Upshifting a pro cycling team

The bike racers are bearing down on the finish line, riders wheezing, cranking, elbowing for a place in a pack that's moving like a freight train. The announcer yanks at the microphone and shouts: "It's all-out pandemonium on the course in Minneapolis!" Spectators close in, screaming, jumping as riders blur by. Cowbells rattle, and the amplified voice yells out again: "Someone just hit the go button!"

It's a Friday evening in mid-June, and the Minneapolis Downtown Classic, the fourth stage of the weeklong Nature Valley Grand Prix bike race series, is almost over.

Racers tuck and pedal in a mass, whizzing through corners on blocked-off streets. Sprints on straightaways net speeds above 40 miles per hour.

Standing below the bleachers, set apart from his small group and cheering, Charles Aaron watches as the 14 athletes of Team KBS/Medifast begin to make their move. Aaron, 39, a native of St. Louis Park, is the owner of the team, a squad of 14 athletes that make up the first professional road cycling team based in Minnesota.

Managed from an office in downtown Minneapolis, KBS/Medifast operates on an annual budget of more than $1 million. Aaron and his 25 employees -- which include the racers, a team coach, mechanics and an office staff -- juggle a schedule that sees KBS/Medifast rolling to the start line at more than 75 races a season, this year from California to the Pyrenees Mountains in France.

Three years ago, maxing out credit cards and networking with old friends for support, Aaron founded Circuit Global Sports Management (CGSM), a business that connects corporations with sports teams to garner sponsorship deals. The KBS/Medifast squad, a team of U.S. and Canadian cyclists age 18 to 35, is CGSM's first professional team.

Banks initially turned Aaron away when he went in for loans. But he believed in his business plan and soon so did John Kelly, CEO of Kelly Benefit Strategies (KBS) in Hunt Valley, Md., a group insurance broker that signed on in 2005 as title sponsor.

Heading into its second season, KBS/Medifast is going strong with several key wins on the national circuit, including top spots in the Nature Valley Grand Prix series. The riders' jerseys -- dark green tops overlaid with corporate logos -- now sport Medifast, a diet and meal-plan company, as a second title sponsor. A half-dozen additional sponsors, including Minnesota companies, have bolstered the team's budget.

Within five years Aaron hopes to grow the Minnesota team to a $15 million powerhouse that can compete in the Tour de France.

"It would be a lie if I said I didn't want to be there someday," he said.

Overcoming hard times

Flash back a few years, and life was not rolling so smoothly for Aaron. A divorce in 2001 was emotionally crushing. His business at the time was bad in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Aaron, an entrepreneur who managed mountain biking teams in the 1990s, was struggling to find a new job.

"I was making money, traveling the world, and then it stopped," he said.

Living in Baltimore, down on his luck, Aaron went back to work doing what he had done in college. He got a job as a valet at the Baltimore Hyatt, parking cars at night, working for tips, barely paying the bills.

Rock bottom came one afternoon when Aaron put on a suit and tie to make a presentation at an ad agency in hopes of getting work. He walked from the agency to the Hyatt and changed clothes. Within an hour, the agency executives, who had decided to have dinner at a nice hotel, pulled up.

"It was awkward, to say the least," he said.

From a two-wheel heritage

As a teenager growing up in St. Louis Park, Aaron pedaled the suburban streets and dreamed of being part of a professional cycling team. He remembers reading magazine articles on Greg LeMond.

"I was fascinated by LeMond as an athlete but also the behind-the-scenes of what it took to run a team," he said.

In 2005, Aaron moved back to Minnesota. His mother was sick. He needed to be near his family and old friends. He needed to come home.

"I woke back up that year," he said.

He also lit the fire under his childhood dream. He sketched an outline for the company that would become CGSM. He found an office and started making calls, started the string of long days and late nights on the computer that would engage the gears, shift the cogs, finally, to a place where his wheels could coast again.

Keeping pace in the race

At the downtown event, an hourlong race in which a Team KBS/Medifast rider comes in fourth, the announcer continues to scream: "The field has turned into a frenzy!"

But Aaron is watching from the bleachers, hanging back, letting the team do its job.

"Once we're here at a race, I say, my duties are done," he said.

The riders flash past. A Team KBS/Medifast rider makes a move in the pack. Jonas Carney, performance director for the team, shouts on a radio, relaying strategy.

Aaron cups hand to brow, the pack of riders arcing a turn, 200 bike tires humming with hot rubber on the road. It is the sound of power and speed, spokes whirring, wheels buzzing with momentum on a stretch of street in downtown Minneapolis.

Stephen Regenold is a Twin Cities writer and author of the syndicated column www.thegearjunkie.com.