Our team was nominated by USA Cycling as the Collegiate Team of the Month for March. It sure is nice to see the hard work paying off, now if I can just have the weather hold out for our race on March 26-27, we'll be in good shape! See below for the USA Cycling Write-up, the original can be found here
Notice GB's photo credit at the bottom :-) Good work G!

Team of the Month

University of Utah

Essay by Joel Hsia, Team President

The University of Utah Cycling Club is the classic story of a developing group that has overcome long odds to firmly establish itself in collegiate cycling. Founded in late 2004, Utah Cycling started out as a group of students who paid out of their own pockets to travel, race, and ride. Fond stories are still told about the early years of racing in jerseys with a block “U” duct-taped on, and even resorting to wearing jerseys belonging to campus parking enforcement. -- Utah Cycling is now self-supported and is able to assist riders in the costs of racing.

Like any club-level organization, Utah Cycling owes its survival to the dedication of its members and officers. It is labor and love from committed individuals that allows Utah Cycling to continue. One particular 2006-2007 school year marks a time of great struggle, when the team nearly fell apart from lack of a governing body. Utah Cycling's advice to other small clubs or teams is that above all else, a solid group of leaders is the most important thing to have.

Beyond racing, Utah Cycling places value in supporting local community and organizations. Throughout 2009, on top of participating in charity rides, the club spent time promoting bicycle safety with young children of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Utah Cycling is also an active supporter for Bikes for Kids Utah, an organization that provides children with free bicycles to help them play, exercise, get to school, and develop hobbies. One of Utah Cycling's top highlights is currently laying claim to being faster than rival-school BYU at the annual Red vs Blue charity hill climb. Proceeds from this community-involved event benefit the Bikes for Kids Utah group.

Utah Cycling's major race accomplishments include consistent qualification for road and mountain nationals. The club is home to and has turned out globally ranked riders such as Mitchell Peterson, Rob Squire, and former MTB national champion Heather Holmes. Utah Cycling had spectacular results at 2009 RMCCC road conference finals, with multiple podium wins in all categories and disciplines. With a great group of riders, and transition into the new Inter-Mountain conference, Utah Cycling looks forward to 2010 and beyond.

Utah would like to recognize and thank the following organizations for their continued support throughout many years: Mass Mutual, Blackbottoms Cyclewear, CycleSmith SLC, and Ritchey Design.

Utah Cycling
www.utahcycling.org

Photo credits, top to bottom: Gina Duncan, Katie Gasser, and SOAR Communications

Reincarnation

My late 60's model Bottecchia steel-framed bike has been through a number of incarnations. I'm sure that since the late 60's until the latest few incarnations, there are even some that I don't know about. Judging from the way I found the bike, I'm sure it has quite the history. It is named after Ottavio Bottecchia, the first Italian winner of the Tour de France clear back in 1924. His death is still mysterious and his legendary status was preserved into the last half of the 20th Century by the bicycle company bearing his name. The model that I have is the model that was ridden by the 1966 "Campione del Mondo" (World Champion). So, back in the heyday, it was quite the bike... Nice polished chrome lugs, lightweight steel frame tubes, and classic geometry. Regarding the time between the year it was built and 2005 (when I found it), who knows the stories that it could tell. Even Greg Lemond won one of his Tours de France on a Bottecchia bike in 1989. What more can I say, it's got heritage!

Despite it's proud heritage and not unlike many other 60's-70's era bikes, I found the bike in my Uncle Stu's garage one day when we were over there for a family get-together. Another bike, a Gitane, also caught my eye, but it was too small for me. The Bottecchia was dust covered with faded paint and some of the chrome was pitted and had a rust sheen to it. Most of that cleaned right up with a little TLC and some elbow grease. When I found the bike, it didn't have anything exept the frame, fork, handlebar/stem, and a crank. I figured it would be the perfect bike to reincarnate as a fixed gear. (see here for the bike in "fixte form")

The fixie worked great and was a blast to ride, but I ran into some problems. The main one is that I live 1,000 feet above the valley floor and there are some brutally steep hills that I have to ride to get home. Sometime I would need to ride it a couple of times a day. With a geared bike this is no problem, but with a fixie, it gets a bit tiresome. Not to mention going back down you have to keep pedaling the whole way because you can't coast on a fixie. I did gain a love for fixed gear bikes and really wish there was a velodrome around here to race on. If we ever live somewhere flat, I'll definitely be riding a fixie around again.

Velodrome

Continuing on, I decided the life of the Bottecchia as a fixie was over. I needed some gears and a freewheel (to coast). I didn't like the look of a deraileur and all the clutter that comes along with it, and I didn't want a single speed because that would still only leave me with one gear going up and the same gear coming down. So, for me, I fell in love with the planetary gears of an internally geared hub. This allowed me to keep the clean chainline of a fixed gear or single speed but still have 7 speeds to choose from. I decided on the Shimano Nexus 7-speed and Cyclesmith happened to have one. I picked it up and started the task of reincarnation. This included adding brakes, re-lacing the rear wheel, and installing the shifter mechanism. Today was the re-inaugural ride and she rode and handled like a champ! Now enjoy some pics of her in the current state.

Tour of the Wasatch Front

Tyler and I have been wanting to ride from SLC to the alpine loop through Heber and then back to SLC for a few weeks now (one big 115 mile loop). After looking into it a bit, we decided to start out a tad bit easier and start from Midway instead of from SLC, thus cutting out the ride up Emigration Canyon to Parley's Canyon and up over the hill to Heber. It took off about 35 miles and a good bit of climbing. We figured that the resulting 74 mile ride with 5000 feet of climbing that we would end up with would be good enough.

And now for some pics:

And one more of the Alpine Loop Scenery: