Post date: Apr 16, 2011 3:14:12 PM
In the Midwest Mid March is usually the time for shamrock shakes, college basketball and of course bicycle races! This year I decided to spend some of my spring break riding my bike with the IIT team. It all started with a 7 hour dinosaur filled Friday night drive down to Columbia Missouri. Saturday morning started early with my first road race of the season. The weather was slowly warming up and everyone was eager and nervous about the scary descent at mile 22. The pace was slow and I tried to remain at the front as much as possible to avoid any crashes. The course was full of rolling hills and no sharp turns. The descent we were warned about turned out to be tamer than a kitty with barely a tap tap on the brakes. However shortly thereafter, an attack emerged and the lead pack of about 7 or 8 took off. I got dropped and after seeing that none of my teammates were around, realized that bridging the gap was the only way to stay in the race. After a couple of miles of struggling I finally caught the front group’s wheels. No one from this group wanted to attack and I was forced to pull for much longer than I wanted to. With about a mile to go, I had enough and let some of the other riders pull. Unfortunately my hamstrings started cramping up and I could not keep up with the lead pack which took off at this point. Seeing no one around me, I took the last mile pretty easy and cruised in for a 7th place finish. Sitting around waiting for Brian, Bryce, Marc and Jon to finish, I learned from Jenna that Jon was taken to the emergency room with a broken radial (elbow) which made the warm sunny Saturday a little less sunny.
Sunday morning was the individual and team trials. After getting wrong directions, we finally arrived at the staging areas and sat in our cars trying to not to catch hypothermia. Apparently Father Winter did not appreciate us racing in the farmlands of Missouri (nearest town: Mexico) and blew in a 20mph 30 degree headwind on the tailend of the out and back 12 mile time trial course. With our start times delayed because of the mapping mistake, I ended up with 7 minutes of rest between the 2 TTs. The individual TT felt pretty good as I passed a few riders and ended up with a 5th place finish. With Bryce being a C racer, we entered the TTT as a C team and ended up with a 4th place finish.