2011 Barry-Roubaix Results

1046 racers registered for the 2011 edition of the Barry-Roubaix and 950 of them made it to the start line. The fact that we only lost 10% of the pre-registered riders proves just how hardcore cyclists are and how much we love what we do. The couch potatoes must be thinking who the hell would ride a bike in temperatures below freezing and then toss in a wind chill from a cyclist moving 15-20 miles per hour. Thats about 10 degrees above zero! Thankfully it was sunny and the winds were pretty light. The week leading up to the event was pretty wild here in Michigan. We have had a colder than normal March and on Wednesday before the race the state was hit with a huge storm. Over a foot of snow fell just 2.5 hours north of us and the middle of the state was hit with a bad ice storm knocking out trees, power, etc. We even experienced some mild icing in Grand Rapids, mild in terms of driving or walking but if that had fallen on the Gun Lake area just 2 days later we would have really had some issues riding a bike on those dirt roads. Phew! Instead Middleville received about 3/4" of rain. You could hardly tell on Saturday, the roads were quite dusty.

All was not perfect. We lost a few lead motos that morning due to a family emergency, we should have put all the 35 women in one wave rather than split them by age, a few result corrections, some podium snafus and most importantly we had some finish line issues in the 65 mile race. Thankfully all the contenders were very understanding and cooperative at coming to a resolution.  So we live and learn and make improvements for next year. Parking, entry drive and finish line set up are the number one items of attention. We will continue to make this event grow and improve.

Congratulations to Eric Box and Samantha Brode on your 2011 Barry-Roubaix 65 mile victories. Don Cameron and Kathy Everts on your overall 35 mile victories and Trevor Smela and Sherry Martin on your overall 23 mile victories!

See you in 2012! Rick and Cathy

Cycling Dirt coverage of the 2011 event