Missionary Omnium 2013 Race Report (HOME RACE!!!)

Last weekend (March 23-24) was our HOME RACE!!! We had a roster of OVER 20 riders, half of which were women, which puts many of the other team's women count to shame. I am just going to post the link to the results because there are so many racer's scores to record and only so much time in a college student's schedule to type them up... So here's that link. There is also a conference race report written by PSU rider, Colin Ross, which can be found here.

Some results highlights include:

• We had 7 first-time racers this weekend, including Jeff Liu, Jeff Bak, Cam Hancock, Adam Dawson, Ryan Nesbit, Jenna Stanley, and Kristin Nesbit!!!
• Rose Baunach (freshman) and Logan Thies (senior, first year racer) continue to improve as they start racking up race weekends.
• Kevin Wallin (freshman) snagged 3rd in his first road race as a Men's C rider.
• Molly Blust came in 4th in the Women's B road race. 
• Becca Mellema (freshman) held on to the main pack for a large amount of time and broke into the top ten with a 9th place finish.
• Whitney Griggs (senior) realized that he likes it when the Men's B and Women's A groups get put into the same race group because he gets to ride with fast ladies :)
• Luke Ogden (junior) was part of a three-man breakaway that came across the finish line with 3.5 minutes on the peloton in the Men's A road race.
• Men's A and Women's B TTT groups both took 2nd place finishes
• Laura Neff (sophomore, first year racer) came in the top ten in the Women's B crit
• Jenna Stanley (freshman) earned her first points towards the team scoring system with 13th in the Women's B crit
• Rachel Geiter (junior) made a gutsy and aggressive move off the start line of the Women's A crit
• Ryan Nesbit (senior) placed 2nd in his first crit in the Men's D field
• Kevin Wallin took 1st place in the Men's C crit

A HUGE thank you goes out to everybody that helped put on this race weekend. Racers, community members, parents, siblings, Allegro, host houses, spectators, corner marshals, drivers, team members that didn't raced but volunteered all weekend, and everybody else that helped out in one way or another! We honestly cannot thank you enough and the race wouldn't have gone so smoothly without you. A special thank you to Debi Toews for finding us paramedic services to have on site and Cam Benner for coming in as an EMT last minute. We would also like to thank Charles Stanger for helping us blow all of the deadly gravel off of our crit course.

I would also like to give a special shout out to Luke Ogden and Alberto Santos-Davidson. Luke was the race director for this event and did everything from being the contact person for officials and filling out permits with the county to ordering the porta-potties. Alberto found and organized all of the volunteers for the event. THESE GUYS ARE THE BEST.

While the home race is always the most stressful, it is also the race that shows me just how wonderful my teammates and the Walla Walla community are. Thank you guys for all that you do, and here's to a great second part of the race season!

Love,
Molly