I will be the guest director for the Kenda Pro Cycling Team this week at the 2012 Cascade Cycling Classic.
I am really looking forward to this new challenge and know that I have some big shoes to fill after the great job that Frankie Andreau has done with Kenda the past few years. I am grateful that Frankie had the confidence in me to bring me on board while he is in France reporting on that big 3 week bike race going on over there.
The roster for the team is: Phil Gaimon, Andy Jacques-Maynes, Paul Mach, James Stemper, Roman Kilun, Shawn Milne, Nathan English and Bobby Sweeting. I had a chance to meet some of the guys at this year’s Joe Martin Stage Race. Tennyson Hulsy will be our mechanic and Paige DeVilbiss our soigneur.
It will be an interesting mind shift for me this week. As many of you know I was the Sport Director for the Hagens Berman Cycling Team the past 3.5 years. Hagens is a domestic elite team whose mission is to provide a development platform for up and coming amatuers who hope to some day turn professional. The guys on Hagens presently and over the past few years are all very good riders who have earned some decent results. Relistic goal setting was the MO of the team however and that typically didn’t include planning for a legitmate shot at an overall win at a NRC stage race (Steve Fisher’s recent overall win at Tour of Delta not included of course…). With Kenda though, it is a completely different ball game as they already have won or worn the leader’s jersey in just about every stage race they have competed in all year.
It is going to be an exiciting week and I couldn’t be more psyched!
Joe
