deal:

Now You See Them: http://www.myspace.com/nowyouseethem

Johnson’s Crossroad: http://www.myspace.com/johnsonscrossroad

The Swayback Sisters: http://www.myspace.com/theswaybacksisters

Music starts at 8pm. $5-10 donation at the door.

So… help us rock in the 2010 racing season, which starts for us two days later at the University of Florida. Ride your bike and receive a special gift, but please be a safety dork and come with a helmet and bike lights.

Please pass on the invite; the more the merrier. See you there!

Jack of the Wood is located in downtown Asheville at:

95 Patton Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801

On a very early Sunday morning with temps in the 20’s and the course an “ice rink,” Mars Hill College Cycling claimed its first podium at a national championship and was ranked as the 3rd cyclocross men’s team in the nation. MHC was led by Matt Willing who fought back from a mid-pack start to claim the fourth of five podium spots. Paul Webb finished closely behind in sixth place. Kyle Knott had an unfortunate mechanical which effectively ended his race, but with only two of three riders eligible for team points, MHC Cycling still claimed third overall in the men’s competition, proving that they are one of the strongest Div II cyclocross teams in the nation. Next year we’ll be back for more, aiming for the overall team title and a couple of individual jerseys as well. Special thanks to the Price’s in Portland and to Lee and Jay in Bend. You fed us, sheltered us, bandaged us… thank you. This was a great end to the year, and the team looks forward to carrying momentum into our Spring road campaign starting at the University of Florida the first weekend of February.

We are proud to announce that Neo Burrito has joined our team of eco-friendly sponsors. For the next year, they will be the team’s official burrito supplier, giving us the pre-race and post-race yummy calories we need to ride bikes fast. Go check out their website at neoburrito.com.

Neo Burrito is firmly committed to running an eco-conscious business: “As a necessary part of our evolutionary maturation it is imperative to our survival that we become conscientious of our extended and immediate environments. It is important that we, as a business and we, as individuals act in accordance with a greater and more long term plan towards worldwide sustainability. Neo Burrito, Inc. intends to participate fully in the Green revolution. Through conscientious education and innovation, Neo Burrito plans to bring about a great influence toward positive change. Our slogan can begin with, ‘making the world a better place, one burrito at at time.’ “

Wow. Welcome to our green team Neo Burrito. Go get a burrito. They’re in W. Asheville right near the Patton/Haywood intersection. Their sauces rock too, BTW.

Kyle Knott, our team’s newest member, won the Virginia cyclocross championship (category 3) last weekend. Kyle won on a technical and muddy course, which he described as the “the hardest course I’ve ever done.” On the first lap Kyle broke away with another rider and immediately put 30 seconds into the chasers. These two battled for the front constantly, fighting for the best lines on a tricky and muddy course. Approaching the last corner, Kyle sprinted past his breakaway companion, taking the last corner first and sprinting to the victory. Kyle is ready to lay it on the line at this weekend’s National Collegiate Cycling Championships.

What an awesome picture from Mud, Sweat, and Gears #5 last weekend. Both Matt Willing and Paul Webb used the race as a tune-up for this coming weekend’s National Championships. They ended up 6th and 7th, riding about at about 80%, saving the big mojo for next weekend. The weather in Bend, OR, looks to be in the 20’s and 30’s with a chance of snow. So this was indeed a good prep.