Sunday, June 21, 2009

Strong showing of MOB at Tour De Kale

Mock Orange Bikes had great repersentation for the 10th annual Tour De Kale. This event has grown over the past 10years to the best organized ride / race in the south east. This due to the efforts of Chris Skeen and the entire Denton Community. There is no better support from parking to reg. to traffic control and food afterwards.
We had over 15 riders this year to include Daryl Rains, Kelly Holems, Rich Melencio, Rick Lee, Steven Brumbley, Ken Gulledge, Paul and Julie Paisant, Teresa Dawson, Frank Mullins, Jerry Rebo, the return of Matt Mason, my wife Nancy and myself took on the hottest day of the year with close to 400 other riders.
At the start I looked around to see who is here challenging for the Summitt prize money and it is the whos who of cycling. Scotty Weiss came all the way from Minn. just for this event as well as Mark Heckman, National Crit champion, Chris Harkey and company as well Ryan Jenkins, John Patterson, Charlie Brown and a host of the Carolina Masters team. There were aslo about a dozen rider from the under 23 junior national team that had just gotten back from racing over in Belgium. To say the least it would be a fast day and inturn a hard, hot day on the bike.
With the added KOM $50.00 cash prize 13miles in we were assured that things were going to very interesting very quickly. Once out of the Farm Park a small break that contained John Patterson, Scotty Weiss, Mark Heckman and three others were up the road. Mark Heckman won the KOM and would go on to win the Summit Challenge as well. As the rest of the field is approaching the KOM I see Daryl moving up on the Left with Sara Tussy in tow. Sara followed Heckman's lead and did the double as well, taking the KOM and the Summitt Challenge prize.
With a break of 8-10 up the road there were several attempts to bring them back with a fine effort of Steven Brumbley and Rich Melencio. The break was with in15sec but with Teams represented in the break controling the situation it was not to be.
Coming into Denton Chris Harkey put in a real hard effort with his Teammate Darren Fuller following whose wheel I was able to latch onto. Harkey then put in a strong pull to seperate us from the remaining field as well as did almost all the work to the gate at the neighborhood. That was enough of a gap to keep the three of us away to the Summitt. This would be as Harkey called the "Old man train" as Chris would get 1st in the 40-49 age group, I finished 2nd and Darren Fuller finished 3rd. In the way of awards Teresa Dawson was 3rd while Julie Paisant was 1st in their respective age groups. All in all a very hot day but a very good day for MOB. Looking forward to a report of the State Games and to next weekend as we host the Tanglewood trianing ride from the Shop. Should be fun. Rodney

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