Monkey Knife Fight advertises itself as a 75 mile gran fondo (not a race) over the toughest, gnarliest, steepest, brutalist, "ridiculousest" roads in Pennsylvania. Late Marsh weather conjoined with sections of paved roads interrupted by PA gravel and dirt roads throughout the Lehigh Valley. One of the after-effects of losing most of the 2020 season is that our elite racers need to fight their way back into racing shape so chapeau to Andy Dudle (Emmaus, PA), Chris Baccash (Doylestown), and Colin Fitzgerald (Orefield, PA) for taking on that challenge.

Behind the scenes a number of our elite and junior racers work directly with Bill Elliston (Easton, PA) the area's best cycling coach. Bill is a thirty year veteran professional and elite racer and Level III USA Cycling Coach. If you were passing Chapman Park in Doylestown Borough this spring perhaps you saw Bill hosting a clinic with some of our veteran and junior riders. Keep your eyes peeled and you'll see that a bunch more this Spring.

A number of results from early racing to tell you about: Bethany Matsick (Warrington, PA) captured first place at the Tigertown Category 1-3 Road Race in central South Carolina on March 27th, and then followed up with a second place finish at the Hincapie Spring Series Pro Women Category 1-3 Criterium on April 11th. Chris Meacham (Doylestown) and Marc Kubushefski (Emmaus, PA) were joined by junior riders Alden Weinhold (Doylestown) and Steve Szabo (Doylestown) at first 2021 weekly Great Valley "practice" criterium on April 18th. This is notable because it's the first time this event has occurred in a year. We hear that Alden did some work down there in support of the big boys. Finally, Colin Fitzgerald (Orefield, PA) and Bethany Matsick raced at the Liberty Cycling Challenge this past weekend in Lynchburg, VA which included a Saturday road race and Sunday criterium. Colin managed a fifth place finish in the road race and finished in the field on Sunday. Bethany says she didn't have any results that she wanted to mention, but importantly she was one of the event organizers so she was a bit distracted. Great to see bike racing return!