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Will Routley finds success on the road

25 races in, local cyclist gaining experience as a team player
will-routley

While most of Whistler’s cyclists are still brushing off the cobwebs, Will Routley was glad this week to finally get a few days off of his road bike.

He had just completed a month-long road trip with the Symmetrics Cycling Team, training every day and entering a series of multi-stage races as far away as Arizona and New Mexico.

Last weekend he took part in the Columbia Plateau Stage Race in central Oregon, a three-day, four-stage epic covering 238 miles of road, not counting 40 laps of a two-mile time trial course. He finished 12 th overall out of a field of 85 racers, just two minutes and 12 seconds back of the leader.

"It was a good race, but it was super-tough with tons of climbing along the way, and everyone was charging pretty hard so you couldn’t sit back," said Routley, who is turning 21 later this month. "I’m really getting into the whole strategy of road racing, and the whole team aspect of the sport.

"Right now our team is pretty strong. We have guys who could be the leader in any given week, but sometimes my job is to contribute to someone else’s race by blocking or taking turns up front. We want to make sure that someone on our team does win, if we can help them, and we did pretty well."

Routley’s contributions in Oregon and at other races have helped to make Symmetrics the most dominant road team in the Pacific Northwest this year.

In the Tour of the Gila in New Mexcio two weeks ago, Routley was 28 th overall out of 125 racers – almost 50 of whom didn’t even finish the race. Before that it was the La Vuelta de Bisbee in Arizona from April 23 to 25, where Routley finished 20 th overall.

Symmetrics was the top team in all of those races.

For Routley, the strong results reflect the three months of hard work he put in over the winter as he lived, trained and competed in the Fraser Valley.

He has already been in 25 road races in 2004, and is learning something new every time he pounds his way off the start line.

The most amazing thing about Routley’s strong season is not his success in races, although this is his first season of road racing with a sponsored team.

It’s not his young age either, although most of the top road racers out there are in their late 20s and early 30s.

Nor is it his dedication to the sport, because Routley is truly doing what he loves.

What is truly amazing is the fact that Routley – at the time of this interview – had not been on his mountain bike even once. Last season he practically lived on his bike.

He finished first in the Samurai of Singletrack, second in the Cheakamus Challenge, fourth in the Test of Metal, fourth in the Nationals Espoir category, first in about half of all WORCA Loonie Races, and somewhere near the top in various B.C. Cup and Canada Cup races.

He did race on the road occasionally, and actually finished seventh in the road nationals, but his main focus until this year was always mountain biking.

Once he had a few days off of the road, he decided it was time to get back on the trails."

"I can’t believe that I finally get to pick up a mountain bike for the first this week," said Routley. "It feels weird that it’s the middle of May already and my tires haven’t even touched the dirt."

He planned to go for a few rides in Whistler and to take part in the Loonie Race on Thursday. This weekend he knows he’ll be back on the road in Washington state with Symmetrics in the Enumclaw Stage Race.

After that he plans to divide his time between the road and the dirt as he works towards parallel goals – to compete and do well in both the road and mountain bike nationals, and, if he can pull it off, to qualify for Team Canada and race both disciplines at the 2004 World Championships.

"I’ve got a pretty busy schedule this year, there’s a lot of racing going on," said Routley, making the understatement of the century. "It’s pretty exciting to have a chance to do that, to race on both the road and dirt this year."

According to Routley he didn’t have a single breakthrough on his bike this year, but slowly improved with every race.

"The major thing is just the increased volume of racing," he said. "The stage races force you to push things up a level because you’re riding hard every day. You get a few days off to recover, but when you do the same thing every day you can feel yourself get better, a little stronger, a little faster.

"The experience is helping too, riding with a strong team. On the road it’s half fitness and half technical, knowing how the race works, how to pace yourself, when to make you move, that kind of thing."

Routley says his weak spot so far is the time trials, "but I’m always trying to work on everything, trying to improve.

"Because I’m spending less time on the dirt, I also need to be careful to stay on top of the technical skills. I don’t want to lose those."

As part of the Symmetrics Cycling Team, Routley is sponsored by Symmetrics, a software company, as well as Westlam Concrete, Northern Feather and Norco bikes.

"We are getting a lot of support. I’m amazed how well-organized this team is, I’d say it’s probably the best organized team in Canada and it shows," said Routley. "I always say the reason we’re doing so well is because we sleep well, because of the duvets and pillows from Northern Feather, but it’s also because everything is taken care of for us. All we have to worry about out there is the racing."