This weekend I had a few training options with nate dogg and the donkeys, but also wanted to spend some time with my special lady friend, so I opted out of the 108 mile death march in river falls on friday and decided to get in some speed work on saturday.
What better way than to race a criterium road race. Per a suggestion by mercury I planned on going down to the northfield crit with him to get in some racing fun. Mercury decided to see if he could find a different way to navigate a round about at 35MPH at the waconia tri and so without going into details, you can't ride your bike upside down on your shoulder.
so I was left to my own on saturday. I got up, started watching the tour and got motivated to get on my bike. I hopped on my bike, and road towards northfield. my plan was to get there about 10:30 for the 11:00 race. I was a bit lazy in my exit from bloomington (partially because I was scared poopless about racing in a crit - accidents, pain, and partially because It was raining out, and partially because I am lazy).
I got about 5 miles from home when it started pouring, it rained pretty steadily through lakeville and apple valley. I stopped in to grab some cash at a us bank and kept on heading. I almost got killed by some donkey haters in a white rusty oldsmobuick who didn't get the memo that ignorance and youthful hatred of things you don't understand is not as cool as it once was thought to be. I made it through to the last town before northfield and the road turned to gravel on me. I assumed it would be a mile or two of gravel and I would hit a cross road I could cut across on to hwy 3. I was wrong. I road for about 10 miles on really bad gravel and started even laughing at one point waiting for my tires to pop and a farmer to lock me in his basement for a year or two.
I finally just decided to follow a car leaving thier driveway as I assume they would head towards pavement, and discovered that I was riding parallel to a nice paved road and it was only 1/2 mile away the entire time. not cool. this slowed me down considerably and I was pretty sure I was going to miss the race. Since the entire point was to get in speed work, I decided to pick up the pace and get in said speed work on the last 10 miles. Mother nature was nice enough to dump more rain on me as I fought the wind and the rain into town. I got to town and noticed little kids on the race course. so I ran over to the table, told them the gravel road story and they let me in as the mens 4-5 race started to warm up. I got my number pinned on me by a nice lady as I filled out the paper work and I was on the course for a warm up lap. I road it 2x and was already tired from the 40 miles in the rain, but figured, what the hell. I got to the start line and saw melissa there, so I emptied my pockets (phone, wallet, spare, food, etc) and threw them to her.
The race started and I missed my clips 2x on my right foot. this took me from the fron row to middle of the pack. the course goes into a sharp Right turn that narrows down to one car width and then hits an immediate climb. picture 60 bikers trying to make this corner with cobblestone.. I was trying to make that corner, got cut off, hit the rear brake, locked it up, and skidded the backend out to about a 45 before I let off the brake, stabalized and headed up the hill. by this time I had basically screwed myself as I was proabably in 50th place after less than a 1/4 mile. I worked my way back up to 30th and into the front of the second pack, there was a gap formed between the top 30 and the rest. myself and 4 others were chasing the lead group, and a combination of us speeding up and the main group settleing in allowed us to close the gap to about 100 yards. There was only one of the 4 in that group that had a clue about working together to catch the pack, so it was a bit of a cluster with me and another guy taking turns pulling but the other 3 donkeys just randomly trying to surge ahead and then falling way behind. Our opportunity to catch back on was lost between fatigued legs and bad tactics. We worked hard, but the pack just slowly vanished around the streets corners. I worked on taking good lines into the corners and trying to keep my HR high and work up the hills. I don't think I would have had the legs to come close to winning, but had I been able to get up with the lead pack, I could have held on a lot longer I think.
The four of us were pulled with about 8 laps to go and that was the end of my day. It was fun, hollywood was the commentator for the race, and I gave out a hollywood scream during the race he liked. he gave me shit for being in a flanders jersey, but I told him he has yet to give me one.
There was a 13 year old kid who finished 9th or something, I am sure I would kill him at basketball.
Ate herberts and gerberts and headed home.....fun day.
there were 3 bad whipeouts (slick roads and donkey galore) and I was glad to have one under my belt and walk away from it.
