|
|
 |
|
|
|
Tuesday, 02 December 2008 |
|
|
|
CORPORATE CYCLING CHALLENGE A BIG EVENT |
|
|
|
Written by Sean Weide
|
|
Tuesday, 24 August 2004 |
|
Earlier this year, I helped Team Kaos ride support for the Life-A-Thon, a tour event in Southwest Omaha. So when I heard some of the team was going to ride the Corporate Cycling Challenge, a similar event in downtown Omaha, I jumped at the chance to get back in the saddle.
The Corporate Cycling Challenge began as a competitive race in 1991. It was staged as a criterium around the Gene Leahy Mall, attracting a few dozen citizen racers. USCF-licensed racers were strictly prohibited from jumping in, so my experience with the event at that time was strictly as a spectator.
Boy, has the event changed - and grown. I arrived at the Heartland of America Park shortly before 7 a.m. and a steady stream of cyclists began showing up for the next hour. It's billed as the city's largest cycling event - and for good reason. At least 1,000 cyclists participated in one of the three events: 10-mile, 26-mile and 45-mile tours.
My plan all along was to ride the 45-mile event, even though I haven’t been riding regularly all summer. I was familiar with the course, with some of it spanning the original road race course for the Omaha Race Weekend. Mostly flat at the start, the course winds along Abbott Drive north to near NP Dodge Park, then climbs sharply from the I-680 interchange. It flattens out again for the run into Fort Calhoun, then climbs back toward Omaha Trace Road before plunging back toward Highway 75. Then, one more climb back up and down to I-680 and back into town.
That was the course, at least, on paper. In reality, we would end up skirting some road construction on Abbott Drive by cutting through a gravel parking lot. And there was no mention of the freight train that would block our path not far from there on the return to downtown (more on that later).
Sometimes you forget all the little things that go into riding your bicycle in a large group event. Like the importance of starting closer to the front. I nearly found out the hard way that starting halfway toward the back of the group can be a dangerous proposition. People of all sizes and abilities were weaving about me, some of them struggling just to stay upright.
My intention of riding with members of Team Kaos racing team never panned out. By the time I worked my way through the chaotic mix of cyclists - some of them going 10 miles an hour, others weaving all over the road - the lead group was long gone.
By chance, though, I spotted a Team Kaos rider just ahead of me as we neared the Gallup University campus. It was Dr. Byers Shaw, one of the team's guiding forces - and an accomplished cyclist himself. Fresh back from a trip riding through the mountains of France, I knew riding with "Bud" would be a formidable task. With him was Dr. Jason Johanning, a vascular surgeon at Nebraska Medical Center and another competitive cyclist who said he was short on training miles. Still, our 23-mile-an-hour pace was not slow.
It wasn't long before I learned that seeing a course marshal on this event would be about the same likelihood as seeing spectators on the Olympic Road Race course in Athens. In other words, they were few and far between. Sure, there was a police car with its rotator lights on at the first turn out of the Heartland of America Park - and another at Locust as we crossed through Carter Lake. But after that, none. I guess the event budget for law enforcement assistance amounted to a grand total of two cops.
This made for a somewhat unnerving ride at times. Sure, there’s hundreds of cyclists blowing stop signs and red lights, but all it takes is one unhappy or nonobservant driver to cause an accident. So as we turned from Abbott Drive onto McKinley Street near NP Dodge Park, we started following the rules of the road, realizing that limited (or no) marshalling was going to be the rule of the day.
Turning onto Highway 75 finally brought the first real climb of the day. Not having ridden very regularly - or as many miles of training as during my racing days (1981-93), I was unsure of whether I'd be able to stay with my riding partners. Fortunately, I was able to hang with Bud as we passed rider after rider on the climb. We crested the climb without Jason and forged on, ready to tackle a longer, less steep ascent after a short descent.
This climb also took its toll on me, but I still managed to stay glued to Bud’s wheel. On the descent, we looked back and saw Jason about 150 meters back. We sat up and awaited the arrival of the small group that had joined him on the second climb.
We didn't notice it at the time, but our rapid pace toward Fort Calhoun was thanks in part to a substantial tailwind. As the course flattened on the run in to the turnaround, we kept the speed high and got within 50 or so riders of the front.
We reached the turnaround on the north end of Fort Calhoun about a hour into our ride. The usual setup of refreshments, bananas and fig newtons greeted us, along with people who were recording the official riders competing in the Corporate Challenge. As we took a breather, a steady stream of cyclists began arriving. It was amazing to me that even with our 24 miles-an-hour pace, so many people were arriving so soon after we got to the turnaround.
Not wanting to stiffen up too much, Bud decided we'd get back in the saddle and forge on - into the wind this time - and head south back toward Omaha.
On the first climb out of Fort Calhoun, I had to look down to see if my tires had gone flat. No, that wasn't the case. And making matters worse, I was already in my second-biggest rear cog. The inevitable was about to happen. I blew. Or, as one pro cyclist likes to put it, I "slowed down fast." Looking to limit the damage, I looked for help from Jason to catch up. "Go ahead," he said, "I'm cooked." With half the hill to go, all I could hope for was for Bud to slow down. And he did. Jason tagged on my wheel and we motored to catch up.
But the terrain that allowed us to catch back on didn't stay flat for long. My best intention of staying on Bud's wheel up the next climb lasted for about 10 seconds. He stood on the pedals, down-shifted and left me virtually in a stand-still halfway up the next hill. Again, it was time to chase. This was going to be a long trip back if I kept losing time on the climbs and chasing back after them.
Fortunately, the rolling terrain turned flatter - and, as we neared a turn to head toward the fast descent, I was feeling pretty good. That's when I looked up ahead to see two cars in the middle of the road and a cyclist on his back in the middle of it all.
It turns out one of the ride participants was signaling to turn left from 72nd Street onto Northern Hills Drive when the car behind him decided to pass him on the left. The two collided and fortunately a Douglas County Sheriff's deputy was nearby. He radioed for help. That's about the only good thing he did, though. With two cars parked in the middle of the course and about 1,200 cyclists still to come, there was a good possibility we were in for another accident.
While Jason and Bud attended to the injured cyclist, I set up traffic control, waving cyclists by the accident scene and getting the two drivers to move their cars out of the way. It wasn't long before the Irvington Rescue Squad arrived and got the rider loaded onto a backboard. (We would find out later that he suffered back and neck injuries, but was listed in fair condition two days after the accident.)
With things back in order, we took off again - with one more long climb to come. This time, Jason, Bud and I hung together and we screamed down the descent to the I-680 interchange at 40+ miles an hour.
Having stopped to help at the accident scene put us back about a hundred or so riders from where we left the turnaround, so we spent quite a bit of our return to the city passing other cyclists. But the good pace we had going turned to a total standstill when we encountered a closed railroad crossing along Abbott Drive. This led to some ribbing for the Union Pacific employees on the ride - though we didn't know for sure that it was a UP train.
After waiting for nearly 10 minutes, Bud made the executive decision to turn around and go another way. We weren’t the only ones who decided to reverse course, either. And, as a former event organizer and race promoter, I could only imagine what the Corporate Cycling promoters would be thinking if they knew hundreds of cyclists in their event were veering off course and converging on downtown Omaha. Talk about a liability!
The rest of our ride was uneventful - nearly the opposite of my racing experiences when the pace grows high and fatigue sets in. Instead, I was feeling good and actually wanting to put in another 15 or 20 miles. But that wouldn't be the case today, as we crossed the finish line and tried to grab a complimentary water bottle given to all finishers.
|
|
| |
|
