June 7th, 2009
Cat 3 Race
The weather held and the sun came to watch the race. Always nice to have the sun as a spectator. Team Wheaton’s Elite Cat 3 guys put in a lot of hard work on the day, chasing breaks and creating their own. As a team of five and the second largest team of the day, David Paquette, Nick Frye, Garrett McAllister, Jon Cook, and Jon Heile all spent time on the front bring back a solo xXx racer who attacked on the 2nd of ten laps.
Coming in to lap six, Cook drop his chain and Paquette waited to help him chase back on to the field but attacks started flying defeating their efforts. As soon as the field started attacking, cramps unfortunately set in for Frye due to his chasing efforts and he was forced to end his day. With two laps to go the winning break was formed and a solid chase group containing McAllister and Heile came close to timing their catch perfectly on the finaly leg burning climb to the finish. In good form McAllister pushed through to 7th with Heile on his wheel to 9th. All would not have been possible without the feed zone support of fellow Wheaton Fransiscan Cycling team members and home made brownies provided by the local 4H club. Thank you to all.
Masters 123, 30+
Dave, DJ and Kevin all participated in the tough field of masters 30+ riders. A strong duo of Vision Questers jumped off the front early and this left the field to either let them go and win the race or try to do something about it. Dave did as much work as he could to try to keep the outright win chances high. LAPT jumped in to help along with a couple other riders but nothing really became organized.
Halfway into the race the big guns attacked on the short steep climb before the start finish and Kev and DJ were able to follow and make the move. On the last time up the climb, DJ impressed us all and became the Wisconsin State RR champion in the 30-35 age class. He was also the first overall Wisconsin finisher with a 4th place behind former Pro rider Robbie Ventura and top National competitor Mike Hegney from Vision Quest. Kevin followed up with a strong 13th and Dave in 19th.
Overall a great day for Team Wheaton!!