Vernon Hills Grand Prix......

My first official race up here in Chicago was this past weekend. It was the Vernon Hills Grand Prix. It was only 10 miles from where I live, but I managed to be late for the race. I gave myself enough time to jump on the trainer for about 15 minutes, but the map of the race wasn't too descriptive and I ended up getting lost and being late. I saw a police officer at the barricades and he directed me all over the place and I missed one of the turns. I came back to him and he pointed out the directions again, but now I was really late. The plan was to do two races. The Masters 30+(cat 1-4), and the Cat 3 later in the afternoon. At that point I was relegated to just doing the Cat 3 until I went to register and they told me I could still get in the masters race. They were running about 15 minutes behind. I quickly got my number and changed doing my best superman impression. I didn't have time to change my wheels though, which was a good thing as I'll explain later.

The course was very open with a fairly stiff crosswind, though not too bad. The roads were good with only two 90* turns. I lined up in the last row. It took a little while to get warmed up and the attacks didn't help either. It was a pretty fast race and the pack got strung out a few times. I managed to keep myself in decent spot until the last turn. I was propably top 20 going into the turn and was just winding up my sprint when a guy went down right in front of me. I thought are you kidding me? How does this guy go down on such an open course with wide roads. Well, he's directly in front of me and I had nowhere to go but up and over him. I remember riding over him pretty smoothly, but somehow after passing him I ended up over the handlebars. All I thought about as I was upside down seeing my bike in the air is please survive, not me, but the bike. I sat there stunned for about half a second and then get ran into from behind. After composing myself for a bit I felt ok, so I got up and checked my bike. It was in working order other then a flat and a bent front rim. I got back on and limped it to the finish line about 200 meters away.

I must've hyperextended my arm because it was killing me to move it. Anyways, I had another race to do and other then my arm and a bit of a sore back I did the Cat 3 race two hours later. I changed my wheels and got an ace bandage from the paramedics for my arm. The first half of the race was very easy with little attacks and few teams wanting to pick up the pace. I was cherishing every bit of it. It started to pick up later in the race and I was now feeling the pain in my arm and the tiredness in my legs. Every time I got out of the saddle I felt pain in my arm. I couldn't put much pressure on it. I didn't get in good position for the sprint, but just happy to finish the race upright.

My garmin had 34mph when I went down. I had 26.5 for the masters race and 25.5 for the cat 3. My bike was ok other then the front wheel and bent seat rail. I was propably going to get a new saddle anyways. It was a good training day. The next couple races should be back in St. louis.