Greg Levien Memorial San Mateo, CA - March 28, 1999

La Canada Road runs along the beautiful Crystal Springs reservoir near San Mateo. On Sundays the smooth, 2-lane road is closed for bicyclists. Our race took place on a 2.5-mile section with gradually rolling hills. 6 out-and-back laps made 50k.

The biggest story of the race was Helle Carlsen (Kryptonics). She was the winner of last year's New York 100k. On this day, Helle stuck with the lead men's pack the entire race. And she didn't just draft, she pulled as well.

The other women skaters finished in a pack sprint more than a minute behind Helle. Ingrid Gabrian (Skate Pro) hawked the line for 2nd, beating out a young Skeelers skater from Modesto and Vicki Heagerty, SDSE's newest skater. Nonetheless, Vicki won her age class. Congratulations on an awesome race!

In the men's race all eyes were on the Twincam skaters Eddy Matzger and Dan Burger. As expected they took turns making breaks on every uphill. At first Michael Weitz (BSI), Kimon Papahadjopoulos (Skate Pro), and Dana Eads (SDSE) took turns covering.

Later in the race these games took its toll as the lead pack was reduced to Eddy, Dan, Helle, Scott Baldwin, and me (Howard). I didn't take this race very seriously, and ended up chatting with Eddy a lot. Dan tired, so Eddy ended up doing all the flyers in the last few laps while I chased. For some reason Scott did not cooperate with the Twincam skaters. He and I didn't exactly coordinate things together either, but the one time I didn't cover Eddy's break, Scott did.

It came down to a pack sprint up the last hill and down the home stretch to the finish. We scattered out based on our exhaustion levels. Eddy won, followed by Scott, Dan, Helle, and me. Unfortunately I had wasted a lot of energy goofing off with Eddy, but at least I had a lot of fun.

Dana finished 6th alone, attempting to bridge the gap between him and the lead pack the whole time. Alice Eads won her age class. And how about Andy Pele for skating such a long race for his return from his shoulder injury? Wow!

Thanks to Sandra, Debbie, and Pamela who were on-site to cheer SDSE on. Look for full results to be posted to the SDSE web site soon.

D (David) Miles, CORA's organizer, was proud to announce that the Napa skate is on again for this June, on the right-hand side of the road. Detailed information is now available at CORA's web site.

Howard
SDSE-IR