Glencoe results.....

Saturday was the Glencoe Grand Prix. Denny and the family were coming up from St. Louis so I'd have at least one teammate here. Like usual, we signed up for both the masters 1234, and CAT 3. They were back to back races which had me wondering how I'd fair. As we were getting dressed I noticed I hadn't brought my heart rate strap. Denny had another one, but it was at his car which was parked at the beach a couple miles away. We registered and then he got on the trainer and I rode to get the strap. That was pretty much my warmup. I don't even think it was four miles.

The first race was the Masters race. There were some pretty big guns in our field. My legs were still a little heavy from a hard ride a couple days before so I was pretty nervous to see how they would do. Usually in a CAT 3 race I could get through the worst part, but now this was basically a CAT 1-2 race. Right from the start a few guys took off and the pace was pretty high. I had a decent starting position, but soon found myself drifting to mid pack. We made it up the hill, which was just a short punchy climb, not even that steep, but still did it's job. I could tell my legs were saying no. I made it three times up that hill, but on the last one my legs just weren't recovering like they needed to so I pulled out and saved my legs for the CAT 3 race. Denny stayed in the race and was with the main group until the last couple laps when he fell off the pace. He was able to stay in a group just off the back. He was the last group to stay on the lead lap. It was a good race for Denny with all the traveling he did for work and then having todrive up the night before. It was actually good I pulled the chutes when I did because when I went back to the car an officer was writing me a ticket. I guess I was parked within 30 feet of a stop sign, ok, maybe I was within two feet of it. The officer was nice and gave me a warning if I moved, which I did.

The CAT 3 race was much better. After my three lap warmup my legs were feeling a little better. The race went pretty smooth, I maintained my position somewhere in the middle. With all the corners and accelerations I just couldn't gain many positions. With the narrow roads and all the turns the pack pretty much stayed strung out. The first corner for some reason was the scene of a few crashes. It was also one of the only areas that saw the group get bunched up. There were two crashes in my race and I saw two more in other races at that same corner. In my race I know somebody tapped my back wheel and then I heard the sounds of metal hitting asphalt. I know I didn't cause it, but somebody propably just not paying attention. The next crash was on the last few laps and I don't know what happended, but I did capture part of it on video. I looked like he may have clipped a pedal, but I couldn't really tell. During the last few laps I was gaining positions, but it was only two or three at a time. On the last lap everything came apart and there were gaps everywhere. I ended up in 38th place. Once again, just happy to stay upright and finish a tough race.

This was one of the best courses I've raced on. In St. Louis it reminded me of the Soulard course and most recently the Tour de grove course. You gotta love any crit course that has more then four corners.