Updates

I have not written in my blog for quite some time now. I rode my bike little over 5,000 miles last year and then earlier this year I fell and dislocated my elbow. No, it was not a bike accident. I was playing at the playground with my 5-year-old, Ethan when I fell off of gymnastics equipment made for two-year-olds. I have not been able to ride since then at all. Hopefully within a month I should be back on it. I have dabbled in running since then, but not enough to stay skinny.

The time I would have spent riding my bicycle has been spent this year on business planning. I organized two new LLC's this year. The first business that will be up and running is Outgun Racing, LLC.



www.OutgunRacing.com

Outgun Racing will sell bicycle racing parts for road and tri bikes. Out first product will be customizable racing wheelsets. Customers will be able to call me or use our website to select their hub model, hub color, quick-release (QR) skewer model, QR skewer color, spoke model, spoke color, spoke nipple model, spoke nipple color, rim material (carbon or aluminum), rim depth, rim color (in the case of aluminum), rim finish (in the case of carbon fiber rims) and rim decals (in the case of carbon rims). Those wanting custom graphics, such as a racing team that wants to outfit the whole team with wheels that have their team graphics, will have that option. Our hubsets will be amongst the lightest in the world yet will use a standard j-end spoke and nipple setup. They will come in black, white, red, blue and silver.



We will be using external spoke nipples so there will be no need to remove the tire just to true the wheel. The spokes we will offer will be Sapim Leader, Sapim Laser and Sapim CX-Ray.



If you really want a DT spoke, I will order them for you, but you may end up buying a few extras. You will be able to take the spokes in factory silver, factory black or have us powder coat them for you in whatever color you like. Our aluminum rims will come in 30 mm and 41 mm depths and will be available in black, white, red, blue and silver. Our carbon rims will be available in 50 mm and 88 mm depths. The carbon rims will be available as tubulars or clinchers. We will have 12k, 3k and Uni-directional (UD) outer layers, each of which will be available in both glossy and matte finishes.







My graphic designer is going to create several carbon rim decal options and each will come in a variety of color choices. If you like one of our graphics, but would like to see it in a little different color to match your bike or whatever, let me know. You will just have to pay a little extra for the graphics to be altered. So, as you can see, our goal will be to give you a wheel that looks the way you want it to. We will be offering other products soon as well, but first we have to work on turning what are currently just ideas into products.




The other LLC I organized is Velocity Bicycle Center, LLC.



Velocity Bicycle Center will be a full-service retail bicycle shop in Peachtree City, GA. I will be seeking an investor for that business as soon as I have the spare time. I will try to post more often in the future.

Team Rides - February 27th & 28th‏

This Saturday and Sunday's team rides will both start at 2 PM from Bicycles Unlimited. I will only be able to make it on Sunday as I am working today. For those going today come inside before the ride so I can tell you more. Tomorrow you will see me out there pulling my 4-year-old son, Ethan, behind me. Can you keep up with him? If we have enough people show up tomorrow I want to have two captains choose teams and hold a little race.

Sorry for the late notice.

Sunday Ride

Don't forget Saturday's ride. We will do 4 laps of the 8.2 mile loop I talked about in my last blog entry.

The next Team Ride is Sunday @ 2 PM from Bicycles Unlimited parking lot. 64° on Sunday. We will go about 36 easy miles.

Monday & Saturday rides next week

SouthSide Cycling Club (www.SouthSideCycling.com) is doing a ride on Pine Mountain on Monday -- President's Day. If any of you are available that day, I plan to go. For details go to their site and it only costs $25 per year for your whole family to join SouthSide Cycling Club. I am a paid member and I recommend you become a member of their club in addition to our racing team.

AND

Let's all get together for the first team training ride on Saturday the 20th. We will leave the coffee shop part of town in Senoia at 10 AM. If anyone wants to start at Bicycles Unlimited with me instead, I will depart at about 9:20 AM. For any late comers, we will be doing a few clockwise loops on Standing Rock Road, Gary Summers Road & Stallings Road NW of Senoia, so you could ride counter-clockwise to meet us. Each lap around we will wait for those that have dropped at the 4-way stop sign at Stallings and Standing Rock. This will be a first ride for the team and I want us all to get to know each other. We will learn and practice riding a pace line the right way. I expect we will ride a 19.5-21 MPH pace. If you do not have warm clothes, get some. No minimum temperature. Rain, please stay away.

Course map link:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=33.305353,-84.556317&daddr=Standing+Rock+Rd+to:Standing+Rock+Rd+to:Gary+Summers+Rd+to:Stallings+Rd&geocode=%3BFS9e_AEdE_L0-g%3BFSRg_AEdIPD0-g%3BFf6J_AEdxJv1-g%3BFeEz_AEd9sb1-g&hl=en&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=0&sz=15&via=1&sll=33.309263,-84.562883&sspn=0.017144,0.027423&ie=UTF8&ll=33.317476,-84.57859&spn=0.068568,0.109692&z=13

We have a new club....almost

We met again this morning regarding starting our new bike racing club. All present agreed with my vision of how the new club should operate as written in my last blog post. We discussed opening the club to mountain bike racers and triathletes. It was agreed that mountain bike racers would be a part of the team, but that triathletes would not. Triathletes in this area already have a strong club, their attire is different than what roadies and mountain bike racers wear and triathletes are not governed by USA Cycling. USA Cycling governs road, criteriums, time trials, track, cyclocross and mountain bike racing. It was agreed that dues will be $75 per year which includes a club jersey and shorts. New officers were elected as follows:

President - Mark Adair (PTCAdair@gmail.com)
Ride Coordinator - Curtis Thomas
Secretary - David Carpenter
Treasurer - John Langford
Race Promoter - Mark Anderson

Our new club still has no name. Given that we are letting mountain bikers in, "The Road Crew", the name I had wanted, just would not make any sense. Nobody had any bright ideas at the time, so please e-mail your ideas for an appropriate team name to Mark Adair. We will then e-mail everyone the list of suggestions and ask for you to e-mail back your vote. Once we have a team name we will be able to get set up as a not-for-profit organization and associate ourselves with USA Cycling. Those who get their racing license after we are associated with USA Cycling will have the club name printed on it, which is how you get that "unattached rider" fee waived at the races you attend. Please e-mail your ideas for a team name to Pres. Adair by Saturday, February 13th.

Here is what we need to do next, in this order:

* Name the team

* Get members to sign up and collect the $75 annual dues

* Use that money to become a not-for-profit and to associate with USA Cycling

* Go after sponsors and design team jersey and shorts

* Purchase jersey's and shorts with the sponsorship money

Here is the list of upcoming races on the schedule so far:
Tundra Time Trial - February 13th
Albany Omnium Race- March 6th & 7th
Perry Roubaix Race - March 13th & 14th
Georgia Cup Race - Union City - March 20th & 21st
Dahlonega Omnium Race - March 27th & 28th
Covington Time Trial - April 3rd
Georgia Cup Stage Race - Chickamauga/Chattanooga - April 10th & 11th
Paris-Roubaix - April 11th
Sunny King Criterium - April 17th & 18th
Athen's Twilight Race - April 24th
Roswell Criterium - April 25th
Sandy Springs Criterium - May 2nd
Giro d'Italia - May 8th - 30th
Georgia Cup Race - Gainsville - May 15th & 16th
Elberton Race Weekend - May 22nd & 23rd
Tour of Atlanta - May 29th, 30th & 31st
Cycleworks NGCA Road Race - June 5th
Cycleworks for Parkinsons Criterium - June 6th
Georgia Cup Race - Rome - June 12th
GA State Road Race Championships - Augusta - June 19th
Junior, U23 & Elite Road Race National Championships - Bend, OR - June 22nd - 27th
Tour de Gaps Race - June 26th & 27th
GA State Time Trial Championships - July 3rd
Georgia Games Road Race - July 11th
Georgia Cup Marietta Omnium - July 31st & August 1st
Masters Road National Championships - Louisville, KY - August 1st - 7th
Elite & Pro Criterium Championships - Downers Grove, IL - August 15th
Macon Criterium - August 21st
GA State Criterium Championships - Grant Park - August 22nd
Pro Road and TT National Championships - Greenville, SC - September 18th & 19th

Members-to-be should now do their part to help name the team, think of potential sponsors, give me ideas for weekly ride courses and go ride your bikes. I am excited!

Next team meeting is in two days

Hello South Side Roadies! I now have over 20 people on a list that are interested in possibly joining our new racing club, so far that is. I expect that to grow quite a bit since we really just started talking about it. At our first meeting though we had a disappointing turnout of six eager cyclists. Worse yet, there were no volunteers for President, except that I would reluctantly agree to take on that role. Mark Adair has now come forth willing to be the President though and vows not to forget about this Saturday's meeting. He at least texted me during the last meeting. I forgive him. I did not want to be President because instead I would really like to be in charge of organizing all of the local training rides. David Carpenter stepped forward for Secretary and Jon Langford for Treasurer. Mark Anderson previously agreed that he would take the role of race promoter. We did not vote any of us in yet, so if there are more willing soles out there, please make it known to me prior to the meeting if you are not going to show up or come to the meeting and present yourself. The way I see it we need a President, a Ride Coordinator/e-Newsletter guy (Me), a Secretary, a Treasurer and a Race Promoter. Perhaps the secretary should do the newsletter. We will talk about that at the meeting. I would hope it goes without saying that these are all positions of service.

I also spent some time answering a lot of questions about what bike racing in general is like and about how things were going to be set up with this new team. I kept stressing that much was still yet to be decided since we were new, but since starting this new Club/Team was my idea, I need to lay out my vision of what I am wanting. If you disagree with my ideas please bring up your suggestions at the meeting and then I will have the bouncers kindly escort you outside. :)

My vision is to start a simple club/team. USA Cycling calls amateur teams a club and I do not expect that every member of the team will do licensed racing in 2010. I hope everyone gives it a try at least once, but I do not want to make race attendance a requirement. As a matter of fact I do not want to require much of the members at all. When we hold our race we will need lots of volunteers to man corners, run the registration tables, etc. I expect most of us to volunteer our time for that annual event.

I do want to see most of you showing up for our local training rides and those that do want to go to the sanctioned races I expect will race together as a team, implementing race strategies learned at our training rides. Most teams pool together the prize money earned in a specific race category and split it evenly amongst those that were contributors to the overall outcome of the race in that specific category. For example if five of you enter the Category 4 race, two of you place in the money, two more of you contributed to helping those first two place in the money and one of you either fell off the back early or felt they did not contribute, then the prize money would be split 25% to each of the four contributors. That prize money earned in the Category 4 race would not be shared with those that were racing in the Category 3's or Masters and so on. I would like for our team to operate in that fashion.

I am thinking of an annual dues amount of $25 plus the requirement to purchase a jersey and shorts for about $25 each as well. That would make the annual dues $75 which includes the jersey and shorts. Jerseys and shorts cost more than $25 each, but I feel that we can easily get sponsors on the clothing to more than make up the difference. I want to make it inexpensive for poor people like myself to get into the club. The sponsors advertising on the clothing want their logos to be seen and club members will be expected to be seen riding in the team jersey a lot. It would be recommended to get a couple so that you can train or race in one while the other one is being washed. My little sister has run teams for several years and she thinks we should not have a problem getting more than the small amount of money we need to make that happen. She also is most likely going to be able to negotiate great prices for our team clothing since her organization buys several hundred thousand dollars worth of clothing every year. There is room on the clothing for about eight sponsors. Some money will be needed to promote our local sanctioned race, but if done right it will make us a profit as well. With some of the money left over I think we could come up with an entry fee reimbursement program to make it less expensive for us to go to the races too. Being a member of a team will also let you avoid paying the "unattached rider" fees that many race promoters charge.

I want to organize a training ride schedule like I did when I was the Ride Coordinator for my bicycle racing team years ago. We varied the location of the training rides every week. We did not do the same boring course every time. We also varied the type of training we did each week. We did road races, time trials, team time trials, and more. My favorite thing we did was choosing two captains, splitting the team into two teams and raced against each other. There was a little 5-minute strategy meeting after the teams were selected and the goal was to place our 5th place guy ahead of the other team's 5th place guy. That way if one team had one really strong rider that did not guarantee them the win. Sometimes this involved pushing our slower riders up a hill, which is cheating, but mostly it taught us to use team strategies. You will learn more about these strategies as you come to the training rides. The ability to implement strategies is part of why I think bike racing is so much more fun than doing triathlons would be. I envision that these training rides will take place on courses around Newnan, Peachtree City, Fayetteville, Senoia & Brooks. On different nights it may be quite a drive for some of us, but fun will be had by all. One guy asked me today if the rides will have a no-drop policy. My response was that for the most part my personal policy will be to try to drop you. Any questions?

It would be cool if we did some carpooling and occasionally babysitting for each other when we go to the races. I intend to mostly go to the ones that are not very far away, but there are races to go to every single weekend somewhere in the region. I work in a bike shop and Saturday is the biggest day of the week, so I can not go racing every Saturday, but I get one Saturday off every month and plan to use those for racing.

The group of guys we have on my list is mostly comprised of people who have never raced before, so they would all go to the races as Category 5 riders. Most Category 5 riders do not have a lot of teammates, so you would have a big advantage over them. I intend to start as a Category 4 racer, which I would only be allowed to do since I have a long history of racing in the past. There are a few of you like me, so I hope you too will start as Category 4's so I will have teammates. If Isaac Strickland joins our team, he would at least at first be the only Category 3 we would have and I do not know of any potential Category 2 or 1 riders yet. We are new, so we can not offer much yet to entice riders to switch to our team, but I expect this team to grow into something more. We would never put a limit to how many riders are allowed to join, but someday we may have a separate elite squad from the development squad. We do not have to worry about that yet. I would love to see legends such as John James join with us to help the newbies learn the ropes, even if he does think that triathlons are fun too.

We talked a little about whether the club should be for mountain bike racers in addition to road bike racers. I personally am not interested in mountain bike racing at all. If we do open it up for mountain biking, I think we should have an additional Ride Coordinator that organizes the local mountain bike training rides. I want to hear people's opinions on that as well. For that matter, what about triathletes? I know there is a PTC Tri club, but I have no idea what the club does for its members. If any of you know the answer to that, please let me know. In triathlons there is no working strategies together allowed and there typically is no prize money either, so much of the benefits of belonging to our team would not entice them any, but if they could get some entry fee reimbursements, maybe they too would be interested in joining. I do not imagine triathletes being interested in what we have to offer, but we can spend a little time discussing it at the meeting.

As mentioned before I plan for there to be an e-newsletter and probably also a club website. We would use those to post a calender for the local training rides as well as the race events.

Anybody creative enough to help with jersey and shorts designing?

The club still does not have a name either. Hopefully you will all agree that "The Road Crew" is the best choice. Think on it.

The governing body for the racing we will be doing is USA Cycling and their website is:
www.USACycling.org
You can go there to apply for your racing license and learn more about the sport. They also cover track (velodrome), cyclocross and mountain bike racing.

You can download the racing rulebook here:
http://www.usacycling.org/forms/USAC_rulebook.pdf

Reminder - We are meeting at Bicycles Unlimited @ 9:30 AM this Saturday. Be there!

Initial Racing Team Meeting - January 16th!

Well, we are finally holding our initial team meeting on January 16th @ 9:30 AM in the training room at Bicycles Unlimited. All that are remotely interested in either racing or riding fast on road bikes in and around the Peachtree City area should attend. For racers, the team will provide teammates for working strategies at the races and sharing of any prize money. Those racers and all other team members will get a uniform and an e-newsletter of various training rides/races/time trials at varied locations to ride with your fast friends. Please invite any of your friends that you think might be interested. Showing up for the meeting does not obligate you to join. To those of you who currently only do triathlons or duathlons I say nothing says you can not do both. There are a limited number of those events and they typically do not pay any prize money when you place either.

To be discussed:

-----------------

* What bike racing is all about - Road Races, Criteriums & Time Trials

* USA Cycling licensing

* Team name

* Uniforms

* Dues

* Sponsorship

* Team offices and duties

* Our own race event

* Local training race and time trial series

* Elect team officers

For those that will be ready, the Tundra Time Trial will be on February 13th. I will bring info on this to the meeting. See you there.