Wow! It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 60 days since our last post. Time flies when you’re having fun, right. Or at least busy beyond belief… so what’s been happening you say? I’ll try and recap but I know I’ll miss something since so much has been going on.
We’ve been hard at work cranking out our new road bike, the STRADA SLR – we can’t seem to get them out the door fast enough, which is a good thing. But the bad thing is I don’t even have one underneath me cause I can justify building one in my size when I have to fill that same size order. Below is our new steed, we are super proud of it…
On the full custom front we have been working hard getting everything in place. We’ve ordered a new frame jig so we will have two, with the goal of having 3 in all. Each will be used for a specific purpose in our tube to tube process. I know I don’t have to do this but it’s something that I have thought about a lot of the last 2 years. I think it will simplify our build process, especially in the ISP front among other things. We have finished our plans for our new Studio work shop on our property in Banks. Which has been a long time coming, when we have to move from our current warehouse to the new facility it’s not going to be too much fun but it will be well worth it.
In racing news our athletes have been doing amazing, which always makes us proud. Please forgive me if I forget something (I know if I would just stay on top of post) I’m just going to cover the women in this post and later this week cover what the men have been doing. So here goes…
Eugene Roubaix – Brianna Walle 3rd Ironclad Performance
State Road Race – Anne Usher 1st Upper Echelon Fitness, 4th Brianna Walle Ironclad Performance, 6th Anona Whitley Ironclad Performance
Bend Don’t Break – Tina Brubaker 3rd Upper Echelon
Special note Bend Don’t Brake was the first stop in the Veloforma Norman Babcock Cat 4 Women’s series. Top 3 riders in the first race – Sandra Clark 1st, Suzanne Girard Eberele 2nd, Kelly Sandow, you can follow the series here - http://obra.org/cat4_womens_race_series although the standings are not correct as the state tt has not be compiled.
Mt Hood Classic stage race. This is an Oregon must do stage race, not only are the courses killer, but the scenery is just out of this world. In the Elite women’s race Anna Christiansen Finshed 15th overall, which impressed me a lot. Especially because she finished ahead of two riders who used to race for me and I know what they are capable of and how strong they are… so my hat is off to you Anna you are riding amazing and developing in to an excellent racer.
You can check out all the results and see what world class riders showed up to do this fantastic stage race - http://obra.org/events/18429/results.
Sublime Sublimity – Anona Whitley Ironclad Performance 1st
Elkhorn Classic - http://obra.org/events/18400/results this is what I would call Oregon’s epic stage race, it is without a doubt a tough one. To do well is one thing to win it, takes some luck and your best A game.
Ironclad Performance once again has proven to me that they are a team on the way up. They know how to race as a team and they proved this at Elkhorn. It was really cool to get race reports from this race, the final stage was one I wish I was able to see from a moto, especially the women’s Elite race. More info and race coverage can be found at Oregon Cycling Action. http://oregon.cyclingaction.com/2011/reynolds-koch-win-elkhorn-overall/
Nature Valley GP - We want to wish Hilary Billington as well as all the others who went down in the stage 5 crash at the NVGP a quick recovery -
http://oregon.cyclingaction.com/2011/billington-recovering-from-nvgp-crash
NRC racing – Whitney Schultz is our only pro athlete this year, she has been traveling all over and it’s been tough to keep up with all that she has been doing, she just finished NVGP and is now in Augusta GA for the - USA Cycling Road Nationals.
You can follow Whit on twitter and on her blog.
Whit’s blog - http://whitneyschultz.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html
Whit on twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/WhitSchultz
We want to wish Whit all the best for Nationals! Kill it Whit!
Ok that’s it for now, more in a few days. It’s gonna be a busy week with work, the Six day and covering what the men have been doing the past 60 days.
Cheers
