West Virginia daily

By Ted Allen / Lynchburg News & Advance April 26, 2005

This week's third annual Tour of Shenandoah cycling race, with a field of more than 400 amateur and professional cyclists, features for the first time a stage finish in Bedford on Friday.

The five-stage men's race, for professional (Category I) and Category II cyclists, starts Wednesday with a time trial at Massanutten Resort and a criterium in nearby Harrisonburg. It ends Saturday near Waynesboro, with a final stage from Lexington to Rockfish Gap.

On Sunday, a criterium for women, and masters (40-over) and Category III and IV men is set for downtown Waynesboro.

Though not quite as long as the now defunct Tour DuPont, which also traversed Virginia in the early 1990s, the Tour of Shenandoah is nearly as prestigious.

"It's a huge event open only to elite riders from the East Coast (and across the United States)," said Hunter Allen, head of The Peaks Coaching Group based in Bedford. "It's like the NCAA Final Four being brought to your front yard. You can walk out your front door and the race comes to you. Spectators don't have to pay."

Former U.S. National pro road cycling champion Chann McRae, who used to race for the U.S. Postal team, is one of the more well known professional cyclists in the field.

Most races require cyclists to stay to the right of the yellow line, but this one makes the entire road open to cyclists.

"It's one of the few events in the whole country with rolling enclosure, where police create a boundary all around the racers and temporarily close the roads as the race goes on," Allen said.

One of the better viewing areas for Friday's stage will be along U.S. 11/43 at around noon as the cyclists climb out of Buchanan, 90 miles into the 102-mile course. Another spectator-friendly location will be on the Blue Ridge Parkway as they turn back onto U.S. 43 toward Bedford at around 1 p.m. But the best will probably be between 1 and 2 p.m. as they approach the finish line in downtown Bedford on West Main Street.

"It's going to be a really awesome stage finish," Allen said.

The cyclists will then shuttle to Lexington for Saturday's fifth stage that ends in Rockfish Gap, near Waynesboro.

Allen, a former professional cyclist, has helped train a six-man team based in Baltimore, Md., as well as Jeremiah Bishop of Harrisonburg, the lead cyclist on another team. Bishop, a mountain biker ranked 15th in the world, will make a rare road race appearance with a group of four other mountain bikers - one from West Virginia (Nick Waite, who raced in the Tour de Georgia over the weekend), one from Maryland (Chris Eatough) and two from France.

"Jeremiah has done most of the stages already so he will be familiar with the finish and the mountains," Allen said, noting the team from Maryland doesn't have that type of terrain to train on normally. "We've worked on a lot of climbing (since) there are so many mountains in this area. I've worked on improving their ability to climb mountains and on day-to-day recovery since it is a stage race. We do blocks of very hard training to simulate that."

Friday's stage starts at 9:30 a.m. at The Homestead in order to allow the cyclists to reach Bedford before school gets out, since the route is heavily traveled by school buses.

Allen anticipates a group of three to five cyclists will separate themselves from the pack on the climb from Buchanan before the sprint finish in Bedford, with groups of 20 or more and one of 60-70 to follow.

"It will be a spread-apart finish," Allen said, "because the mountains do separate the men from the boys."

This is cache, read story here