Chiropractic Crit and Wonder Lake crit

So today's my birthday! It's also the one year anniversary of my freaking broken collarbone injury. Last year I was doing a race on my birthday out in montana, and not only did I get dropped on a hardcore 3 mile 2000 ft climb, right before the finish, someone acted stupid and totally crashed me out and broke my collarbone. But it's alright--I've strategically planned a way to prevent this from happening again this year. Recovery Day!!

Well I had two races this past weekend. One was pretty sweet, and one was... less than sweet.

Chiropractic Crit:

I went and drove up to wisconsin for this race. The course was awesome--smooth, tucked in a little residential community, and very tough. It was a .8 mile loop that was broken into thirds. One third was a flat into a headwind, one third was a little ringed 35 second climb, and one third was a down hill. Figuring I wanted me some training, I went and registered for the 3's and the 1/2/3's.
The 3's race started easy enough, I was near the front for the first 25 minutes, and things were going good. Then, bam-- All of a sudden, I ain'ts got me no more matches, and I totally blow up, getting myself droooooopped. Talk about an ego blow. Then, to make matters worse, I remember they don't give refunds, so I go and line up with the 1/2/3's. This time I only made it 10 minutes before I got ridden away from. D-d-d-dang. Them Wisconsin riders are stroong.
After dissecting my epic loss, I think I can blame it on one thing. I aint no good at hill repeats. I don't practice them, and it shows. Time for some trips to lemont! Also, weighing 79 kilos don't help much either.

Wonder Lake Crit:

So I wanna start out by saying, Shame on all you chicago guys who didn't come out to this race!

This town did an awesome job hosting a bike race! They had community support, volunteers, even boy scout troops helping! Plus the whole town just sorta camped out next to the course the whole day and made for awesome spectators who cheered for anyone they saw, regardless of teams, or even whether you were warming up instead of racing!
The course wasn't super complicated, just a 4 corner with a sliiiight hill on the backside that followed a kinda narrow turn. After the day before's debacal, I was happy to see a flat course to try to redeem myself on. When I lined up with the 3's, I was kinda surprised- there were only 13 guys in our field!! Come ON! Then it also sunk in, that out of those 13 guys, 5ish belonged to Burham Racing, 4ish were from South Chicago Wheelman, and the remaining 4 were an unrepresented rabble of me, Tyler from triple X, another guy from the southwest collegiate conference, I think his name was mike? and a WDT guy. From this point on, to simplify things, I'm gonna refer to those not racing for South Chi or Burnham as "Team Awesome".
So I knew that Burnham and South Chi would try to put someone into the break. I didn't think it would happen on the second lap. But it did. The second time up the slight hill in the back, a burnham guy attacked and a south chi guy followed. By the time I stopped being foolish and realized that they definitely would be able to stay away, they had a 20 second gap, and with the help of their team mates, it was growing. I tried a couple bridging attempts, but every move was swiftly countered by Burnham. After a couple more laps, Team Awesome realized that we needed to work together if we wanted anything better than sprinting for 3rd, so we mobilized, and started doing organized pulls. Our work started to pay off, and by the time we got to 5 laps to go, we were really close to catching the break. With 4 to go, the South Chi guy in the break cracked, and floated back to the field. With him back, I was expecting some help from the rest of the South Chi team to bring back the Burnham guy, but to no avail. Also, right then, the Burnham guys were looking mighty strong, especially Julian, who had just soloed to win the O'Fallon race the day before. So even if we did catch the guy in the break, they had another real strong guy and fresh guy who could go up the road just as easily.
So with 3 laps to go, Team Awesome figured sprinting for second was alright. The sprint was pretty sweet--see, I'm kinda like a locomotive in the sense that, I don't have the most explosive force, and my acceleration ain't amazing, but once I get up to speed, I can hold some pretty decent power for 10-15 seconds. Which is why at 300 yards, I was behind everyone, and when I crossed the finish line, I was 3rd in the field sprint, 4th overall. Unfortunately, that was one spot, and about 3 feet out of winning 70 bucks. Oooh well.
On a side note, Burnham did win the race (and awesome job guys, you totally earned it!), but Team Awesome took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in the field sprint! Not too shabby!

Following the race, I decided to take advantage of the amazing weather, and great scenery and hills, and go riding. The hills and strong winds helped make for a pretty solid ride, and by the end of the day, I did another 75 miles.