The BC team of Zach Garland, Matt Potma, Mike Rothengatter, Cyrus Kangarloo, Shawn Goulet, Aaron Schooler and the direction of Alistair Howard headed down to Enumclaw this past weekend for some great racing. There was not a cloud in the sky all weekend, and the race was extremely well run with a very fun and fast 10km TT Saturday morning, a technical 8 corner twilight criterium and 5 laps Sunday of a really good road race course featuring a 3km climb near the base of Mt. Rainier.
Things started off well for the team in the time trial. It was a U shaped course that was very fast and winding through the trees with one small little roller. Zach came in with a very fast time putting him in 6th place just 12seconds off the winner Jamie Sparling. Cyrus and Matt both put in very solid rides as well with Cyrus just one second behind Zach in 7th and Matt in 11th. Garrett came in 19th putting 4 H&R BLOCK-KONA riders in the top 20.
The crit was one where you really had to race from the front all the time with all the corners making it very hard to gain positions. Aaron got in the first real break of the day, so Matt, Zach, and Garrett rode near the front covering moves until it came back together. Once it came back together no more real breakaways formed, but the team continued to race very aggressively. All the fast corners and the fast pace made it very hard for anything to get away. Matt rode a very good race giving a big effort a few laps to go off the front but that came back as well. For the finish, the goal was to get Cyrus and Zach up well enough to get some points. Cyrus, mostly due to an impressive lead out by Matt, Garrett and Aaron, managed to snag an impressive 6th in the sprint while Zach had a little less in the tank after riding so aggressively all night and came in just outside the points.
Cyrus taking on Kenny Williams (unsuccessfully) for a big prize prime
Aaron taking on Dave Vukets (successfully) for a points prime
The goal for the road race was to work for Cyrus and keep or improve on his 5th place overall as well as go for the stage win. Aaron kept up his impressive riding and got right in the early break for the first few laps while the rest of us just tried to conserve our energy, get in any moves that tried to get across and be in the front group over the climb as it would often break up but then join back together. When the break came back another move went that looked pretty promising with Zach and Garrett both in it, but that didn’t last very long. Zach continued to attack another few times eventually creating the main break of the day with Rob Britton and strong a US rider (Todd Harrison). When they hit the climb all the efforts Zach put in the last 15km caught up to him a bit and he got gapped over the top and was unable to rejoin the break so waited for the pack. Matt, Garrett, Shawn, and Zach then went to work chasing their hearts out for the next 2 laps to try and bring back the break, but it wasn’t going to happen without some more help which no other teams were going to provide so just before the climb on the last lap the chasing stopped. This was followed by a bunch of attacks by Trek Red Truck, none of which were able to stick and so we came to the final climb as a group. At the base Zach attacked again setting things up for Cyrus and he made the final selection perfectly. Cyrus then rode in for 7th keeping his 5th overall capping off a solid weekend for team H&R BLOCK-KONA. The team rode very well together everything was done as a full team effort. They all look forward to the Westside Classic next weekend and are confident and ready to try and get a big win!
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