Steve Tilford

I’m a big proponent of shopping around for hotels at races. I obviously stay in a lot of hotels. I’m not really sure what a retail price of a hotel room should be, but they are sort of like diamonds, you should never pay retail, rooms are always discounted.

Hotel room prices have went up quite a bit recently. This Labor Day weekend is a case and point. The Gateway Cup is the first time I ever used Priceline to get hotel rooms. It probably was 10 years ago, I booked 4 rooms for my team at a Doubletree in Westport for $19 a room. So it was only $76 a night, plus taxes and fees, which can be substantial. It was almost ridiculous.

I’ve been checking for rooms for the next three nights. I sort of have turned into a hotel snob somewhat, so normally check out 3.5 to 4 star hotel. And these are the hotels that are discounted the most, so that works out fine. The cheapest hotel at Hotwire was $46, which was a 1 star near the St. Louis airport. I had been waiting for a 4 star hotel downtown, which showed up three days ago, but disappeared since. I wasn’t that big on staying downtown, but it is close to a couple of the races and is new territory.

When you keep checking back, you need to clear your cookies each time or the websites know you’re looking and the prices increase. You can pretty much figure out what hotels Priceline or Hotwire will give you if you use Bidding for Travel or Better Bidding websites. You go to the hotel lists at these sites and it shows what hotels are used by what sites. These sites are key to knowing what hotel you might get.

At Hotwire and Priceline, they show if the hotel is pet friendly. I figure out what hotel I’m going to get, then go to the website to check on the pet policies at the hotel. Hiltons, Doubletrees and such are the best for pets. It is a hassle worrying about taking your dog in and out of a hotel during a race weekend.

I got a 4 star hotel in downtown St. Louis, the St.Louis Union Station Doubletree, for $57 a night, for a total of $215 after adding $43 for taxes and fees. So it turns out to be around $70 a night. When you go to the website, the cheapest room is $169, plus taxes, so it is probably around $120 a night discount. I’m not who pays that amount, but you don’t have to.

The race isn’t until 9:15 tonight, so there is no rush today. Leaving mid afternoon, to try to miss traffic in Kansas City and St. Louis. Hopefully it will all go fine.

The Doubletree looks like a pretty nice hotel. Historic.

Tucker’s look when you tell him he can’t chew on your cycling shoes.

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.