Tuesday, September 6, 2011

55+ RACERS @ 2011 MASTERS NATIONALS TT- AUGUST 31

By John McKee

Wednesday August 31st, 2011 saw the first day of competition at the 2011 Masters National Championships in Bend, Or. On Tuesday Phil Richards, Monty Pettus and I rode the 25 km TT course because Phil was going to ride it the next day. We also rode the road race course and 60+ crit course at North/West Crossing that day.
The TT course was challenging and had a good amount of climbing to it. The racers 65+ and up would ride the 18 km course and the rest of the field would ride the 25 km course except the tandems. They would ride a little further. The pavement was pretty good until you started riding out a ways toward the turnaround but everyone seemed to do fine on it.
I am only going to highlight men Socal riders that placed in the top 5(podiums) that were 55 and older. There were plenty of those so let's go. No Socal rider placed in the top 5 in the 55-59 age group. Vic Miera placed 5th and is from Las Vegas and they are part of the SCNCA. In 60-64 the favorite Kenny Fuller smoked the field. I know he flew up the day before. Don't know if he got out and rode the course. If he didn't, it was a hell of a ride. His time of 36:25 would have placed him 5th in 55-59 or 4th in 50-54. The only other Socal rider that podiumed was Link Lindquist. Link was 3rd out of 3. He gets the bronze for that. Only have to finish to get that. You never know how good the last person is as a rider. In women 35-39 the last woman in the TT(Cheryl Fuller-Muller) won the criterium against my Paramount teammate Hilary Crowley.
Kenny Fuller atop the podium in the 60-64 TT
Fritz Tomasello/Dave Prechl were 2nd in elite tandem TT- Fritz is 65 in 2011 so this qualifies for my blog

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