I bring you this update from a doubley male occupied queen size bed in the Muskie Motel in the booming metropolis of Muscatine, Iowa. And yes, The Muskie is a nice as it sounds.
We're out here for the memorial day weekend races that include a Friday RR, followed by 3 crits, one of which being Snake Alley. So far we've completed half of the weekend so I figured I get you up to speed.
Well we nearly missed the start to the road race because we rode our bikes to the wrong side of tracks, literally. We went to get a bite to eat (a six inch sub and three cookies), and the worlds longest train blocked us from getting back to the start. The train was about 7 minutes long but we arrived with a whopping 3 minutes to spare. So I just finished my cookies on the neutral roll out.
In an unusual development, a break stuck and we weren't represented, so we fought for scraps in the field sprint. Chris 7th, Paul 10, yours truly 12th. Nothing to write home about but we all kept our skin on the sketchy run into town.
Saturday was the main event of the weekend, the Snake Alley Criterium. We did 20 laps, whick meant 20 trips up the short but steep Snake. Its a rough brick climb with 5 switchbacks and is only 30 seconds long or so. The race normally blows up completely except for the group of leaders.
This year I found myself in the lead group of 15 or so with Paul off the front with some crazy Ukrainian dude. Well Paul dropped his chain and was coming back to the field so I tried to get on the front and set a little slower pace, but all that my efforts on the front accomplished was putting me into the red, and with 90 degree temps, there was no recovering.
The leaders dropped me with 1.5 laps to go, just going over the top of the snake. So I rolled in alone to finish 18th. That doesn't sound like much, but it really isn't terrible considering the parcours. I am kind of disappointed because if I had been a little mire conservative and stayed out of the wind a but more, I'm sure I could have stayed with the leaders for the remaining 3 min of racing and factored into the sprint for 5th. I guess you learn from your mistakes, but an extra 500 bucks sure would be welcome in my pockets.
We still have two crittier crits left this weekend and those are just what I like, so hopefully we can pop off a win and get errbody's pockets phat.
Here's a link to the race coverage Geraint, the man behind Bloomington Velo-News, wrote for Podium Insight.
http://www.podiuminsight.com/2010/05/29/starchyk-miller-win-snake-alley-criterium/
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