Alternate Memorial Day Plans

For the last few years my Memorial Day plans have involved heading out to Iowa for the usual big money crits and what-not. Well this year, given my situation, I opted to head to St. Louis to visit Lauren for the long weekend as well jump in a circuit race on Sunday.

I got into town on Friday night and just kind of kicked it with Lauren and her fam for a while and ate and then ate some more. Saturday We went to her brothers High School Lacrosse game, which happened to be the state championship. It was my first lacrosse experience and it was rad. Her bro (RJ)'s team came back from 3 goals down with 5 minutes left to play and forced overtime. Then they scored early in OT to take the win. I was pretty into it and it was awesome to see RJ win a state title in his last game as a high school lacrosse player. Went for an easy hour spin Sat. night and watched the season finale of Lost that we had been holding off on watching. That show is outrageous. I wish I could quit watching, but I just can't.

Sunday we rolled out to the Wildwood circuit race for L's race at 9am and I helped her get ready to massacre some cat 4 women. She had a decent field for her race and managed to get 3rd by about half a bike length to the winner. She lead out the sprint and I think she had it in the bag if she hadn't "forgotten" to reach for a harder gear. Damn Little 5-ers. We ran in to St. Louis celeb Kevin Moore at the race and chatted with him for a few as well.

In my race I was determined to make it into the break, but didn't really think about the consequences of making the break... you have to work it to make it go. Well I got away with two of the local TT guys on the hilly circuit and they were punishing me. We were away for all but the first 2 or 3 laps of the race. For a bit we had Nathan Rice, a good cross racer from that area with us in the move, but he fell off the pace after some of the strong turns from the other two, not me. I tried to do what I could to help them out, but these dudes were seriously rolling it. I told them I wasn't going to sprint them and moved to the back of the break with a few laps to go so I didn't get in the way. They attacked each other with a half lap to go and I just cruised in by myself for 3rd. It was nice to make to move, but it definitely showed me that I've still got a long way to go before I'm back in real race shape.

I averaged 195 bpm for an hour... How's that for hurt box?

After a trip to Panera with K-Moore, Lauren and I headed to her family's lake house to do a whole lot of nothing... and we were successful. Took the boat out a bit, slept, ate. It was a nice way to spend the holiday. The weather was too rainy for me to work on my fabulous tan, but a solid weekend none the less.

A huge shout out to my teammates who had a solid weeknd in Iowa and the others who went to Pennsylvania for the weekend. Andy Moskal picked up a "W" in PA. Greg "Calves" Christian got second to Bergman at Quad Cities on Monday. Paul Martin took 2nd and Dan Campbell 7th at Snake Alley. Friday, Chris Uberti snuck in with the sprinters in the Burlington RR to take 8th. Good work guys. Looking forward to being back out there with you full time.