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A good morning sir

One of my goals this season was to get a cat 3 upgrade before June.  Another was to win a race as a 4 before I upgrade. I was hoping that would happen at Vernon Hills (congrats Matt) but my upgrade request went a lot quicker than I anticipated.  Cool.

Being a 3 is great so far; no more 8am starts.  Even still, I woke up early to get my kit out of the washer and give it time to dry.  I found a nice little surprise in the back of my jersey.  My Palm Pre must have been a little dirty and it needed a wash.  Not a great start to race-day.

Got to the race in time to see my 5 teammates race, and Wayne Simon crush souls.  That’s when I noticed that the masters had bottles of wine for Primes.  I thought to myself, “Man, that would be sweet. I have to hurry up and get older, I love free wine”.

Pre-Race

I got a nice long warm-up in, something I haven’t been able to do all season yet.  Shortly before the race Scott (teammate) showed up with the wife and kids, shortly after that Mr. and Mrs. Psimet did as well.  Very cool as none of them needed to be there that early (and Scott couldn’t race anyways).

One of the neat things about local bike racing is that you get a real sense of community, you begin to learn who is who and it helps come race time.  Honestly, I don’t know many of the 3′s so I didn’t have any real idea who’s wheel would be a good one to be on. My only 3 teammate (Scott) is recovering from injury.  I got some good advice from him but my main goal in my first race was to test the waters and see where I stood.

The Race

I managed to be at the front of the start.  Last week I DNF’ed at Iowa City after failing to clip in and then spending 10 minutes sprinting to regain position before I felt a major pain in my ass (that is, a cramp in my ass). Sunday, I managed to clip in like a pro and start of the race was slow.  I wasn’t too surprised by this and I knew it would pick up at some point.  The race is 45 minutes long, no reason to hammer from the start right?

I’m surrounded by black jersey’s and for once they weren’t xXx. Burnham racing was there to do some damage and had plenty of numbers.  I’m not sure if Scott told me, but I had no idea who their guy was.  In fact, the only person I did know to watch for was Chazz Martin(ISCorps).  I figured if he was going to do well at the race, than I would probably be best suited to follow his moves.  It’s been a while since I’ve felt so lost at the beginning of a race.  No idea how my fitness compares, no idea who is strong. I’m just along for the ride.

The pace picked up a lot after the first attack. I didn’t see who it was but it didn’t develop into anything.  For the remainder of the race, black jerseys were constantly smacking the peloton in the face with attack after attack.  I expected this.  Much to my surprise, these attacks weren’t ruining me.  More importantly, they weren’t turning into anything.  In my mind that was because they weren’t the attack. That ended up being a misjudgment.

I felt great. Moving up when I wanted, chasing down attacks as needed.  Before I knew it, the race was nearly over.

That’s when it happened. Crossing the line with 5 laps to go I heard the faint sound of a bell and as we rolled over the line the announcer said something about a bottle of wine.

The Prime

I’ve never gone for a prime. I’ve been tempted by cash, ipods, a pair of brand new look pedals almost got me at Sherman Park last year, so too did the cake at Fall Fling. Alas, I’ve always got my eyes on the race at hand, for better or worse.

My logic Sunday was that a cat 3 race wasn’t going to just end in a pack sprint.  That goes contrary to everything I’ve been told by the interwebz for the last 3 years.  And of course, skimping into the 3′s by sucking the wheel of stronger riders means that in the likely event that a end-of-the-race breakaway does win it, I’d probably not be in contention.

I like wine.

I told myself I wouldn’t go for it…unless I could win it.  I might as well walk away with something today.  As we rounded the last turn I found myself 3rd wheel back.  I waited for 2nd wheel to go and I came around the other side of the 1st wheel.  As I started my sprint I asked myself what I was doing, then I realized that I was all in and it was a bottle of wine or nothing.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the beautiful site of a wheel trying and trying to come past me and then the subtle last lunge before fading out of vision.  I haven’t crossed the line in front in a while.

I won my wine. But shortly after I got back into the peloton I realized I was shot.  Instead of mixing it up and ruining someone else’s day knowing that I had nothing left, I sat up and watched the group ride off in the distance.

I was a little disappointed as I think I could have done well assuming I positioned myself well.  That’s life, the wine was good.  I can now cross off #4 & #5.  Now I just have to find a pro-contract by July.

PS

That was the smoothest peloton I’ve ever ridden in.  That alone is worth the cost of admission.

Tags: chicago bike racing, psimet racing, tim speciale, vernon hills

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Race Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.