Fitchburg TT and Circuit Race

Sorry for the delay in updates from Fitchburg, it's been raining everyday out here, so most of our would be down time has turned into bike cleaning and clothes cleaning and shoe drying time.

So let's back up a few days. Greg and I got out here on Tuesday night, to our host Steve Roszko's house. Wednesday we rode the TT course 3 times in the rain to try to get a feel for it. Thursday was the TT, a 9 mile out and back with some pretty good rollers. For those of you Bloomington peeps, very similar to the Forrest TT, only bigger rollers. Anyway, I rode hard, but just couldn't really ever get my effort level down. I was always going too hard or too easy trying to recover from my going too hard. My time wasn't very good, but I didn't have too high of expectations either. I'm just happy to be out here racing in the big races again.

Yesterday was a 75 mile circuit race on a 3 mile loop. The loop had a pretty steep climb that took about 1 min or so to get over. So we did the climb 25 times and it definitely took its toll on the field. The race was all about positioning, because after the climb the course continued on a false flat for another mile or so. That's where all the carnage happened. People would open gaps and if you were too far back, that was it.

170 people started the race, and I think something like 70-80 finished in the lead group. People started getting dropped pretty early and I was still hanging around in the front group late in the race. Colavita came to the front with 4 to go to help Bissel chase the break and that's when I really started to feel the burn. I got dumped off the back with a lap and a half to go and rode in with some of the other groups that were scattered all over the road. I finished a half lap down, but wasn't sure where that put me because there were people everywhere, some 2 and 3 laps down. I'm sure getting results sorted out was a nightmare. It really sucks to come unglued from the field so late in the race, but I really had nothing left in my legs. Oh, I almost forgot. I crashed again! Some fools stacked it up right in front of me at the base of the climb on the second lap. So I'm watching the field ride away from me on the climb as I'm sitting there kicking at my pedal thinking this might be the end of my race. Luckily I got back on after a few minutes of sprinting. I was definitely breathing through my eyes after that one though.

So that's about all that's been going on our here bike racing wise. Steve has been an awesome host and his kids have been pretty hilarious. His 2.5 year old son Broadie told me he was going to pee on me and his almost 6 year old son Oscar stuffed a giant meat ball in his mouth and insisted on showing me his progress after every chew. His kids are great, but like Steve said it would be, staying with them is definitely good birth control.

110 mile RR starts in about 1.5 hours. This update brought to you from my mobile telephone... This time I wasn't driving though.