Tonight was the kick off race for Downer’s Grove. Exactly the same course they use for the National Championships tomorrow. Just 50km in length. 7:10 pm start. Normally this is the fastest race of the weekend. Being only 50K and everyone fresh. But tonight was different. It didn’t seem like a lot of guys wanted to expend much energy. Breaks were going up the road every lap and no one seemed to concerned about making sure they had a guy in the move or blocking. Lot of times there were 10-15 guys away. Luckily for the field that is usually too big of a group to work together.
Long story short, towards the end of the race, the last 10 laps, the field was together. Then a bunch of guys got away. And more got away. Eventually there were nearly 20 up the road. The field started with 140 or so guys. Lots were dropped, but there was still a gob of guys left. But, lot of pros were calling it a day. The Kelly Benefit guys started dropping out first. Then a bunch of Bissell guys. I was surprised that I was still around. That wasn’t any of my doing. The race wasn’t going full tilt like prior years. The few laps that it went hard, I wasn’t in control of my destiny. I have way too many excuses to use any of them. It was only painful maybe 5 or 6 of the 31 laps.
I’m not sure if the race started later than the previous years, but it was getting pretty dark the last 5 laps. I started moving up to the front the last 3 laps, but realized pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be sprinting for any place hardly. I think we might of caught a few dropped guys from the break on the last lap, but I just rolled in somewhere in the blob. Probably finished in the 20’s. Frank Pipp outsprinted Karl Menzies and Jeremy Powers to win. That was pretty good. Menzies was going pretty crazy good a couple weeks ago in Elk Grove. I really don’t know any more places than that. I wasn’t following the race up front as well as I normally would have. The race did have a okay average speed. Something in the mid 28mph range. A bit hot and a bit windy too.
Tomorrow I’m racing the Elite National Championships. It is a pitiful day when I’m hoping it comes down to a field sprint. That’s the only way I’m going to get a decent result. I’m not sure what that would be, but I’ll let you know tomorrow.
Do you think Lance would of beat Dave Wiens in Leadville by 28 minutes if Dave Wiens would of ridden the Tour?