I've had a vaguely exciting life these past few weeks, and I’ll do my best to wrap it up in a few informative and interesting paragraphs.
At the beginning of April I headed to Hillsboro-Roubaix for the first team “A” race of the season. Ebert's back was killing him--literally, I think I saw him howling in pain, wretched on the ground before the start of the race. Now don't get me wrong, I like pain and all, but this pain looked pretty much as obnoxious as racing a crit with ice on the road (which, subsequently, I managed to do this past weekend). Needless to say I had no expectations for Ebert to jump on his bike and race for 90 miles in the wind. But not only did he jump on his bike and race, he also took the honor of covering the early breakaway--which just by chance became the winning selection on the day. Fancy that. My back felt fine on that Saturday morning, but I surely didn't want to be out in the wind all day long! Soon enough the race got hard, and Jeff, Carter, Bret, Alex, and I were trying to jump on a train and bride up to Ebert's breakaway and give the guy a hand. There were these cobblestone like contraptions on the course on each lap, and being as excited as I was to race on cobbles for the first time I threw down a partly intentional, partly "cool, this is what it must feel like to be Tom Boonen!" attack and got a nice sized gap with a Turin rider. I quickly found out that my legs were not exactly "going well" that day, and after 5 minutes off the front I was kind of toast. Then came the crosswinds, and the hell that accompanies their gusting, gutter-driving force. I positioned myself poorly coming into the windy section, and that decided the rest of my race: doomed to chasing back to the peloton after every crosswind. Needless to say the legs died pretty quickly after 22 miles of that, and my race was over.
Right after Hillsboro I hightailed it to UW Madison's team training camp for spring break in Bryson City, North Carolina. If you've never been to NC--there are mountains. Big mountains, but not at high altitude. Big mountains that make you climb for hours then descend for over 20 minutes. Big mountains that make the legs sting and burn with lactic acid. But the big mountains gave us a great excuse to hammer out a 32 hour training week to prepare for the Tour of Virginia stage race at the end of April. In that terrain I got the training hours on the bike and traveled back to a snow-covered Madison, WI landscape to end the week.
Finally this past weekend April 14-16th I went down south--we're talking the deep south in small town America. Yes, you know where I'm talking about, Oregon IL but of course! The ABD guys got together for a nice training camp starting with a solid 4.5 hour ride on Friday. The weather was perfect, and we got the green light from Ebert to hammer a bit and see how the legs hurt in a paceline. I guess we should hurt pretty good, because we averaged 23 mph on a group ride in the wind! Nothing is better than Italian food after a nice solid ride on the bike, so for dinner the guys got together for good eats at your local Oregon, IL Italian food joint. Then on Saturday morning, after a team photo or two, I said my goodbyes and jumped in the car drive to a few collegiate races in Indianapolis on Saturday and Sunday.
Being the informed and responsible consumer I always am, I managed to carry no cash or debit card with me for tolls and consequently got 5 "Missed Toll Reminders" from the kind folks who run the Illinois Tollway. After surviving the tolls I realized I had 2 hours to get from Chicago to Indianapolis in time for the crit race on Saturday - it was "fast lane" drivin' time. Unfortunately the white out (read: snow) prevented me from doing things my way, and the drive was slow enough to put me at Marian college's campus 10 minutes before the start of the Men's A cat criterium. Somehow things came together and I lined up on the starting line. The race was shortened to 40 minutes due to the ridiculous weather conditions. This is how collegiate racing works--the race promoter approaches us and says "how long you guys want to race today, is 20 minutes alright?" Then we verbally duke it out with the promoter until a set time is decided upon for the race. Seconds later, we're off!
The race was just a test of cojones and bike handling skills. There was never really an attack, there were just so many corners and chicanes on this course that you can't really corner fast enough to close any gaps. So after 10 laps or so it's just 5 riders left at the front of the race, including myself and my teammate Steve. We're taking preem points at every opportunity before I attack and string out the breakaway with 3 laps to go and set up Steve for the sprint win. With 1 lap to go everything comes back together and Steve still has fresh legs - so a job well done. I latch on and hang on to get what I can for the finish while Steve takes the easy sprint win by several bike lengths. I managed to stay up for a a podium spot in 3rd place.
Sunday brought 2 more races, a TTT in the morning and a circuit race in the afternoon. Our TTT team had a hard time getting things going and keeping the pace smooth, which landed us in an unfamiliar position--3rd place! This was the first conference TTT Madison has lost in quite some time, so it was hard to swallow.
Three hours later, the circuit race was held on a very good course--one very steep 150 foot climb, followed by flat, twisty crosswind sections, and finally ending with a long downhill into a headwind finishing straight. I made it across and the field chased and I sat on the break until some very strong riders bridged up to the move and we began to work together. After that it was home free, we worked smoothly together in the break and put 2.5 minutes into the field before the last lap. On the last lap hill, Greg Christan of Michigan State University attacked and I held like glue to his wheel, and from there we continuously attacked and counterattacked each other until the finishing straight where the cat and mouse game ensued. Unfortunately, I lacked the savvy to take the win in the tactical game, and I ended up coming up short on Christan's wheel at the finish for 2nd place.
So, I ended up with three podium places this weekend. But one of these days I'm going to win a race. And that, my friends, will be a day worthy of celebrating with an entire can of Diet Sam's Choice Cola AND a baguette.
Keep it on two wheels--
Ryan
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