The Niagara Classic or the “Eff” as the Locals Like to Call it

 The Planet Energy boys lined up Sunday to tackle the famous Saylors Hill in one of Canada’s true classic events which has character and history thicker than years old asphalt we raced on. On the line representing the squad was Randy Randell, Ryan “the bull” Roth, Andrew Huntinelli, Mark “I did chores this morning” Batty and myself.

The plan was to get Ryan and Randell up the road in a mid-sized to small breakaway towards the middle of the race and let them take care of the rest. Batty, Hunt and I did all we had to do early, covering moves, throwing down odd attack and making sure all was in control.

With about 70k to go Roth jumped across to a lone Jetfuel Coffee rider and no one seemed to think this was too threatening. Ryan’s only with one guy right? We’ll catch him. Oh boy, they tried to catch him but to no avail. Randell threw down a hearty attack in the long crosswind section taking only a few guys with him, he quickly left them for dead on the climb and bridged up to Ryan and his breakaway companion. Behind Hunt continued to cover all the moves, and Batty managed to hop in the 3rd group on the road.

As the laps fell off Ryan and Andrew made their moves on the climb with one to go, dropping the Jetfuel rider that hung tough for a while, and came in for a recreation of the Good Friday RR earlier in the year, only this time Roth was 1st and Randell took 2nd over 7 minutes ahead of the field. Batty easily won his break sprint for 8th and Hunt rolled in with the field.
You may wonder, my dear reader, “where did you roll in Buck?” well folks I hate to report that I did not finish. I’ve been nursing a injury for the last few days, one that makes cycling pretty hard. I told the management of my issues before the race and I contributed what I had, and pulled out of the race with 3 laps to go once I knew the boys had the win, and Batty and Hunt were holding it down in the rear.

All in all it was a great day for the boys, followed up by a great spread of food back at the Team HQ. Thanks to Steve and Josée for that!  Thanks also to our top mechanic Rick Barrow for the TLC to our bicycles.  And hats off to Allan Nicholls who braved the cool windy day to help the team before, during and after the race. Al, you’re more than welcome within the team as long as you finally admit that Greg Keelor from Blue Rodeo is better than Jim Cuddy

That’s all folks, thanks for reading.

Bucker

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at %I:%M %p and is filed under Featured, Races, Rider Blogs and tagged with Andrew Hunt, Andrew Randell, Argon18, BlackBerry, buck miller, CarbBoom, Giro, Hutchinson, Mark Batty, Niagara Classic, OCup, Ontatio Cup, Pearl Izumi, Ryan Roth, Shimano, Steve Bauer, Team Planet Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.