Primal Pro Women ARE making a difference!!! Clinic attendee Laura Jorgensen shares a personal victory.

We have some awesome news. I just received an e-mail from former Delray race clinic attendee, Laura Jorgensen. She has a success story that we want to share with the world. 

Laura's article means alot to me because as a cyclist and as a teacher (coach) you often wonder if what you are doing is really making a difference. You train hard and you give hours of your time to the sport of cycling with faith that what you are doing will pay off.

I owe this attitude to the inspirational Nicole Rienhart who passed away September 17th, 2000. She once said, "You have to work hard for a long time without results. And you feel like you're putting yourself into a hole, but you just have to stay focused. You have to have to have faith that if you are doing the work now, you'll get there sometime."

Thanks for reiterating my belief in faith Laura. I just love seeing our hard work and attendees hard work pay off. We just love making a difference and helping others dream big.

Laura's report:

HOW I CAME TO LOVE DAIRYLAND (even though I’m lactose-intolerant)

SOMETIME IN MARCH - I set out to conquer my first crit at Delray Twilight. I was a triathlete and when I thought about cycling I thought about crashes. Ahhhh, the CRASHES!  I mean, I love the Tour de France, but did you see the guy who flew into the barbed wire fence last year?? Nonetheless, I was persuaded when a friend told me that an awesome pro team, Primal, was going to be there to do a pre-race clinic. Surely they would teach me everything necessary to stay on two wheels! And teach they did – quite brilliantly might I add. After the race I asked Nicky, the team director, for any tidbits of advice or races that would be beneficial for a newbie “pseudo-cyclist” such as me. She told me Tour of America’s Dairyland, an 11 day cycling bonanza. I plopped that in my memory bank thinking, “Wisconsin…that’s a loooonnng way from Miami,” and went on my merry triathlete ways. As fate would have it, my knee did not follow suit, and pleaded with me to ditch the running shoes.  Eventually I succumbed, tossed the sneakers and goggles in the back of the closet and decided to dive head first into cycling.

TWO MONTHS LATER - I was hooked. The cycling bug had taken me over and I continued to follow the Primal women’s team and be inspired by their oh-so-awesomeness. Florida race season starts to fizzle in the summer so, as I evaluated my options, I remembered back to Nicky and Dairyland. I knew work wouldn’t allow me to race all 11 days, but I knew just the right person to ask which races would be the best to experience. As I began typing the email I figured there was no way Nicky would remember me and more than even more likely she would probably wonder who this crazy creeper was clogging her inbox. WRONG! She remembered me from the clinic and told me that if I went to ToAD to call her when I arrived so she could give me super-secret pro insight on the course. Ok, maybe it wasn’t super-secret, but me – Laura “done 2 crits in my life” Jorgensen call Nicky “ToAD All-Star” Wangsgard for real time advice and there is no Miss. Cleo $1.99 per minute rate?? I was floored by the generous offer, yet I didn’t protest. 

JUNE 22^nd - First and foremost, for anyone that hasn’t done ToAD or anything like it yet: DO IT! You get to play like a pro for a week and worry about nothing but riding your bike: majorly cool and fun! Plus you get a cow jersey and chocolate milk if you win a stage. That’s right, chocolate milk!! But, I digress. Back to the story. My ToAD journey began and as instructed, I gave Nicky a call. Riiinnng….. Riiiiiinnngg… There’s no way she’ll answer. WRONG AGAIN! Not only did she answer that day, but every single day I was at the race! The fields were big and the riders strong, but I had a secret weapon: NICKY!!  Every night I debriefed her on the day’s action - the things I did poorly (these were aplenty) and the things I did well and she gave me advice for the next course. Regardless of the outcome, every day I was getting oodles of experience and learning a TON. Here are a few highlights:

1: Start your sprint EARLY. Don’t wait for everyone else to initiate.

2. On the last lap, get through the corners in the top five. Bad position = bad result.

 

3. Don’t let another team’s lead-out control the pace on the last lap. If they’re going too slow, PASS THEM and never look back!

So, the million dollar question…what did all the pro advice bring me??? Two solo wins, five podiums, and enough points to upgrade to a Category 2. Meaning - fingers crossed - when Primal rolls back into South Florida for Twilight in 2014 I will be alongside them on the start line. OK – maybe more like behind the wheels one of these unbelievable superwomen hanging on for dear life, but nevertheless, a looooong way from my first crit experience back with them in March. A million thank you’s to Nicky and Primal Pro Women for all the time, advice, and priceless knowledge!!! You ladies are the best!

USA CRITS stop #7 in Boise, Idaho July 13th

Primal Pro Women took a few weeks off from their busy race schedule to rest and train. They are hitting the crit scene as I'm writing this post in Vancouver, Canada (BC Superweek) to tune up for USA crits stop #7 held in Boise, Idaho. On Saturday Tiffany Pezzulo, Joanie Caron, Melina Bernicker, and Kaytie Scott will race the Boise Twilight Criterion. Primal Pro Women are ready give themselves the chance to win and defend their team overall lead. I will post a full race report shortly after. Go Primal!!!

Monsoon Weather Conditions in Glencoe for USA Crits #6

Glencoe Grand Prix blog by Kaytie Scott

Primal Pro women continue our racing calendar with a stop in Glencoe IL for the Glencoe Grand Prix race number 6 of the USA Crits series. 

The Prof (Nicky) and I arrived late Thursday night. Like 3am late maybe you can call that got in really early? We quickly got some shut eye and heading to local school visit with the kids of West School. They were an awesome group of kids that have many hopes and dreams for the future hopefully we were able to give them some good advice and help them on their way to future success. We also talked them into cheering their guts out for us on Saturday.

We then headed to Wayne Simon’s house. He was to be our host house for the weekend and he is one of our team’s greatest supporters. He owns and runs the company ENZOs they make amazing products that keep us Primal Pro women flying. Without ENZOs button hole we could not keep the training schedule we do. But I digress; Wayne is also an avid cyclist and so shortly after we arrived he took us out for a little spin. We had to quickly build our bikes so we could head out. Well everyone but me can build their bikes quickly, being that I am new to this traveling cycling world I’m still working on that skill. So after everyone waited for me to be ready  we headed out on a ride around Wayne’s house. He was an awesome tour guide and took us on some beautiful roads. He also did openers with us because he would be racing the following day.

After our ride we headed to the GEF/GGP community Dinner it was an awesome event we were given trading cards with our pictures and team names and we handed them out to all the little kids there. It was great to meet so many people of the community. We felt like rock starts having cards with our pictures on them and the kids believed we were.

Race day!!!

We arrived early to meet the women in the 3 4 field to start our Primal Pro women Clinic part 1. The Prof gave them all of the pre race advice and her personal secretes they would need to be successful. We planned to meet for part 2 of the clinic after our race to go over skills on the bike.

The Glencoe Grand Prix did something totally new to me that I absolutely loved. They assigned you a start number according to you overall standing in USA crits and NCC races and that was your start in the pack. I got 19. That means I didn’t have to stand for at least a half hour just to get a good starting position. I was able to just roll out with everyone and start on the second line. Score!! It took a lot of stress off the field we are always racing before the race actually starts just to get a good starting spot. 

So as we are standing on the starting line it starts to drizzle we had been warming up in the sun but true to this year theme of course it had to start raining. Everyone was trying to let air out of our tires before we started the race. I pulled a rookie move and didn’t let enough out and spend the whole day slipping around corners.

So the gun goes off and at this point it is raining for REAL it feels like someone is dumping buckets of water right on your head. There were some pretty bad crashed earlier in the armature categories so the Pro women were taking it pretty easy in the corners but once you are past the corner you are up and sprinting to the next corner to hit your breaks and do it again. We had a relatively safe race and there were only a few minor crashes most just sliding out in a corner. After a little over half the race was complete the field was whittled down to about 20 riders out of the 60 that started. We had Tiff, Joanie, Mel, and awesome gust rider Kelly still left. Joanie attacked the field trying to get an advantage but was brought back and then there was a counter attacked by Laura van Gilder, Erica Allar, and Samantha Schneider.

That move stuck… we raced a good race just missed the break but in the conditions we held our own really well. Some of the corners you were pedaling and your foot would go in the water it was so deep! We ended up with two of our riders in the top 10. We maintained our 1^st overall team standing and Joanie is ranked 4^th overall and Tiff is holding strong to 5^th. Nice work ladies! 

Special thanks to Nicky Cyp for putting on such an awesome event. 

We are looking forward to racing Tulsa Tough this weekend. Joanie and I are already in Tulsa enjoying the sun and hoping the rain stayed in Glencoe.

Cheers!