So, stage 1 is not a stage. It was supposed to be a 45 lap criterium in St. Paul. But, the weather wasn’t great and the roads were wet. OH NO! We shouldn’t have to race with wet pavement on a short loop the field said. We raced about 30 minutes before an official on a motorcycle was doing some stupid stuff and ran into a rider. I was in the remains of the front group. Something like 20+ riders. Heathnet had virtually their whole team there. Kelley Benefits had a bunch of guys too. Stevic was the only Toyota guy. I never even got winded. Jonathan Page fell and nearly took me out, but that was only the close call for me. If the officials really were going to enforce the “complete half the race or miss the time cut” rule, there were not going to be many guys left. But, the motorcycle fell, they neutralized the race and that was it. Everyone bitched until they canceled it. No rain, no lightening. Just wet road.

I didn’t really feel like riding a wet criterium. I’ve fallen enough this season. But that is part of the sport. Especially during a stage race. I don’t understand why the officials would call a race just because some/most the riders didn’t want to keep going. There were a lot of man hole covers and lots of guys were falling down. But, that shouldn’t make any difference either. The main problem nowdays with races like this is that the officials have no ability to do their jobs when it gets just a little sketchy. They shouldn’t have allowed so many automobiles and motorcycles on the course. Plus, they didn’t have any way to score the event. Shows how small our sport is when the officials continually can’t score a rainy criterium. Whatever. Guess the race starts tomorrow. 70 mile road race at 5 pm.

Nothing much to report here. It might have been the easiest stage that I’ve ever done in all the NVGP’s I’ve ridden. Only 66 miles and little wind. In the 70’s. Nothing to complain about there. The field pretty much stayed together for the whole 57 mile big loop. The finish loop is 5 laps of a pretty technical circuit. That is where it got harder. I haven’t seen the results, but maybe 1/2 the field came in together. Healthnet rotated for the last 3 laps and cranked it up abit the last lap. Enough to put most of us out of contention. I realized pretty early that I wasn’t going to be able to move up to sprint, so I just kept floating further back the last mile, just trying to stay connected to receive winner’s time. Kirk Obee won. Not sure who else was up there.

Tomorrow is a 6 mile TT in the morning. Finishes up a pretty good hill. Then the Minneapolis Criterium I won a couple years ago in the evening. Not too hard a day either. I didn’t bring any aero equipment along, so I’ll just cruise the TT on my road bike. There is so much time to lose on Saturday and Sunday that the TT doesn’t really come into play that much for me. Or most of the rest of the field.

The leadouts at the end of the races now, especially criteriums or circuit races, are pretty interesting . Healthnet or whoever is up there only rides on the inside of the course. By that, I mean that if it was a 4 left hand corner criterium, they ride in the left gutter on all sides and swing out at the last minute to the right to negotiate the corner. If the riders behind try to get past the 8 riders in front, they are chopped when the leadout swings out wide to turn. So effectively, the team in control can rotate slower for a longer time and the riders behind end up doing intervals behind. In is pretty dangerous and I’m not sure what I think of it, but it is pretty effective.