Pauly on the gas! by Matt Haughey

Salem Short Track 2013 was well represented by Team REALL. The Monday evening series took place the first three weeks in August in Salem at the Oregon State Fairgrounds. On August 5th, my teammates Ryan Eisele and Jeremy Warnicke raced in Pro/Cat 1 finishing in 8th and 10th place respectively. They continued their rivalry in Single speed with Jeremy placing 5th and Ryan placing 6th. My brother Matt and I, performed well, too with Matt placing 2nd in Juniors while I placed 3rd in Cat 3.

On August 12, Julia Fudge came up from Eugene and earned a solid first in the Women’s Cat 2! Matt placed first in the Junior division and I came sixth in Cat 3. Jeremy returned and finished 8th in Pro/Cat 1 and held 5th place for the second week in a row in single speed.

The final race was the 19th. Paul Zweigart raced and placed 4th in the Men’s Cat 2. Julia again finished 1st place in her division. Matt and I, each took first in our categories! Ryan returned to action riding to 12th place in Pro/Cat 1 and finished strong in single speed in fourth place. Jeremy rode to 10th place in Pro/Cat 1 and maintained his 5th place standing in the single speed category. Read more »

‘Puff Daddy! by Nathan Pfeifer

With all of our worldly possessions in a moving van heading to Washington I took a “break” from packing to take another stab at the race I said I would never do: the Cascade Cream Puff 100. As I was coming up toward the top as a mountain bike racer I heard about the CCP. It was a race down in Oakridge, Oregon which claimed to be ridiculously hard and totally awesome at once. At that time, I couldn’t imagine riding 50 let alone 100 miles on a mountain bike and hence determined that I would never ride such a crazy race.

I continued to hear how rad it was but basically ignored it until 2006 when my friend Ben Thompson won the it just days before we left for Europe to race the Transalp Challenge. Undoubtedly the CCP sawed off his lower extremities so instead of me chasing him up all the climbs in the Alps and Dolomites the opposite occurred. However the seed of possibility was planted and when I finished third overall in the NUE series in 2008 I knew I would eventually give the mother of all Hundies a shot. Read more »