7th Place Feels Better Than 8th
This past Saturday marked the end of the ICA’s Illinois Cup and heading into the day, Chris Curran (Burnham) was the points leader. Not surprisingly, Burnham came out in full force with 11 cat 3′s. For the first time, I felt I was racing with a full roster as a 3. PSIMET fielded myself and Scott Knoepke, Raviv Wolfe (who has been out with injury), Jason Senffner (who hasn’t had as much time to race as he’d like) and Jared Craft (who’s race was his first as a 3).
The plan was fairly simple, in the unlikely event that Burnham would let something trickle up the road, we would try to be a part of it. In the more likely event of a bunch sprint, we would try and succeed. The context of the race–11 Burnham riders trying to secure 1st place in the Illinois Cup for Curran–meant a fairly straight forward approach. There has been a tendency this year for these races to feel a little slow, cramped, and bunched up. That was not the case Saturday.
As soon as the whistle blew the field sprinted from the line into a long strung-out line of riders. I thought, “So it’s going to be like that, huh?” And for the most part, it was. Naturally Burnham wasn’t the only team there (which reminds me, Burnham and Bloomington should get together for a “Diverge the appearance of our kits” committee meeting) and they weren’t the only ones keeping the pace up.
This kept me near the back of the field for a lot of the race as I had no intentions of over-working myself to stay up front in a race that I knew that wouldn’t matter until the end. The race was clean from my perspective for the most part, the higher speeds in combination with a few sketchy stretches of pavement out of a few of the turns made for some hairy moments but until 4 laps to go the race was fairly uneventful.
At this point in the race I was focusing on moving up to position and staying there. As we entered turn number…i’m not really sure (are large U’s 1 turn or 2)…going into the back stretch I saw a rider slide to the ground and subsequent bikes tumble. I narrowly missed this mishap but now a large gap had formed between those in front and those in back of the wreck. Fortunately I saw Knoepke in front of me and he is the engine that can with a draft to match. He, myself, and a few other riders made contact with the main group within a lap. As we rolled through the wreck, everyone appeared fine and the road was clear.
Still, as we came upon the start/finish we were neutralized with 3 laps remaining. It sort of made the previous 45 minutes feel like a bit of a waste. We were given an extra lap and eventually sent on our way.
I thought the restart would be hotter than it was and so I was right where I felt I needed to be going into the last few laps. Leading into the final U-turn I found myself behind Curan and Senffner. We passed a handful of riders on the outside and just before we were to come on the exit of the final turn, Jason’s wheel skipped up enough to cause Chris and myself to ease up a bit, fortunately no-one wrecked.
Ultimately I wasn’t aggressive enough going into that final turn and was too far back regardless of Senffner’s 30mph skip-to-his-lou. As I made my sprint I felt that welcome feeling of other riders leaving my peripheral–unfortunately being as many wheels back as I was, it was a whole lot of “meh”, finishing 7th–1 away from any points and 2 away from any bucks.
In other humorous news…
I wasn’t able to make it out to Wood Dale but Jared Craft was. I’m not positive if he’s done many (or any) ABR races and apparently is still a Cat 5. It seems he made a request to not have to race as a 5 only to be denied, which is a little odd if you ask me. As I expected him to do, he won the race. And all the primes.
Some Shill
I’ve never used any chamois cream until Wayne gave me a sample of his ButtonHole. I admit I have nothing to compare it to, but I also have not had a single issue with my taint since. I now own an 8oz tub as it’s the best chamois cream I’ve ever used. Seriously. It’s worth noting that at $20 for 8oz, it’s twice the value of Assos or DZ, and Enzo donates 10% of that to children’s charities…so you’re saving your taint, and some kids in-need.
Feed some local business at http://www.enzoscyclingproducts.com
This one may seem obvious, but I’m loving my custom wheels from PSIMET. I’ve never had a set of wheels give me as little trouble as these.
As for PelotonPoints.com, it remains neglected as I race and real work gets in the way. Much improvement and functionality remains in its future.
Tags: chamois cream, grayslake, illinois cup, jared craft, jason senffner, psimet, raviv wofle, scott knoepke, tim speciale