Chicago Crit - thankful i got out alive

It was awesome to be able to race in grant park again. I don't think there's been a race down there since the late 80's. Project 5 had 8 of us in the 3's field and it was such a blast to race with such a full team. I can't remember the last time i was in a race and every time i turned to look for a teammate i saw one.

I pretty much tried to stay at the front for most of the race. Covered some moves, tried a move or two of my own but nothing was getting away. Our priority was to get Tim in good position so he could start his sprint from 5th or 6th place instead of 20 or 30 back. With about 6 laps to go I asked tim to let me know when he wanted to move up. Before he even was able to respond he saw an opening and took it and left me there sitting mid pack. I rode out the rest of the race in the middle and on the last lap saw that tim was in a good spot and took it easy. You just had the feeling there was going to be a crash and sure enough in the last turn a whole bunch of guys went down. It was kind of in 2 waves. First some went down on the inside and slid to the middle. Then there seemed to be a second or 2 when you thought it was done and then a bunch of other guys went into the barriers on the outside of the turn. I was able to come to almost a complete stop and weave my way thru the carnage and softpedaled into the finish. Tim ended up 2nd so we are all happy with how the race went.

The reason i'm so thankful is not because i survived the crash but because monday night i found a crack in my frame. Right above the derailer hanger there's a crack that travels all around the frame. i had been trying to solve a creaking issue for a couple of days and after an easy recovery ride last night i found it. Big bummer.

Since i'm not one of the guys who has 3 road bikes, a mountian bike, and a cross bike, i'm SOL right now. I'm scrambling to try and put something together before this weekend. Wish me luck. Anybody have a 60cm frame?

My week off

So i just had a full week off the bike. i went up to the U.P. to a summer camp with my son. it was an incredible time but was a little hard not being able to ride or watch the tour. we had no cell phones, no internet, and no tv.

i did get to ride a little since the camp had hydro bikes. very fun. next year i'll have to bring my pedals, shoes, saddle and seatpost.

they also had a climbing tower that i ran up and down to stretch the legs.

now it's the chicago crit tomorrow. should be a blast. i can't wait.

IL State cat 3 RR to short?

...then move to Iowa. The cat 3's roadrace is 108 miles.

flyer

cycling update info

Misc. Stuff

A few random things

mini race report
I raced at bensenville yesterday and it didn't go so well. The heat combined with my ability to always get gapped out of turn 3 combined to get me dropped after 40min so i pulled out. pretty disappointing since that was my only superweek race this year.

tour de france commentary
After waking up and seeing the news of ricco's expulsion from the tour it became apparent to me why they decided to have no time bonus's at the tour this year. It sure makes it easier to reshuffle the standing without having to recalculate time bonuses. i wouldn't expect to see time bonuses back for quite some time.


Get well Jim!
Jim Scott, the same Jim Scott who so kindly lent me a wheel at Wood Dale, was injured on tuesday but thankfully he's going to be ok. Get well soon buddy. Congrats on 3rd!!! For SW to say that there wasn't anybody within 20' of you is insane. The same thing happened at the finish of the 30+ race on wed. they had removed the barriers so the rider was able to keep upright.
I won't even get started on the saftey issues that seem to always come up during superweek every year. maybe that'll be another post sometime.

Interbike

So it just happens that i will be in vegas during the week of interbike. So does anybody have any way that i can get in to the show and especially the 3 day bike race? I'm just trying to weasel my way in somehow. If you have a way just leave a comment.

thanks!

Wood Dale Cat 3 ABR State Crit

My race day almost didn't even happen. I've been having some rear wheel trouble and decided not to bring my rear race wheel instead opting for my mavic open pro wheels. After arriving and registering and getting suited up i went out to warmup on the other course that is in this business park. I hadn't been riding for more than 10 minutes when ping, there went a spoke in my rear wheel. I had no spare and had that sinking feeling. I yelled at tim and told him and we headed back to the car to try and find one of our teammates to see if i could bum a wheel. Enter jim scott from apache. he so generously offered me a wheel and we got it all setup with 10 minutes to spare. i guess the stress of that made for a good warmup. So the rest of this report is brought to you by Jim Scott of apache. Thank you jim.

Our plan was to have me try to get into a move during the race and if that didn't stick then i would work as hard as i could to get tim in a good spot for the sprint. I was feeling pretty good and wanted to put some hard efforts in so i stayed near the front and tried to keep an eye on the attacks that went off and eventually placed myself in a couple. I did get in a move sometime between the 2nd 1/4 of the race but that didn't last very long and as soon as we were brought back Tim jumped into a little break and so i sat back and tried to recover. With the heat my heartrate was in the 180's but after a lap or 2 sitting in i got it back down to the 160's. I was still feeling really good when a couple riders attacked and i heard tim yell for me to go so i bridged up to the 2. We rode a couple of laps together and 1 or 2 more guys bridged up to us. Then they called a prime of a box of powergels that i ended up winning but that seemed to kill off the rest of my break partners. I ended up doing another lap or so on my own hoping someone would bridge up to me cause i still had some life in me but didn't want to try the suicide solo break.

Eventually i was caught and i sat in for a couple of laps, trying to find tim but i couldn't find him. as we passed the start/finish i saw him jumping back in after a mechanical. Eventually we got back together and we started working our way back to the front where we stayed for rest of the race. With 2 to go David Reyes from ABD attacked hard and i had the itch to try and go with him but decided against it in favor of keeping tim at the front of the field on the final lap. Everything was good until turn 3 on the last lap. Right in the middle of the turn was where i got swarmed by the field and i lost about 20 places in about 1.5 seconds. When i saw tim up ahead of me i just turned of and softpedaled to the finish. i didn't realize until today when i saw the pictures that David made it thru the last turn before getting caught. What a gutsy effort and it makes me wish i had joined him.

It wasn't the result i wanted but i felt really good about the race i had. I did everything I set out to do and still felt really good even though i put in some hard efforts. i was also able to play the team role and to me that's as much fun as trying to win it yourself.