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.

Glencoe Championships this weekend.......

Sitting here watching Pawnstars and laughing my ass off. Chumley is such a tool that he's so damn funny. Glencoe is this Saturday. This is the same crit championships that had been held at Downer Grove. I never did that race, but I guess now I'll be doing it, only it's in Glencoe now. I've now raced the past two weekends and hopefully my form will be coming back again. Last week I did the Grayslake crit. The plan was to do the CAT 3 and then the masters a couple hours later. I didn't have a great race. I could tell my body was a little tired from training a little too hard during the week. I only did the one race. I think I ended up somewhere in the middle of the field since they only placed the top 12. I did a good three hour tempo ride yesterday. It must've been a hard ride because I was completely useless when I got home and fell asleep on the couch. I'm still gonna get out for an hour today and then take tomorrow off before Saturdays races. I'm signed up for two races back to back so we'll see how that goes.

Tour of Elk Grove races.....

I knew it had been a while since I last updated this, but I didn't think it was this long. The last race I did was back in St. Louis at the Tour de Grove. Two days of racing in the St. Louis heat. My legs and form were just coming around back then and I was feeling pretty good. I got a 25th place on the second day which was a three mile circuit race with a ton of turns. It reminded me of Soulard, but bigger. While it wasn't a great result I was happy with it since it was a Cat 2/3 race with a lot of strong 2's. I was 10th among the 3's though. That was my last race until this past weekend. I spent five weeks of basically riding tempo and doing long training rides, barely any high intensity stuff. Work seemed to get in the way and I wasn't sure how my fitness was going to be going into the weekend. Saturday was the Cat 3 race. It was on a six turn circuit with a tight 180* turn, but then the rest was super fast. With my fitness being what it was my goal was to just finish with the pack. I told myself if I just made it through the first 20 minutes I'd be ok. Well, I made it through, but I went through some ridiculous pain. I made it through to the end of the race, I was about middle of the field. I'd say there were around 60 guys racing. We averaged 26.6 for the race. Sunday was the Cat 3/4 masters race. I was feeling pretty good about myself for this race after the day before. I though I could only improve on the previous days result. This race went pretty smooth for me. I didn't go through the pains I did the day before, but I still had to work pretty hard. There was one incident though that I wasn't too happy about. I was making my way through the pack and I clearly had a hole and grabbed it. I guess the other guy thought differently and felt the need to speed up and bury a shoulder into me. I did all I could to stay upright as I was now leaning into another guy on my left. It would've been really ugly to go down where it happened in the middle of the pack. I yelled at him and so did a couple other guys. The last thing I'd expect from a masters race is some a!@hole to get all worked up over me grabbing the hole. The race continued and I found myself feeling pretty good. I got in a good position on the last lap. I was around 8-10 guys back as we cooked it around the last corner. I had so much momentum that instead of staying on the guys wheel in front of me I drifted to the outside a little. That was a big mistake. I found myself out of the paceline and directly into the wind. Instead of sprinting out of that group I basically had to sprint from that point just to maintain my position. I eventually swallowed up at the line. I think I finished around 20th place. I'm not sure the exact placing since I wasn't on the results sheet. I propably got behind some dude again........I just checked the official scoresheet from the website and I finished in 19th. I wonder how much I missed out on since it paid top 20. I was able to finally get some race footage with my camera. I had no way to mount it on the handlebars and I wasn't liking it mounted on my helmet. I crudely taped it right on top of may garmin. It worked, although I couldn't use the info, but who needs it for a crit. I've never done the Tour of Elk Grove, but it was an NRC race and by far the largest purses for the pro's and paid 20 deep for my races. The racing was good and now that I'm living up here I'll put this weekend on my calendar. I was surprised nobody from our elite team was up here, but I guess the state crit championships was this weekend.