We’re stay at host housing here at Nature Valley. I’m usually pretty adamant against that. Too many times there is a sick kid or something and the whole team ends up sick for the next two weeks. But, the few times it works out, it works out great. This is one of those times. We’re staying in Woodbury, a suburb Southeast of St. Paul. Super for riding. We’re staying with Bob McEnaney and his family. It is so comfortable. They haven’t had to go out of their way to make it that way. That is just the way they live. Their house is exactly like a house should be. Clean, but lived in. Really lived in. Sports equipment everywhere. A gym downstairs. Interesting projects in all different stages of completion. A household. Their yard is like a scuptured garden. A million different varieties of plants. Pool. Running brook. They are on the go all day. Ben Raby, guest rider, said it perfectly. Bob did more yesterday morning than Ben does in a week in Boulder. It’s true for me also. Yesterday they got up and exercised for a hours at 5:30 am. He went to the store and got a boat load of groceries. He went out and rode his bike for a couple hours. Vacuumed the house. And then mowed the lawn. All before noon. And I left out about 50 other things. It’s like watching the energizer bunny. He repeated it in the afternoon and then drove down to Cannon Falls for the finish of the race. As a cyclist, that is mind boggling. Bob took us to a killer bar after the race in some small town in between Cannon Falls and St. Paul. It was famous for their burgers. I don’t usually eat too much of that stuff, but the life experience is worth the trade off. If there is a trade off. Anyway, they did have 50 types of burgers. Everything you can imagine on a burger plus some. Nick Coil got one with peanut butter and mayo. Nick loves peanut butter. I couldn’t of stomached it, but he said it was great. I got a fried egg and blue cheese. Thought a little extra protein was in order. And the beer on tap was cold and plentiful. I think I’m going to have to change my mindset on the host housing thing. These life experiences make the suffering on the bike much easier to justify.

Peanut Butter burger.

Bob getting the stream flowing.

Weird mushroom where we parked in Cannon Falls.

Another tempo session over. The venue was awesome. The Uptown area of Minneapolis is great. There was a pretty huge, knowledgable crowd watching. Everything a big time criterium should have. The course was an 1 mile L shaped course with not much altitude gain. It was fairly open. The racing was nonexistent until the last two laps. Maybe the last lap. Bissell rode at the front all 75 minutes. They didn’t always ride the inside of the course, disrupting the field, but did the majority of the time. Jelly Belly tried to take over with 7 or so laps to go, but didn’t have enough juice. Finally Colivita did their crazy fast last lap and Haedo won again. I was never in the mix the last two laps. I made a few efforts to get up to the front, but couldn’t get into contention, so ended up not sprinting. I ended up 20th. A fair amount of guys lost some time. I guess there were some splits in the field the last couple laps. The average race speed was over 29mph, so the last couple laps had to be way faster than that. I wonder if the crowd had any enjoyment watching a 7 man Team Time Trial for the majority of the race. I’m not sure they even ever offered a prime. I know I’m wrong. Ben Raby won an 60 massage coupon early on.

Tomorrow is the deciding day in this stage race. 4 finishing circuits up a big climb in Mankato. If I was to guess, I’d pick Rory Sutherland to win alone, but who knows. I think if the Bissell Team sets tempo the whole race to the circuits, it would be a huge error. We’ll see.