It was a great weekend of racing for the Battley Harley-Davidson/Capitol Hill Bikes cycling team for the last weekend of the Greenville Spring Training Series. Both races were held in/or around Greenville, S.C. Saturday's River Falls RR was approx. 60 miles long with a circut of 6 miles for 10 laps. The course was rolling with a nasty little climb to the finish of each lap. Saturday's team consisted of Dave Fuentes, Todd Hipp, Keck Baker, Chuck Hutcheson, and myself. About 60-70 racers participated with local Pro teams DLP and Time Development in attendence. Within the first lap a break was established with Dave driving the break. The break stayed within sight until the climb at the end of the first lap where they kicked it into high gear and lef the field behind. This was the last time we would see them. Around three and a half laps into the race the break had 2:30 and Harley's Keck Baker went away with what ended up being a group of four. The chase gained as much as 2 minutes on the field before a team wearing pink kits came to the front and reeled back the break to within 15 seconds. A few riders would break off from the chase and a few would bridge up and in the end the group of four would put in a solid effort and stay away until the end. Dave cramped on the final climb, no doubt due to the majority of the work he did in the break, which even left a lone Bissell Pro rider in astonishment, and held on to third while Keck finshed 6th overall and third in the sprint out of the chase group. 2 in the top 6 was a great result and well deserved by the hard riding from Keck and Dave.

The second day was another approx. 6 mile circut and 10 laps around the Donaldson Airport. It was wide open and very windy the entire race. Dave, Keck, Chuck, Todd, Eli and myself were ready to go. No one thought breaks were going to be able and stay away but it sure did not stop anyone from trying. There were a lot of small attacks and 5 second gaps throughout the first 1.5 laps. All of them had a Harley rider present. With 1.5 laps down, myslef, a Time Development rider, and a Black Dog rider (pink kit team) got a good gap after jumping on a counterattack. For the next lap we all went super hard but 1 lap was about all I had. The Time rider was very strong and I was getting gaped on the climbs. I fought through for the next 2 laps and approaching the finishing straight on the 4th lap another Time rider, Tom Soladay, bridged. At this point I was only able to pull on the flats and downhills but we stayed away for another 2 laps before the field caught us. At this point I was done and resigned to the back of the pack. Didn't stop Harley though. with 1.5. laps to go Keck got in a move with a Toshiba rider and a Time rider. With the Time rider sitting on the whole time it was only Keck and Toshiba who powered themselves to the podium after a long and windy day of racing. Keck finished third in the sprint with Dave Fuentes winning the field sprint for 4th and Todd Hipp rounding out the top 6.

Great weekend of racing from Harley and just a taste of what is to come.