I started racing around 2010. Because of job pressures and health issues, I stopped riding. After I finally realized that my job was going to kill me, I made a career move in 2013. Best decision ever! I joined a local race/club team and started to race again. I won my first RR in 2014 at San Ardo as a Cat 4. I grew up in Watsonville, and moved to Fresno in the early 1980s. [As of 2020] I am 62 years old (Race age 63). I hope I have a couple good race years still ahead of me. But, unfortunately I was hit by a car and currently recovering from my injuries. I am married to Michelle for 25 years. We have a daughter Hana 20 and son Davis 18 years old.
Patrick O’Rourke
I have been involved in sports since I was 4. My love for competition started when I played on the first organized soccer team in our area, over 40 years ago. I also played basketball, baseball, football, and even played for the Illinois State University Rugby Club in college.
After I graduated from Illinois State University with a business degree I was hired by the company I still work for today, Consolidated Electrical Distributors. One benefit was, they moved me from Illinois to California, and I’ve been here for almost 25 years now.
After I moved to California I decided to get into mountain biking and participating in any of the races that were in Northern California. Eventually I got into road cycling as a means of training for mountain biking.
There were things I liked about both mountain biking and road cycling. I really appreciated the systematic way that you could upgrade in road cycling. After putting in a lot of training, I began to earn some upgrade points from Cat 4 to Cat 3. On July 4th of 2015 at the Davis Crit I crashed really hard and went to the emergency room. I ended up having shoulder surgery. Although this derailed my plans to upgrade in 2015, I recovered well and came back in 2016 to earn the rest of the points I needed to upgrade to a Cat 3.
Part of my success was from winning the Merced Crit in 2015 and repeating the first place finish in 2016.
I love competition and being a part of a team with like minded individuals. Now I’m focused on helping my teammates achieve their goals and eventually me upgrading to a Cat 2.