For the third year in a row I headed to eastern Iowa for the memorial weekend bike race "series". The use of quotations is due to the frequent reminders over the course of the weekend that each race is separately promoted and its not actually a series... whatever, everyone treats it as such.
The one commonality between the three years I have been racing there is that I somehow have not managed to upgrade from cat 5. I really need to get on that. Three years ago these were more or less the first races I had ever done on my road bike. I am pretty sure I got shelled in every one of them. That summer I broke my collar bone mountain biking and also got hit by a car... at the end of the day, I didn't really ride my bike that much. Last summer, I was quite clearly in good enough shape to upgrade to 4s, but got burnt out racing and didn't make my 10 starts required to cat up. This year- well, my results at the memorial weekend races weren't as good as last year. I don't know, I don't think I am really in worse shape. I just think I was not as lucky. Oh well... at the end of the day, I am mulling the decision of catting up over in my head right now.
So, the races.
Saturday was the Snake Alley Criterium. As painful as this race is, its always a good time. If nothing else, you have beer drinking on the hill yelling at other riders to look forward to. That said... this years race was particularly annoying to me. To start with, my rear derailleur was messed up. For some reason I didn't notice this in the trainer, and only realized it when I was riding to the start (10 minutes before the race). Luckily I ran into John Meyers and he and Josh Carter fixed it by the side of the road. Considering it was fixed and indexed in about 3 minutes, the bike shifted surprisingly well.
The race started with little fanfare. Even though I had pre-registered, apparently alot of others had done so before me. My start position was about 2/3 back. From the gun I sprinted to try and get frontish before the snake... this mostly worked. I chilled for the first three laps. The third lap some dude ran into my rear wheel at the bottom of the snake and knocked me off my bike. I ended up having to run up the whole thing. I didn't lose a ton of position running, but it really did wipe me out and I didn't really push it on the downhill.
(thanks Dan for the photo)I was assuming I was mid to front third of the race at this point. So I just kind of rode for the next two laps.
This is when the oddities happened. As I was coming through the start I was pulled out of the race with a fellow who I had just lapped. I attempted to argue with the official to no success. He responds to "Seriously, I am not a lap down" with "well... you will be" This might or might not have been true. Regardless. I was pulled after 5 laps.
The takeaway message from this race was that 1. my tires were well glued on, and 2. my bike looks sweet with the easton ec90slx's. I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Miller High Life and sitting on or near to the snake taking pictures. All in all it was a good afternoon.
* as a side note I learned Saturday that I am completely confused by the Applebee's menu.
Sunday was the Melon City Criterium in Muscatine IA. I hate this race. Seriously, I find the uphill coupled to a downhill type courses to be really boring. The only redeeming factor about this one is the speedbump at the bottom of the hill. Despite hating it, I did well here last year- 7th I think. Last year I attacked at the first turn on like the third lap and ended up finishing ahead of the field in a group of 3. I thought maybe I would have some success again this year.
The race was moving really fast and eventually (maybe 3/4 of the way through the race) I was dropped by the front group. I rode around in an ever changing chase group that I spent 90% of the time on the front of. I really thought that I had sucked this race up, but it turned out that a lot of selection had already happened before I was dropped. I finished mid field. The amusing side note was when a junior attacked the group I was in on the hill the last lap. I guess he really wanted that 1 additional placing in the 30s.
The last race of the weekend is the Quad Cities Criterium in Rock Island IL. Again, I did well here last year -5th. Last years race involved some guy attacking from the gun. When he wasn't coming back to the field I attacked and bridged up to him on turn 4. A few laps later we were joined by another group. Eventually a team mack guy attacked 4 dudes got on his wheel and I was left in the second group on the road.
I hoped for a repeat of this, but the early break never really got away. I think about 6-8 of us had a gap of a few seconds for a while... nobody was really pushing it, and we got caught. My plan was to hang out at attack again with 2 or 3 to go. This part of the race came and went without my getting myself into a position in the pack to attack. When we got to the final turn I let the sprint happen without me. Got 25th, whatever I was happy that the race was comfortable for me an I was involved in the action. The rest of the afternoon was again spent beer drinking and race watching... good times.
Hopefully I will get some decent results sooner or later, but its mountain bike racing for me the next few weeks.
