Hyde Park Blast Crit

So todays course was up and down straight with two 180 degree turns and a downhill sprint finish, perfect for me (Sarcasm).

I missed the break and tried to bridge a really large gap solo, not the best idea, got almost there and held about 15 seconds back for about forever, i was eventually caught and punked in the sprit so i had to settle for 8th, but its all good though cause i felt awesome and superweek is just around the corner.....I heart wisconsin.

Neither Joe B, Chris B, nor I had done this race before, so we didn’t know what to expect as we headed to Cinci. Unfortunately, the course was less than we’d hoped for…

To make the course, the promoter blocked off about a half a mile of a 4-lane road—that was it. We went back and forth doing 180's on each end—around a small traffic island on one end and a few hay bales on the other. The turnarounds were a little hairy, but the good news (if you could call it that) was that if we crashed, it was going to be at a walking pace on the turnaround. The result was that we accelerated from 5 mph to full speed twice per lap—60 times during the race. Fun city.

Odd thing about this course was that positioning was not all that important. There was lots of room to move up, and no matter where you were in the field, you had to slow to 5 mph for the turnaround. Thus the guys in front had very little advantage on the guys in back. And breaks had little advantage, as well, almost ensuring a bunch finish.

And what a finish: downhill, high speed, and guys coming from way back trying to win—chaos. The sprinters with teammates to lead them out had a huge advantage. (That gives me an idea for next year…)

After a week of hard riding, my legs didn’t like the repeated accelerations. I jumped up to a solo break early in the race only to find out that the guy wanted to head back to the group—after being off the front for all of 15 seconds. Oh, well.

It was nice to see Joe and Chris in the race, and nicer to see Joe in the front group after a short split. But everything came back together, and since none of us are Petacchi, the race ended up being a hard training ride.

Afterwards, we watched Ryan Gamm finish 8th in the elite race—good job, Ryan.