Throughout the life of this page various members of the team have contributed to the reports of our exploits. At this point I am writing what could very well be the final post. The Kinleys-Fish cycling team has folded. There are several reasons that this has happened, the majority of which is the financial situation. Throughout the world of professional cycling sponsors are pulling out of backing teams and races. This is not untrue in the local scene. The way that Fish Cycling has operated in the past is to rely on small local companies that would want to be a part of the athletic community. Whereas this strategy has served us well for 2 seasons. Because of various circumstances, it has become increasingly difficult to sell the idea. This coupled with a change in my life situation has made it difficult to find the necessary time to maintain the necessary organization.
There is an upside to all this. The riders on the team will be joining the guys over at Speedway Cycles Racing team. We anticipate that this merger of cycling teams will form an organization with the cumulative power of the super bands that were formed in the mid and late 90’s. Greg, over at Speedway, along with their riders expect this to be a successful move. The riders are expected to flourish in their new environment and build on the success of the past season.
It has truly been a pleasure to manage and ride on this cycling team. What is exceptional is how successful it turned out to be. Much was done to make the team as visible and successful as possible, and I feel that goal was accomplished. I had a blast spending time with the riders both on the road and off. I feel like this is one of the coolest things that I have done in life and am proud of this accomplishment. I wish everyone involved the best and thanks for your help throughout the entire process.
The season ended with countless victories for the various riders on the team. It was an unbelievably successful year and we hope to build on this success. The season ended with a Cyclo-Cross series. This was incredibly run and organized by Bruce Ross and his loyal team of course setters. This was my first foray into Cross racing and a bruised rib and a cracked rim later, I am a fan. I know that any style of race that advocates the handing out of beer to riders, is a good one.
There was also an abundance of mud, leaves, sand and more mud. Now that the season is over, we must start looking toward the future. Kinleys Restaurant has decided to stay on as title sponsor of the Kinleys-Fish Cycling team. We are currently working on the sponsor lineup for the next season. What is known at this point is that Speedway Cycles, Albabici importers and possibly others are going to continue their support of the team. To coordinate sponsorship and support backing, we have contracted the help of a designated sponsorship coordinator. His service will be invaluable to the organization of the team. There are other developments on the sponsorship front, although I cannot promise anything at this point.
In terms of the roster, there have been some key changes. All around strong man Yrjo Roovers has accepted a job in North Carolina and will be moving around the 1st of November. Chris Dahl, Steve Nelson, Marvin Colbert and Jack Anderson will continue to ride on the team. Myself (Joe Fish) on the other hand, will not be on the active roster, as my life situation will be drastically changing come May. I will be graduating form University and have no solid plans for what to do after that. I presume that there will not be time or room in those plans for a full race campaign. To replace the two lost riders, I am working on signing some established riders. Nothing more can be said on this point at this time. For now, the team building process continues, and the serious training for the next season has already begun.
4 stage wins, 9 stage podium placings, 4 sprint bonus wins and 3rd overall. This is just a quick rundown of the tour and I am sure that much more will be written on the topic. Check out Yrjo’s blog on an entertaining perspective of the race.
I (Fish) have taken my first victory of the season. It was on the Goldenview Crit course at Goldenview middle school on the Anchorage hillside. This is an event that I had targeted for a possible victory from the very beginning of the season. The course is a .4 mile loop on a road around the school that included portions of brick pathways, man-hole covers and various cracks, basically it is a melange of crap to ride on. Fortunately the two long stretches of road are decent enough. On this particular day there was a gnarly headwind on the back stretch that created a worse crosswind when the air rushed over the to of the building as we turned a corner. It was decided before hand that I would be the one to attempt the win. The pace started out fast with Yrjo taking massive pulls on the front, rotating out with Steve. This succeeded in dropping several people form the pack. As the race would progress we would later lap many of the other riders, some of them multiple times. This tactic continued for the majority of the race. Steve than faded back in to the pack to recover for the leadout. At this time I stayed too close to front, sticking my nose out into the wind on more than one occasion. With 3 laps to go, Steve came back to the front and took over for Yrjo. Keeping the pace incredibly high, Steve dropped me off with one lap to go, where I accelerated right at the start/finish line. Accelerating with everything I had left in the tank I made my run for the finish line off the front of the remaining group. Feeling nervous, like I had mad a tactical error, I look behind me only to see Steve directly on my wheel. With the knowledge that nobody could come around both of us in the remaining distance, I just pushed harder. I crossed the finish line in front with Steve in a close second and Yrjo slotted in for third. It is gratifying to know that we are capable of these wins, but also that we are more than capable of working as a cohesive unit. This is truly a race to be proud of for the entire team.
The next event on our schedule is the much anticipate Tour of Anchorage. This is an event that the entire racing community has been looking forward to for the entire season. It takes place August 13th-16th. The stages are as follows:
Thursday 13th-Kincaid Prologue start and finish is at the Kincaid Chalet start at 7pm
Friday 14th- Ft. Rich road race start at 6pm
Saturday 15th morning- Moose run TT start at 10am
Saturday 15th evening- Glen Alps Hillclimb, start at potter marsh at 6pm
Sunday 16th morning- Downtown circuit race start location TBD start at 10am. This course should prove to be one of the more exciting as it takes place on A street, 9th Ave, C street and Fireweed, utilizing all left hand turns.
I would highly encourage anyone and everyone to come out and heckle the team or just hang out and watch some exciting bike racing. Feel free to email me for more information on starting locations etc. Hope to see you all out there.
Chris said that we all look like a bunch of monkeys that have gotten high off sniffing glue. I feel like that properly sumerizes our adventure on saturday. Chris and Steve rode the 200 2/man relay in around 9:30 and Joe rode the 200 solo in around 12:14. And yes that means that we covered 200 miles in one day. We started after breakfast and finished at dinner time. We are completely aware of the insanity that this demonstrates. The lone canadian in the group, as demonstrated by his blatant advertising via jersey logos, is friend of of the team, Miles Kelly. Some of you know him as the brother of former team member Tim Kelly. Last year he participated in a 400 mile relay with Joe and Tim as teammates. Miles rode the 200 solo event in a time faster than Joe. The general consensus of the event is that it was a rough day. We all had our issues, but in the end it was a successful day that saw everyone from the team that entered, finish. For everyone on the team this event signaled the longest single day ride that we had completed. More info and photos may come later, but possibly not. The next event on our team schedule is the Goldenview Crit on the 29th.
The man that was previously thought to be insane has indeed finished the 24 hour race. Not only did he finish, but he got 3rd place. This is especially incredible considering the race resume of the top 2 finishers includes little known races such as the RAAM, Fireweed 400 &200, The Susitna 100 (on bike and or skis),The Ididabike Challange (which is exactly what is sounds like) and more miles on a bike than we care to count. Jeff Oatly (RAAM finisher) and Chet Fehrmann made it one hell of a race. And than there was Yyjo on a singlespeed. Ill spare you the details and let him speak for himself. He recounts the tale of the 24 on one gear here.
We, as a team, have taken a break from racing for awhile. We decided that our time would be better spent training for the big events that are coming up. Yrjo is planning on contesting the 24 hour mountain bike race in Palmer. This event has been dubbed the “Rally in the Valley”. This event is being expertly organized by Greg over at Speedway Cycles. Yrjo is racing on a 29er Moots (awesomeness) single speed. I think that this qualifies him as both incredibly awesome and slightly insane at the same time. No seriously he needs to be institutionalized, what he is planning on doing in completely insane on nearly every level. If he were to commit a crime against humanity while engaged in the act of riding his bike for 24 consecutive hours the case would be dismissed on a plea of temporary insanity. On a more sane and cheerful note there will be a party for the duration of the event. I and some friends will be in his pit area cheering, jeering,and heckling him on to the finish line. We may also be passing him some awesome beer from MidnightSun Brewery. It is rumored that there will be a 15 gallon keg of Bittburger Pilsner, and if you don’t know what that is than you are not worthy of its consumption. If you want to join some of the members of the team in heckling Yrjo for a few hours feel free to contact me.
Other members of the team are gearing up for the Fireweed 400 event. Various members of the team will be contesting the event in various divisions. It should be an incredibly difficult weekend. This is the block of the summer where the team shows that it is not only capable of being competitive in short, fast, explosive events but also has incredible endurance. The ability to ride a bike for an incredibly long time is not as easy as it sounds. We, as a team are looking forward to the challenges that this next 4 weeks will surely bring.
Without going into too much detail about the race today, we won. Chris entered a three man breakaway less than half the way through the race that managed to survive to the finish. Chris easily out-sprinted his breakaway companions for the victory in the 10 lap, 37 mile race. This continues the winning streak that the team is enjoying.
Out of laziness, here is a link to some great photos of the race taken by Chris Peterson. I do not feel the necessary motivation to post the photos individually here on this page.
http://picasaweb.google.com/ChrisOPeterson/KincaidLoopRoadRace?feat=directlink
As with all photos posted on the site, and the majority of the photos on the sites linked here, it is possible to save them to your computer to have as part of a personal library.
The race pace started pretty casual, until Steve and Chris put in a hard stints to get the pack up to pace. Both Steve and Chris alternated on some early attacks to test the response from the field and each time, the filed demonstrated a desire to tag along. About two-thirds race distance, Steve sprinted off for a breakaway attempt. After three laps of leading alone, the field bridged the gap and he moved into tactical mode for the end. On the flag lap, both Chris and Steve jockeyed for sprint position. Coming out of turn three, Mackey Franks assumed the lead and picked up the pace into the final fourth turn. Steve and Chris were both on his wheel and Mackey saw his break foiled. That was the moment as Steve sprinted hard around Franks into the last ninety degree corner, carrying in so much momentum that he swears he felt his front wheel and fork flexing through the turn. Tactically, he could not have asked for better field position. Steve came out of the final corner with a nice gap to second place teammate Chris Dahl and easily claimed the race victory for Kinleys-Fish cycling.
The team was also represented in Expert class by Joe Fish. He decided to race in the different division after a prompting by Andy Pohl of Team Kaladi. This turned out to be a bad idea. Without going into too much detail, the race did not end favorably for Joe. Solace can be taken in the fact that the team claimed yet another victory in Sport Class, with no sign of slowing down.
