Under sunny skies, cyclists get first taste of the season with Cherry Pie Road Race

By Nancy Raskauskas

Gazette-Times Reporter

“This is the first real race I’ve ever done,” said 12-year-old Jordan Selker, a sixth-grader at Linus Pauling Middle School, just after finishing the Cherry Pie Road Race on Sunday in Adair Village.

Jordan rode the 26.9-mile race on a tandem bike with his dad, John Selker, who is a biological and ecological engineering professor at Oregon State University.

Although Jordan will have to wait until he is 13 to race independently in the road bike category at Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA) events, he is no stranger to long rides.

He has completed the Strawberry Century, a 55-mile non-competitive race in Lebanon, on his road bike, and he’s also survived some punishing rides with his dad in Switzerland, where his family lived during a sabbatical.

“We had one ride that was seven hours in the rain, going over hills with three passes that had 5,000 meters of climbing,” said John.

“He’s never ended a long ride complaining,” he added.

Jordan is the youngest member of the newly formed Willamette Valley Cycling Team, sponsored by Pacific Power Blue Sky and based out of Corvallis.

Formed in the fall, the group already has about 75 members.

The team, in cooperation with OBRA, was the host of this year’s Cherry Pie Road Race, which consists of 12 races on a 26.9-mile loop course in Benton and Polk counties. This was the second year the course was set near Adair Village for the race, which has become the largest one-day road race in Oregon.

Team coordinators Jim Fischer and his wife, Heather Paris, both engineers at Hewlett-Packard, were the impetus behind bringing the Willamette Valley Cycling Team together.

“It used to be the EWEB Windpower team, based out of Eugene,” said Paris. “We eventually changed sponsors to reflect that, for the most part, our team is in Corvallis and Salem now. We wanted a sponsor that was less Eugene-centered, more universal in Oregon. Pacific Power Blue Sky was great for that.”

Other team sponsors include Solar Summit, Town & Country Realty and Full Cycles. Having eco-friendly backers is an important team value; so is inclusion.

“We try to be ambassadors and to get more women and youth into the sport,” said Fischer.

The Cherry Pie Road Race is the main fundraiser for the team’s programs. However, putting on a race, especially the first race of the year, is a complicated business.

At one point, Fischer had to console a woman who took a wrong turn on the course, turning a 26-mile ride into a 50-mile one (he offered her a refund), while simultaneously handing out prizes to top winners in their categories who were leaving before the awards ceremony.

“OBRA is very grassroots,” said Fischer. “It’s all about just showing up and seeing your friends and having a good time racing. So races have to cater to weirdness of racers.”

For instance, out of the 550 or so racers, more than 150 of them registered on the day of the race and others forgot their pre-registration or needed to buy an OBRA license.

Luckily, there were more than 80 volunteers on hand to help sort out registration problems and provide support on almost 30 miles of unclosed rural roads.

Willamette Valley Cycling Team members Scott and Angela McCanna were just two of the many volunteers on Sunday. They drove the course in an SUV decked out with the team colors, providing support for racers.

Each race had a support vehicle ahead of the lead rider, a follow car bringing up the rear with officials and a “wheel” car that provided support for racers with injuries or bike problems.

The OSU Cycling Team was also well represented on Sunday. Pamela Archer, a third year team member and marine resource management student, raced with the category 1, 2 and 3 women (a competitive-level 52.2 mile race) in the afternoon.

Because it was the first race of the season, Archer was taking a relaxed approach to her race.

“Game plans never work out,” she said.

Another racer who embodied that sort of “roll with the punches” attitude was Nathan Smith, an Adair Village resident, known in triathlon circles for his many Ironman race performances.

Smith’s chain broke just before he was scheduled to race with the category 5 men. He fixed it on the spot with some pliers, but had misgivings about the quick fix holding up.

“My chain was skipping while I was out there (on the course),” said Smith.

He decided to make a move early to avoid extra stress on the chain during a sudden sprint at the end. As a result, he led most of his race on roads familiar from numerous training runs.

But, in the end he was unable to hold off a pack for the final climb and got swallowed up just before finishing crossing the finish line.

The Cherry Pie Road Race name originated because in the early years of the race top award recipients received whole cherry pies as prizes.

Over the years, though, they’ve shifted to giving out smaller individual Hostess-style pies.

“It was expensive and we found that not everyone likes cherry pie,” said Paris.

This year, the race, which was held in unusually good weather conditions, was just the treat cyclists were looking for coming out of winter hibernation and into the spring racing season.

“Oregon has a great atmosphere for cycling,” said Fischer. “There are 3,000 licensed OBRA members in the state. Not to mention, you can race more than 300 days of the year in Oregon. We’re second only to California and we definitely have more riders per capita here.”

RESULTS & TEAM LINKS

Willamette Valley Cycling Team

Team information and Cherry Pie Road Race results: www.willamettevalleycycling.com

Oregon Bicycle Racing Association (OBRA)

Regional race information and Cherry Pie Road Race results: www.obra.org

Oregon State University Cycling Team

Team and racing information: http://oregonstate.edu/groups/cycling

Mid-Valley Bicycle Club

Club information: www.mvbc.com

Nancy Raskauskas can be reached at 758-9542 or nancy.raskauskas@lee.net