Nature Valley started today. Having abit of a computer access problem so I’ll update more later. The weather is cool here in Minneapolis. Barely in the 70’s. Tom Zirbel, Bissell, won the TT this morning. 6 miles finishing on a 800 meter climb. I sucked. I generallly suck at Time Trialing now that everyone has time trial bikes. I swore last year I was going to get one. I almost did last week. I felt pretty good, just went pretty slow. Zirbel recovered pretty well from his big effort in Philly on Sunday. He beat Rory Sutherland, Ouch, by 13 seconds.

The St. Paul Criterium was tonight. Bissell had 6 riders finish in the top 12 in the time trial, so the race was destined to be a field sprint. The course was 1 km with one side having a slight climb and the start/finish stretch downhill. There were a zillion man hole covers that were recessed. It was stupid dangerous. Not because of the road surface. Mainly because of the way that Bissell was setting tempo at the front. They were only riding the inside of the course and swinging out for each corner at the last minute, jacking up the riders behind. A 4 rider break stayed away until the last lap. Colivita did a crazy fast leadout the last km and Haedo won. The front of the field shattered. I thought I was in pretty good position, but got tangled up and shuffled back. I had a bunch of juice still on the last lap, but the front of the field split. I was just trying to reconnect to the front and ended up 10th. There were huge gaps, but I’m sure the officials will score the field with one time. The average speed was pretty fast. I had something in the high 28 mph range at the end. Pretty quick considering how many times a lap you had to be fully on the brakes. It was starting to rattle a fair amount of guys. I was okay with it. That was just how it was going to be.

Tomorrow, the Cannon Falls Road Race doesn’t start until 5 pm. It’s less than 70 miles, so it will be a field sprint again. There won’t be any real bike racing until the last hour on Saturday in Mankato. The finishing circuit there is very hard and it will decide the GC.

I rode to the time trial and criterium and back, so it was a good mileage day. Not sure what I’m getting the mileage for other than I like riding my bike in new places.