Pilarcitos #1 Official Race Report

Pilarcitos CycleSports
732 Fairfield Road
Burlingame, CA 94010
info@pilarcitos.com
(650) 302-6310

Hellyer Park, San Jose, Ca
Sunday, October 8th, 2006

“Suppose we gave a race and everybody came?” Opening day of the Bay Area Super Prestige Season has traditionally seen fields of less than 300 start off their ‘cross season with the Pilarcitos gang (240 in 2003 at Brisbane, 245 in 2004 at Candlestick & 290 last year again at Candlestick) but Sunday the Park Rangers had to shut the gate entrance after 10:00 am – every parking place in Hellyer Park was taken. And during our post-race debriefing with the Hellyer Park staff we discussed a variety of methods to cope with record numbers in the future – because we ARE coming back! Almost 400 riders gave their Bay Area Super Prestige Series presented by Accelerade a dusty kick-off in the fields behind Northern California’s velodrome and we can work on smoothing out some of course in our copious free time.

The event supplied that quintessential Paris-Roubaix experience on every lap – a hard pounding on the pave (the land-fill above the track) interspersed with 333 meters of banked smoothness and then an immediate return into the dusty chip bark and full exposure to the bumpy paths. The course turned out to be fast but ohhhh! My aching molecules. Just like P-R …..Some of the hard-core trackies who were on site yesterday from the NorCal Velodrome Association were thrilled to see this many cyclists encountering the track for the first time – that smooth banked stuff might rub off! Welcome to Hellyer Park and come back for some fixed gear fever.

The Roaring Mice took a healthy whack at the star-thistle and associated weeds on Saturday, cutting and clearing wide new paths but they and the Pilarcitos staff ran out of gas before they could create their hoped-for 7 minute course. Most races averaged 5 minute lap times which kept the scoring crew, led by Casey Kerrigan and Tom Simonson in full-time scribbling mode. Our heartfelt appreciation to Jenny, Barry, Ryan and Eric – that’s a lot of number recording.

25 riders during the day made excellent use of the Ritchey Neutral Wheel Support Tent – located just prior to the Accelerade barricades and climb the wheels enabled riders to finish and score series points – and the Roaring Mouse Team Competie ( that’s sort of Flemish/Dutch for “Competition”) standings will be announced as soon as Paule Bates can operate a keyboard again. Weed whacking all day Saturday, course taping Sunday, racing with the 45’s and course tear-down and clean-up – the hands are almost functional again.

Results were posted last night at www.pilarcitos.com (with podium pictures probably tonight) and are also available at the www.ncncaracing.com site. What’s next? 49’ers have a bye weekend so we get to use the next landfill – Candlestick Point. This year we hope to have some pump sprayers available for the 2 sections most prone to dust (Bianchi/Ritchey barricades and Accelerade chute) to dampen the dirt and keep the haze layer at a minimum.

Please review our results for mis-spellings (mis-speelings?) and missing team names and send corrections to: Tom@pilarcitos.com so we can have it fixed for the remainder of the series.

October 22 – Candlestick Point, SF
November 5 – Crocker-Amazon/Mclaren Park, SF
November 19 – Golden Gate Park
Dec. 3 – Coyote Point (CCCP)

Tom & Alec Simpson
Pilarcitos Cyclesports
www.pilarcitos.com
info@pilarcitos.com


2006 Bay Area Super Prestige Cyclocross Series, presented by Accelerade

with support from:

Ritchey Logic
Bianchi
Sports Basement
Pedro’s
Big Swingin’ Cycles
Sheila Moon
Summit Bikes
Palo Alto Bicycles
Felt Racing
Sharkies
Lake Cycling Shoes
Roaring Mouse Cycles