There is something about racing at night that makes it very hard to get to sleep.  I really like racing later in the day/night, but last night it didn’t treat me so good. I crashed.

The Lafayette Park race has gone on forever.  The surrounding neighborhood has really went through a revitalization.  It used to be pretty shady.  Lots of boarded up old homes. Beautiful homes, but neglected.  Not now.   This homes are spectacular.  There is even an old church that has been turned condos.  It is amazing.  I talked to one of the owners during the women’s race and he said the upper ones have 50 foot ceiling and one has the pipe organ in it. It is nice to witness a city changing for the good.

The course is just 4 corners and open.  It is fast.  They put up way more lights that in the past. There was hardly a dark area.

I felt alright.  Not great, but okay.  The speeds were pretty unbelievable constantly.  It wasn’t that hard, but it was quick.  I had a 30 mph average after the first few laps.  Everything was fine until about 7 to go.  That is when Unitedhealthcare went to the front to try to control the race.   They did the stupid riding the inside of the course tactic, then swing wide at the corners.  They didn’t invent this stupid shit bike racing, but they use it virtually every race they do.  It is so dangerous and on a course like this, it doesn’t do anything but hurt people and break equipment.  Plus, they are going slower than the race normally would be going.  I looked at Strava and nearly all the laps they are leading towards the end are some of the slowest of the race.  I don’t know how to fix this, but it needs to disappear from criterium racing.

I think there was one crash before the last 7 or 8 laps.  Of course there are more crashes at the end of a night time criterium because people are jockeying for position, but the ones at the end of this race were caused by the field being continually chopped by the UHC team at the front.

With 2 1/2 laps to go, on the 2nd side, the UHC guys were strafing the field and someone got overlapped and a crashed occurred in the middle of the field.  It was pretty close to the front.  I was a few guys back and ran into a pile without even tapping my brakes.  I thought is was going to be ugly, but for me, I came out of it relatively unscathed.  A Elbowz guy, seemed the worst.  I think he might of broken his collarbone, but I couldn’t really tell.  My lower back is tweaked, I’m missing some skin, but I’m not complaining.  My bike too came out okay.  Just my seat was destroyed.  I took a huge Crescent wrench and tried to straighten it, but it bent the wrench. That is crazy.  I guess seat rails are pretty strong.

And it didn’t come close to working out for UHC.  They didn’t place a rider in the top 3.  The course was way too wide open and a group of riders could always go over the top because of that.  Aldo Ilesic won the race.  He came directly back from the Red Hook fixed gear race in Barcelona, where I think he finished 4th and his team mate won.  Daniel Holloway was 2nd and local team rider Bryan Gomez from Gateway Harley Davidson was 3rd.

I talked to Daniel Holloway before the race and he said he was putting on a ceramic chain that was supposed to save him 5 watts.  He has huge jockey wheels on his rear derailleur that are supposed to save some more watts.  Seems to me that it just adds chain, but what do I know.

Today the race is at Francis Park at 5:15, so it will be light out.  I need to try to bend my seat more or get a new saddle.  I think I have one lined up with the Elevate guys, but would rather ride my own saddle.  I’d like to sleep some more.  I don’t think that is going to work out.

Pretty quick race. I’m sure it would have just gotten faster if I would have ridden the last two laps.

A house right at the start/finish line. The whole park is lined by these.

Riding to the race at sunset.

Results

Tucker on the drive yesterday.

This might be the most boring “race report” I’ve ever done.  There isn’t much to write about yesterday’s race.  The course is a 4 corner, wide open criterium.  It was going around and around fairly quickly, but it was never hard.  Our average speed was always hovering around 30 mph, which seems fast, but it really wasn’t hard.

On the last lap, on the final corner, I thought I was in pretty okay position, but probably should have been a little more inside.  A couple guys ahead of me got tangled up and fell.  I had to grab a bunch of brake and then go super wide around the corner.  I came out of the corner about 50 guys back, but more importantly, 100 meters from the front of the field.  I sprinted a couple times, but realized I needed to not be in the wind the whole lap.

I made a sort of sketchy move, which I was called out on, with two corners to go.  I dove the inside of the corner, but there was tons of room, but I guess I scared some guy.  He came up to me after the race and was mad.  He said we were going for 50th place and why take risks.  I told him I didn’t take any risk.  He said he had to pull his brakes.  I asked him why that mattered if we were going for 50th place?  He didn’t really have an answer for that, but he was still pissed. In reality, he was closer to right than me, but if that was the worse incident he had in this race, then he should be happy.

I passed a few more guys and was hoping they might regroup a little, but no luck.  It stayed in line going 35+, so I ended up 33th place.  I did have a KOM on the 3rd side of the course, averaging 39.9 mph.  I was going pretty hard, but it is a little downhill too.  I finished 5 seconds back, which is about how far back I was at the first corner after avoiding the crash, so it goes to show you how important positioning is at the finishes of these races.  Especially when you don’t have a ton of race speed to make up for problems, which inevitably, always occur.

Today is a much harder race.  It is called the Hill area of St. Louis and is the Italian section.  I’ve had good races here historically.  I don’t think I ever have won this race, but know I’ve finished 2nd a couple times, then lots in the top 10.

I have set low goals today, just wanting to get a full race in.  I need race miles for sure, I can tell. I’m not as bad as I suspected, but am not that great.  I ended up with over 80 miles yesterday, counting a hour ride in the morning, then riding to and from the race, plus the 36 miles of racing.  I’m a little tired.

I didn’t catch up on sleep.  We had to get up early because Trudi had an early flight.  She is heading up to Canada for the two World Tour races there next week.  So I’m alone on Tucker duty.   It is a little time consuming staying at a hotel and all, but we have a routine, so it will be fine.

It is supposed to be in the middle 80’s today, then over 90 tomorrow.  The races get progressively harder as the temperatures are getting higher.   That’s not good.

The Tour of Spain has been pretty great the last few days.  I have it playing right now.  I’m not sure how Quintana got away from Chris Froome, but it is making for interesting tactics.

There was a lot of drafting to be had yesterday.

I saw this house by the Mississippi River yesterday out riding. It is build on a boat with poles beside it so it can just raise up when the river floods.

This is the church on the Layfayette Park course that has been turned into condos. I’d like to see the inside of the upper units. The ceilings have to be 50 feet high.

The St. Louis arch.

Trudi at the St. Louis airport this morning.

I hate being on the 2nd page of races like this.

Tucker must have wanted some water after the race yesterday.