Elk Grove

Tour of Elk Grove (cat 4), 8/1/09
Race #32

4/75

(my dad took this photo of the finish with a bit less than 150m to go. Nice work, Dad!)

Man, I really liked this course. It was challenging with the fairly tight turns and the loooooong finish—right up my alley. The guys who finished 1st and 2nd in our race were definitely strongest today. That does not happen too often.

Type 1 report: not perfect, but not bad either. The worst part was forgetting my bag with my bottles of water…I had one bottle all morning. Not smart, but not a disaster for a 35 min race.

My RPE for this race was way higher than others. The accelerations hurt every time. With the rain and after the first crash no one wanted to take those corners too fast so instead we took them too slow. Or it was my piss poor short warm up that left the legs burning.

Teammate Jordan Ross led me out to finish 2nd in the field sprint, 4th overall, and Jordan was able to hang on for 10th. It was very tight in those final 200m. At the line I was ½ wheel off 3rd and ½ wheel in front of 5th. It was nice to have a good wheel in that finish because of all the jockeying and the length—I didn’t need to fight for one, I just needed to decide when to go. When I went I had to change lanes from the right side, up through the middle, then on the left side—ah! finally I had an open lane! So I went. My chain slipped and I wound up slightly over geared but never mind that, in just a few seconds I was gasping past the finish.

The overall race was tough. Once again, I started in the back of the field; someday I hope to lean how to get a good starting spot on the line (I better just follow Jordan, he seems to know how to do it.). Anyway, we get started and sprint out of every turn, even up front. It was really taxing. Once the rain started the course became very slick and there were a bunch of crashes. I was almost involved in one that had nothing to do with rain or turns. In chasing the break that got away ½ way through the race, I rotated through the front and another rider (I don’t remember anything about him) had trouble coming around me and when he did he hit my bars with his hips and I had to brake, then he just died or purposely killed the pace and I was suddenly overlapped and leaning the wrong way. When I came free of his wheel he was moving left and I was leaning to my right and--I thought, for sure, that my time had come…race over. But I slammed the brakes and escaped with just loosing my balance and, luckily, not taking out anyone else. In retrospect, this was a perfect case of “my wheel; my responsibility.” I was too close to him, though if he didn’t have the mustard to pull through good sense says that he should not have rotated through. After the brief shouting (not by me-I was still in shock) I jumped back in, mid pack. This whole thing sucked because it happened right in front of my entire family too (they were 50m past the finish). As my wife has been reminding me all day, I was much closer to a DNF than 3rd place, by a long shot. She’s right. Anyway, it was a short race and difficult and I’m happy with my result.

I got to hear some good news for our team. Right now we have 1 cat 3. Next season we hope to have 4. That is very good news because Spidermonkeys have been great this year as a development race team for new riders, we’ve got a few kinks to work out but we’re doing a decent job growing the racer population in Chicago. Now we will have several more mid cat racers to challenge and lead the new cats. And as Bryan Merrill said, teamwork and race plans only work well when you have a few riders at the same fitness level. Well, now we will and that will be fun.

Soldier Field Series, 7/29/09
Race #31

8-9/50

What a race. I know the threes will admit that it isn't much better but...I can't wait to upgrade.