Tour De Champaign

Sorry I never finished my updating from Fitchburg, it really wasn't all that eventful. The road race was hard and the crit was kinda hard and I finished in the overall, 70th or something like that. Not necessarily something to put on the top of the resume, but I think it's going to be really good for my fitness. After a 6AM flight and a 175 dollar charge to fly my bike, I made it back to my own bed for the first time in 3 weeks. I put another medium-hard week of training in this week so that I could get a nice big block including F-burg. The legs aren't so snappy, but with a little recovery I should be in good shape.

Now I'm hanging out at Mark Swartzendruber's house in Champaign, IL for the weekend for two new races on the calendar, with some pretty healthy purses too. Yesterday was the first of two crits and our team brought four guys out to try to get some results. The pre-reg wasn't very big, so we thought there field might not be too tough and we could put 4 in the top 5 (just kidding). Turns out Texas Roadhouse had the same idea. On top of 6 or 7 Roadhouse, there were a few ABD guys and that Webcor guy from Dairyland. I think his name is Ryan Parnes, butt hhe's really strong and I believe may have won a race or two up there. Aaaanyway, the racing was pretty aggressive because everyone was looking for the break to go early, but everyone wanted to be in it. Lots of promising moves went and came back until a big group of 10 or so got away, and a few others even bridged up later. The break was huge and the field pretty much shut down. We had me and Vince in the move, TRH had 3 guys including Puffer, Parnes made it, Jeff Schroetlin from ABD was there, so it had some pretty good horse power. There were a few late race attacks that were aimed at splitting the break up, but nothing worked until we got the bell. A guy from IS Corp attacked through the start/finish and it was basically full gas from there. That caused a split of 6 of us and Vince was there too. Coming through the last corner, Puffer tried to take a line that wasn't really there and pretty much t-boned Ryan Parnes and took out Vince in the process. I had my back wheel locked up and was in full Tokyo Drift to avoid the bike and bodies that were flying. Schroetlin and I had to pretty much start our sprint from a stop and I ended up second and Jeff was third. The IS Corp guy got through the corner without any real obstruction and took the win. Chris and Derek took 2nd and 3rd in the field sprint, but it sure would have been nice to keep Vince upright and have another guy in the top 5, but as they say, that's bike racing. I think everyone is feeling pretty good for today, so hopefully we can get off this damn 2nd place streak the team is on.

Check ya later.