Tour of America's Dairyland Wrap-up

I'm typing this from my phone as I speed through Illinois, away from Dairyland and towards St. Louis for a few days.

So you probably guessed that by my lack of an update yesterday, the road race didn't go so hot. Well, you were right. Well it was really hot, just not from a performance standpoint. It was literally 100 degrees and we were supposed to race 80 miles on a 10 mile course.

A break went pretty much from the gun and we hand Greg in it and so we were pretty much chillin in the field as a team. It was actually cooler to get out in the wind a bit, so I would occaisonally go to the front toride in the wind, rather than sit in the stagnant air in the middle of the group. The racing gradually got more intense as the laps wore on. I was getting at least one if not two bottles every time through the feed zone, and I'm not even much of a drinker in races.

Eventually I saw a group going up the road with Andy Crater, Frank Travesio, Ben Raby, and Pat Lemiux. It looked promising, so I dragged my weak legs across to it. I don't know what I expected, but it was really hard. Travesio and Crater were literally pulling at 35mph all the time. I was sitting on chewing on my stem, praying for mercy. I felt a bit better when I saw Raby was hurting as bad as me though. Eventually all the groups on the road had exploaded. The break was shelling guys and we soon cam upon Greg's corpse rolling along. He was totally shot. I got popped out of my group. The field caught me and it was tiny, but I went right out the back of it too. When my lights went out, they went out real hard. I pedaled squares back to the feed zone and called it a day. Dan and Vince were the only Panther guys to survive the day. Dissapointment was abundant as we went and sat by lake Winnebago until we felt like getting back in the cars.

Today we were all a little salty from the road race, so were we determined to get some.The course seemed like it was gonna be an easy one, but I don't know about the other guys, but it was harder than I thought it would be. Lots of attacks went and came back for about 45 minutes of racing, but one actually got a nice gap and we had Dan in it. A 2 man move with Frank "the tank" Travesio. They worked well together and got a nice gap. I ended up in a 7 man chase group with a bunch of former PRO's aiming to beat me down. Ben Raby (Kodak Sierra Nevada), Chad Hartley (BMC, Jittery Joe's) and Adam Bergman (Colavita). Since I had a guy up the road, I wasn't pulling through. They didn't like that. They were trying to ride me out of it every time one of them pulled off. So these gaps would open up and we would all be forced to close them or get dropped from the chase. This wore on me pretty good. With 4 to go, a group of 4 more guys came up and so now our group of 11 was sprinting for 3rd. Andy Moskal of our team was in the group of 4 to join late. The attacks atarted immediately. It was all I could do to cover them and when the sprint came I was totally smashed. I ended up in freaking 13th. Andy was 6th and Dan got beat by Travesio, but still it was a good day for the team.

As I was driving, I was getting pissed at myself for botching that situation so hard, but I also realized I'm at the emd of a 9 race in 18 day period. I'm seriously due for some rest before Fitchburg. But I guess if you told me I'd be able to race this much this month and not be feeling sick, I would have been pleased just to participate as much as I have.

My GPS is telling me that I'll be in St. Louis in 153 more miles, so it looks like I'll have time for a bit more reflection before I hit the hay.

I hope this mega long post from my phone actually works. Thanks for reading!