Knowing that Daylight Savings Time was scheduled to happen during sleep time prior to the race, I made sure I got to bed a little earlier and left myself plenty of time to wake up and get things organized in the morning. I believe that I may have left a little too long, because I had way more time to think about what I was about to do than I normally have. Mind you, I am very into ways to mentally prepare. For instance, throughout this crit series, my Desktop Image on both computers lists my goals for the series. The goals are: Finish, Win Cat 5s, Help Chris and Steve place well. I have been staring at these goals for well over a week and will continue to stare at them when I'm on my computer, both at home and work. However, on the morning of, I try not to over think things because that just leads to increased nerves. Anywho, while I was getting my bag ready and car loaded to head down, I received texts from both Chris and Hank that they are out due to illness (to kid and self) and I was unable to contact Steve, so it looked like I was going solo. This is no big deal, I've raced solo plenty of times; however, all of our strategies were team-centric, so I ended up thinking more about how I wanted to attack the race.
The drive down to Kenosha was fairly normal. Right as I was turning on to 80th Avenue, I could feel my stomach doing summersaults. I was thinking: it is cold and cloudy, I have no teammates and I have not been on a bike outdoors since November. Awesome! As I pulled into the parking lot, I found Jeff McKillip's car and parked next to him. At least I'd have a familiar face at some point.
After registration, using the facilities and watching some of Jeff's race, I went back to my car to start getting warmed up and ready to race. As I was putting my trainer together, I remembered why I could not use my trainer and my bike with the skewers that I own. Good thing to note for future, not something that I wanted to discover on race morning at the site. I started thinking, what else could go not according to plan? I tried to push that thought from my head and just focused on the task at hand.
Instead of riding my trainer, I decided that I would try to do the warm-up that I would have done on the trainer out on the open road. This turned out to be a huge blessing in disguise. I was able to replicate what I wanted to do on my trainer fairly well while getting the jitters out of feeling my bike on the asphalt for the first time in months. I kept monitoring when the race before mine was due to finish and adjusted my warm-up on the fly to allow myself to finish warming up within 10-15 minutes of the finish of the race before mine. That way, I could dump the extra stuff at my car, switch gloves and ride to the start/finish line warm and loose.
I lined up in the second row of the bunch at the start while they were checking to make sure we were all there. Astonishingly, there was a guy (first timer) who was only wearing shorts, a Yankee's jersey and toe-clip pedals. He was actually fairly strong despite not knowing how to handle his bike all that well. I had decided to just sit in the pack and see what happened for the first few laps. As expected, no one went on a break so at the start of lap three, I jumped and had a huge gap on the field rather quickly. Unfortunately, no one came with me. I rode solo for a lap without gaining or losing ground on the field, so I decided to shut it down and let myself get caught. I sat in the field for a few more laps then did it again with the same results. One of my favorite parts of my breakaway attempts involved hearing the coaches yell at their cyclists to sprint so I would not get away! It made me smile each time!
With only a little more than three laps to go, the guy leading the field swung wide in the back stretch to try to get people off his wheel. As expected, the pack followed like a herd of cattle being led to slaughter. I took this opportunity to race up the inside of road and got a huge gap on the field while they tried to figure out what was going on. I shut it down again as we crossed the start/finish line with three laps to go. As we made it through turn three, I mentioned to the guy next to me (Shawn) that this was the most gentle three laps to go that I've ever experienced. He mentioned that he is a Track guy and the whole race is boring. We got a good chuckle out of it.
On the last lap, no one had picked up the pace at all, so I decide that I would once we hit the back stretch. Coming out of turn two, I punched it and got another huge gap on the field. Surprisingly, the field did not chase me down, so I kept the hammer on. At this time, the newbie I mentioned previously crashed behind me (I only heard the crunch of metal in the distance) and took two other guys with him. It was a bloody mess. Hopefully he is ok. Definitely not the way you want your first bike race to go. Knowing that my legs were not going to be able to keep pushing hard and muster a strong sprint in case I got caught, I decided to ease off the gas a little between turns three and four. Despite easing off the gas slightly, I still had a bike length or so lead going into turn four. Coming out of turn four, I punched it and really poured on the gas. As I approached the finish line, I glanced to my side to see where other people were. I had several bike lengths between myself and the next guy so I sat upright and glided across the finish line with my arms held high (Donna said it was Tour de France style). I am really hoping someone got a picture of that!
This was my first cycling win ever! Needless to say, I was stoked! I met the guys who took first and second on the cool down lap. They were cool guys and I look forward to racing with them again. The second place guy was really strong, a mountain bike racer trying out the road for the first time. He led the race for the most part, since he is more used to just a consistent level of suffering and not the accelerations common to road racing. I know that if Chris or any of my other teammates were there, we could have put an immense amount of suffering on the field and definitely road away from them. I am very excited for next week when we can make that happen!
Here is a photo afterwards with my medal!
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