I managed to stay upright and have all my skin after 4 days/nights of criterium racing in St. Louis. It is fairly unusual, especially approaching fall, where you can race four days of criteriums in a row.  It is just what I needed.

Yesterday, the race near Benton Park is the hardest race of the weekend.  The course has a ton of tricky corners and there is just enough elevation change that the field is super strung out and thus, lots of guys get shelled.

The race is really a positioning race.  If you’re not riding towards the front, you are putting out a ton more wattage than if you were.  Sometimes I’d be 400 meters up the start finish stretch and I’d hear Frankie Andreu say that the field is still coming around the last corner.  All I could think was that those guys have nearly no control of their destiny.

The race was most likely going to be a field sprint.  So many of these teams that are travelling the NCC circuit have no other game plan than to field sprint, so that is what is going to usually happen.  UHC sent Adrain Hegywary off the front for a long break, but an individual was never going to stay away.  Even Brad Huff, who can field sprint crazy good, did a suicide solo move with a few laps to go.  He stayed away until the final lap, with UHC lining it up to haul him back in.

My race went just okay.  I was feeling alright, no speed as usual, but I wasn’t having any trouble dieseling back up out of the corners.  Towards the end of the race, I was concentrating on staying somewhat near the front of the field, which is easier said than done.

I was pretty good on the last lap, better than pretty good, just 5 or so guys behind the UHC train, which was 6 of them.  But, I made a huge error that I couldn’t recover from.

On the last right hand corner, about a km from the finish, I came into it a little hot, trying to be right on the wheel ahead of me.  After the corner, the road goes downhill for a few hundred meters, super fast, and if you’re not drafting it is game over.

Anyway, the two guys in front of me got into it a little bumping match and my front wheel got in between them, I had to tap my brakes and that was it.  I was two or three bikes lengths off and it was going over 40 mph.  I ended up riding  the whole stretch in the wind, with just two corners to go.  RIght before the next left corner, a lot of guys went by me.  I was lucky to be able to slot back into line and get back up to speed, but by then I had lost 10 slots and a good result wasn’t possible.

Coming out of the last corner, a guy that had just went by my outside, I think it was Nolan Tankersley, took the corner way too wide and fell.  His bike hit the barrier and bounced back towards me.  See video below.  It is weird, because from recollection, it seemed like the bike was higher and way closer than it really was.  I had to swerve, which you can see on the video.  I passed a few leadout guys before the finish, but I was going nowhere, having wasted all my energy screwing up earlier.  I finished 19th.

I guess I feel better about finishing 19th than 17th the day before.  I was in a good position to have a result, but didn’t have the juice to recover from a huge mistake.  And the huge mistake was just tapping my brakes once.  Bike racing is interesting in that regard.

There seemed to be a lot of crashes the whole weekend.  I’m not sure why that was.  There was lots of bumping and elbows being thrown, but I never saw anyone fall from that.  Maybe it is the stiff bikes and harsh ride of carbon, deep-dish wheels.  Or the “new” position of having your handlebars way down, no headset spacers.  Or maybe it was because a ton of guys were at their limit and they make mistakes then.  Whatever the reason, there were probably 15-20 guys that fell each day.  Multiply that by 4 days, then it was 80 separate riders falling.  Out of 130 starters, that is over a 60% chance of hitting the ground.  That doesn’t count the guys that fell more than once.  Seems high.

After 4 days of racing criteriums, I moved up from 1300th best criterium rider in the country, according to USAC criterium ranking system, to 35th.  The reason for this was the quality of the field.  The best guys in the country were there, so the ranking numbers are very skewed.   I’m not the 35th best criterium rider in the country, so the rankings are not correct, which they never hardly are.

Driving back from St. Louis last night was way more dangerous than the race.  We drove into a huge storm just past Kansas City and it was blinding rain until Topeka, which is 60 miles.  We came upon a SUV that was on its side in the middle of the interstate.  There were two highway patrol cars already there, but no one was outside and no one was moving.  A bolt of lightning struck right next to the van.  It was so loud and bright that it scared the shit out of us.  Catherine didn’t have any power when I dropped her off.  I love weather, but it can sometimes be super scary when you are in it.

It is supposed to rain on and off all day here in Kansas.  I’m sure I’ll find a slot to be able to go out for a spin.  I didn’t wake up that tired today, but it is usually tomorrow, 2 days after, when it hits.  So, two weeks until Chequamegon.  I need to ride my MTB a ton this week I think.

I’m in the blue, swerving around the bike that was missing its front wheel.

Chequamegon is a race I’ve done a zillion times.  Well, that is an exaggeration, but I’ve ridden the race since 1998 I think, so 17 times now.  Even with being injured over the years, I’ve never been hurt enough to have to miss the race, which is mildly incredible.

I know the course like the back of my hand, which is an advantage, but there are a lot of guys that know the course super well.  And it’s not really a course, anymore, that you really have to know perfectly.  Over the years the 40 miles from Hayward to Telemark have gotten more and more well groomed and it’s nearly more like a technical gravel grinder than MTB race. Whatever you want to call it, the race is a blast and my favorite weekend of the season.

This year, I was a little more iffy than others past.  Usually, I know whether I am going to be in contention.  This year I felt pretty okay, but was so on and off on a daily basis  that I was just hoping to have a great day. And that didn’t happen.  I only had a so/so day.

As usual, the race is controlled through Hayward until it hits a couple mile asphalt stretch on highway 77.  That is when the race starts.  The quads accelerated and I stayed on one as long as my gears allowed.  The field was just really strung out.  We stayed together and I jumped for Rosie’s field and hit it in the lead.  There is a new road just a couple hundred meters into the field and it was soupy, so I wanted to be at the front crossing the road.  It wasn’t an issue.

Then the front group started forming in the field and by the time we hit the Birkie ski trail, a couple minutes later, we were in line going pretty hard.  Here I felt just okay.  It was still a huge group and I knew most of the guys riding in front of me, but not all.  Jeff Hall was riding at the front quite a bit and when he was pulling it was going fast.

We stayed together for the first Birkie trail section, on Phipps Fire Rd. then back to the Birkie Trail for 6 more miles.  I got a little shuffled back further than I wanted, but felt okay enough not to worry about it too much.  About half way to OO, Jeff Hall pulled out from a couple guys back and jumped.  I was super surprised that no one reacted.  I was probably 10-15 guys back and  it was bumpy grass off the dirt trail, so I just stayed in line.

I knew Jeff was going well.  He done the same thing in the Lutzen 99’er a couple months ago and it took Brian and I around 40 miles to chase him down and we only had 25 miles here.  I rode up to Brian Matter and said that if we didn’t go the race was over.  Brian already knew the situation and he did go to the front and took a big pull.  Right before OO, I jumped and got a small gap.  I was planning on going hard until I could at least see Jeff. But as we cross OO and re-entered the Birkie trail I heard a time split of 1:15.  I though, “shit, it’s over”.  Jesse LaLonde, who has won the race before, on a singlespeed, came by and I just sat up.  We hit Janet Road and there were less than 20 of us left, but no one had any interest in riding together.

At Martel’s pot hole area, the most technical part of the course, a doubletrack with some water holes and a couple trickey, fast descents, I jumped again.  I had ridden the section a couple days earlier and was hoping to split the group to a reasonable size that might feel compelled to work together.  I had a fast line around the front huge puddle and hit it from there.  After a bit, Dave Flaten, US Air Force, was right on me and he told me we had a gap.  I rode the rest of the section pretty steady, but didn’t feel like I have big accelerations in me.  We lost a few guys, but there were still 15 of us by the time we got out to Bodecker.

There are some long stretches on Bodecker and we couldn’t see anyone ahead.  This is probably where I started loosing motivation.  Not that I’m not interested in getting 2nd in Chequamegon, but I am way less interested in racing for 2nd than for 1st and it seemed like we were racing for 2nd.  So, I just sat at the back, waiting for the next narrow section to try to get away again.

That section is before a couple miles before the high point.  I jumped again and Dave and I separated again.  When we got out to the road, Dave took a big pull, but just a bit later, starting up a small climb before the high point, Corey Stelljes jumped  by and put in a big dig.  It had rained the night before and this section had a bunch of water puddles that weren’t there on Wednesday.  I got shuffled back a bit and we had some issues deciding which side to negotiate the puddles, so we got a little split up.  We got back onto the snow mobile track before the Firetower Climb and this is where it really went south for me.

I was too far back in line for climbing the Seeley Firetower Climb.  It is a 2-3 minute climb that goes up in 4 pitches.  It is rocky and somewhat tricky.  I was 4 or 5 guys back turning up the climb.  Brian Matter came on my inside pretty hot and I got a little twisted up heading up the first steep section.  I was planning on leading up the climb and never thought I’d be back in line.

The climb was way slicker than I’d anticipated, from the rain.  I spun my rear wheel on a root, then again on some wet rocks and lost a few bike lengths.  I wasn’t worried because I felt aright.  I was planning on riding the steep pitches easy, then the transitions hard, but I bobbled again and a couple guys went by, one was Jesse LaLonde, the other Jesse Bender.  I got behind Jesse and he was climbing just steady.  But it was too slow and we were losing the group.  I only have myself to blame, I opened up the original gap and was confident I could close it on the top.  Jesse was dismounting and running the steep sections.

Anyway, I went over the top maybe 20 seconds back. I saw that a couple guys split off the front of the group, it was Dave and Corey, but I thought it would probably get back together. RIght then I heard a time split to Jeff at 1:45.  That was bad.

I followed Jesse and his Kuhl team mate to the Birkie Trail and then took off again, thinking I would get back to the group racing for 2nd, but that wasn’t to be.  After about half the Birkie section, there was a group of 5 just a 100 meters ahead of me on the hills, but I wasn’t going good enough.  I made up about half the distance and knew if I didn’t catch them by the end of the Birkie Trail I was done for.  And I didn’t.

When I got to the road, about 7 miles from the finish, they were gone and I was alone.  I was feeling okay and got going pretty good, but wasn’t that motivated.  I knew I was in the top 10 and didn’t really care if I got 4th or 9th.  So I rode to the finish alone in 9th, a little shell shocked.

What really surprised me when I arrived was that Dave Flatten, who had motored to 2nd, was only 8 seconds behind Jeff Hall at the end.   That bummed me out completely.  I thought Jeff had maybe blown the last 10 miles, but it is mainly downhill.  I talked to him and he said that he was going pretty good all the way to the finish.

As it turned out, we were getting erroneous time splits.  I know better than to listen to people I don’t know yelling out times, but when more than one person says the same thing, then it becomes believable.  Jeff actually had less than 40 seconds at the top of the Firetower.  If I would have been riding at the front, I probably could have seen him ahead.  That would have changed the whole race for me.  But I wasn’t riding the climb and the front and rode the climb horribly, thus wasn’t in contention at the end.

It is hard being upset not winning Chequamegon.  I wasn’t have that day.  But, it was a winnable year.  Brian and Tristan seemed to be a notch off.  Dave and Corey were riding incredibly strong and would have been hard to beat if it came down to the end, but the race, in retrospect was winnable.

Jeff Hall road incredible.  He was by himself for 25 miles and that isn’t an easy thing to do with the course so wide open in so many places.  A group nearly always rolls way faster than an individual can ride.

The day was perfect.  Cool at the start, then perfect.  The finish area was huge this year.  Molly was playing music and beer was flowing.  It was so nice just standing, soaking up the sun, endorphins running through my body.  We stayed around the venue for way longer than usual. I listened to Molly sing for a while and caught up with friends and future friends.

Bill had gotten split off right when we hit the Birkie trail early, but had got going later.  He said he was flying at the end and finished 26th, which was respectable getting shelled so early. Catherine rode a steady race and was 12th woman and won her age group handily.  She seemed happy, which she should, just getting back into the swing of racing, having moved back to Topeka 3 months ago.

Chloe Woodruff won the women’s race handily.  She rode super fast, just 13 minutes off the men’s time.  I think this is her 2nd win there.  She is local, so she must be super happy.

They moved the awards up to 4 pm and gave out the 40 mile awards first, so we didn’t have a chance to cut any wood, so yesterday we woke up and did that for a few hours.  Then we went and rode singletrack.

Today I’m flying to Richmond Virginia to the Road World Championships.  I am going to go for a ride in Minneapolis soon, then head over to the airport.  Trudi has been working like crazy for the team time trial, which was yesterday.  BMC won the event by 11 seconds and repeated their last seasons victory.  She sounded excited being behind the scenes in the whole adventure.

We’re staying in Richmond until early next week, then driving a BMC car back to the Midwest.   We might take a couple detours, but we’ll probably just decide those as they become clear.