Mesa HCTT and Criterium Full Report

This weekend our team traveled to the fourth race of the season with our largest group yet.  The race was held in Grand Junction, Co by Mesa State College.  The first race on the bill was a 6k hill climb in the Colorado National Monument.  It was a beautiful course with a few tunnels and very smooth road the whole way. The weather was very hospitable as well, very little wind and temperatures in the high 50’s low 60’s.  The team of 26 riders, including two of our coaches Matt Shriver and Dave Hagen, had a block of time reserved for 10:00 with riders taking off every 30 seconds.  We had very strong rides from people in each category.  Our Men C rider Robbie Jones won his race clocking a 16:58. Gathering some more point for an upgrade to Men b.  The girls both B and A also had good results.  The B girls, Sarah Sturm and Hilary Smallwood, finished strong with Sarah placing 2^nd with a 20:12 and Hilary in 7^th in 22:14 and A woman Jessica Lathrop 5^th with a time of 19:59, Tina Dominic 9^th in 21:14, Sabina Kraushaar 11^th in 21:38 and Missy Erickson in 12^th in 22:19.  Our best two race category finishes came in our B men and our A men, however.  The B men have shown much improvement in every race and today was no different.  We had Kenji Fortune in 2^nd in 16:50, Alex Dossin in 3^rd in 17:06, Levon Kalemkiarian in 17:19 and Grady James in 9^th in 18:08.  These excellent results were met by the 13 A men we had racing this weekend.  Each rider had a great race and really showed there strength. Ian Burnett got his first win of the season finishing with a time of 14:57.  He was followed closely by Alister Ratcliff in 3^rd with a 15:05, Jesse Dekrey 4^th in 15:11, Ian Gordon 5^th also in 15:11, Trevor Downing 7^th in 15:31, Cody Stephenson 11^th in 15:46, yarden Gazit 17^th in 16:09, Russel “DangeRuss” Brown 18^th in 16:11, Jonathon Kranzley 25^th in 16:34,  Brandon Emmert 29^th in 16:47, Ben Kraushaar 36^th in 18:18 and Alex Howard in 37^th in 18:19.  Our A men are a group of very strong men this year and are improving in every race.  Our coaches also proved that they can hang with the best of them with Matt Shriver 4^th in the Pro 1, 2 race in a 14:51 and Dave Hagen 12^th in the 3,4,5 race in a time of 18:51.  A job well done for all of our riders and a great opener for the criterium which will be held later in the day. 

After a morning full of time trials the Men’s C & B and Woman’s B had to grab a quick bit to eat for lunch and head off to the Grand Junction Speedway for a criterium.  First on the agenda was the Men C race.  Robbie Jones was our lone racer for the 25 minutes race.  With a large field Robbie was out numbered but it didn’t affect his performance.  Robbie was in perfect position, in the front of the pack, the whole race.  He successfully managed to stay out of early crashes and stayed safe the whole race. Robbie was following every attack and mixing it up himself.  With a few laps to go Robbie was setting up for a sprint finish.  Robbie led the whole last lap and nearly won the sprint finish, just getting out sprinted by an inch.  He has gotten more and more confident and comfortable with every race and earned some more upgrade points. 

The Woman’s B race started right after the Men C race and Sarah Sturm and Hilary Smallwood were ready for their 25 minute race on this fun very technical course.  As soon as this race started Sarah attacked, instantly breaking the field into pieces.  With the field of about 25 now shattered the main group was whittled down to about 10 girls.  Sarah was pulled back into the field after her first attack but it didn’t take long for her to attack again.  This time she was off the front with about a 15 second led leaving the rest of the girls chasing.  With every lap that went by the field became more and more disorganized making it possible for Sarah to stay away for the whole race by herself.  Sarah won the race by about 15 seconds and Hilary had a great race as well.  She road strong the whole way picking off girls with every lap.  She ended up 14^th.  It was a great day for both of them and Sarah’s first win of the season.  

The next race on the ticket was the Men B race.  There race would be 45 minutes and with three strong FLC riders a good result was expected.  Kenji Fortune, Grady James and Alex Dossin started the race and it was fast from the gun.  The field wasn’t as large as past races with only 20 starters.  Early in the race Alex Dossin was caught in a crash.  He took a free lap and jumped back in but with serious pain in his shoulder pulled out after a few laps.  This left Kenji and Grady out in the field.  Grady did his work at the beginning and made it possible for Kenji to make it into the break.  He was accompanied by a few teams who had for than one rider in the break, including CSU.  Kenji kept his cool riding with the no teammate and put himself in a great position for the whole race.  His cornering got better with every lap and he kept his face out of the wind to conserve energy for the sprint.  The last lap things began to heat up and Kenji again found himself in good position.  Coming into the last corner a rider went down right behind him and he nearly went down himself.  He made it through the corner and the sprint was on.  Kenji came across the line in third behind two CSU riders.  Kenji has show a lot of improvement over the past couple of weekends and was excited with his result.

The A woman had a late start to their criterium getting to race in the cooler part of the day.  They were scheduled to take off at 6:25 for a 45 minute race.  We had four girls in this race Tina Dominic, Jessica Lathrop, Sabina Kraushaar and Missy Erickson.  Missy also raced the Woman’s open race just an hour before the collegiate race.  During the open race she was railing the corners better than the boys and in the tightest corner of the course  attacked, came in a little too hot and suffered a mishap in the lead of the race and crashed.  She got back into the race but was feeling sore and pulled out to save some for the collegiate race after some wound dressing by Dr. Shriver.  The girls set off for a brutal 45 minute race.  The pass was set by the CSU rams who had a very strong group of girls that day.  There were many attacks and attempted break but Missy, Sabina and Tina made sure that nothing got away so that we could set Jess up for a sprint finish.  All the ladies performed well and avoided some crashes.  With a few laps remaining Jess was our only girl still in contention for a win.  She set herself up nicely and took home 3^rd place in a very fast race.  This race was the first of the season for Tina and Sabina and both show much promise for races to come.  The race was a valiant one for Missy Erickson who was a bit banged up after her crash.  It was a great team effort.

The final race of the evening was the Men A race.  This was an interesting on due to the fact that it started at 7:15 and was under the lights.  The men were all very excited coming off a great time trial performance and were stoked to race under the lights.  The course however got shortened, due to the fact that there weren’t enough lights to go around the whole course.  The 60 minute race was kicked off and was certainly the fastest of the day.  The men had things strung out from the gun.  Our team, with 13 racers, took it upon themselves to be very aggressive.  As the race zipped around this short course many riders fell victim to the fast pass and couldn’t stay with the group any longer.  Ben Kraushaar and Trevor Downing mixed it up early and showed the field that FLC was ready to race.  About 15 minutes in our own Russell Brown crashed in a corner and caused the field to split in half.  This split left only about 4 of our riders in the front group and seven in the back.  There were a lot of crashes during this race and Dana Alia also found himself on the ground about halfway through.  The pace maintained its high speeds and Alister Ratcliff went on the attack with a Mesa State rider.  The two were off the front when they realized that the race had been shortened and they were now in great position ahead of the field for the remainder of the race.  Alister got second in a fast sprint and the field came in right behind with Brandon Emmert 4^th and Trevor Downing 5^th.  Jesse Dekrey who had been in the front pack also suffered a crash in the last lap and lost position.  Cody Stephenson grabbed 11^th as the second pack came in.  Ian Gordon, Jesse Dekrey, Ben Kraushaar, Ian Burnett, Yarden Gazit, Alex Howard and Jonathon Kranzley rounded out the field with an impressive effort in this fast race. 

Report by Allie Johnson

Pictures and Mesa Road Race coming soon!