this week's highlights...

...do not involve racing. I knew months ago I'd have to miss the Chicago Crit, and though I was able to see a few minutes of it in the morning, I almost wished I hadn't. It was painful to see such a gorgeous course, even worse to see the top 5 Cat 5 spots filled with a few names that I'd topped before. Enough about that. The news:

Until recently, the little man, much to my consternation, has nearly refused to ride a bike. Last week, he woke up on his 6th birthday, asked to ride his no-training wheel bike, nailed it in 3 minutes, and preceded to start ripping like he's been at it for months. He now wants to do bar spins, truck drivers, and feeble grinds. I need to find him a mentor, as I can do none of those things, except in video games.

The other news is that his big sister is now a bicycle commuter. She's in Girls Rock Camp, and it happens to be on my way to work. She rides 5 miles each way, most of it in the bike lane on Clark. I guess sketchy riders at the track won't scare her much after this.

Hopefully I'll have some actual results to post after Elk Grove or the State Road Championships. I have three more starts to get out of the 5s: I suspect my "antics" in a bulls jersey/single speed have not earned me any leeway, and I'm being held to the letter of the law regarding my upgrade.

On the 12th day of Superweek my road bike gave to me

A goddamned creaky drivetrain.

Holy Hill. More like Holy Shit.

When the the bike shop says get a new chain *before* your next race, you should believe them, especially when it has a variety of climbs every lap. With my non-access to hills like this, I would have been lucky to stay in the mix, but it would have required split-second shifting. Not two dropped chains, dozens of skipped shifts, and general redlining to make up for getting caught out of gear every 3-4 minutes. Excuses, excuses. I have little to report, as I was in trauma. A couple long easy hills, a couple short hard ones, a long medium and a long hard one, 5 laps. It would have been fun to race if I had a working drivetrain and, uh, hills to practice on within 50 miles of my life.

On the plus side, it turned into a killer climbing workout, and my legs are aching in ways they haven't for years. If I could only do this every week or two without driving out of state, I might be a decent road racer. Another highlight was drinking beer with the team on the hood of the Cuttin' Cruiser after the Pro rollout. Ice cream truck music, a fog horn, and Public Enemy: the Rock Racing Escalade has nothing on it. It will be a miracle if they ever allow us back in Wisconsin again. The team didn't have the strongest day (12th and 14th, earned some gas money), but you gotta have some fun somehow. Thank god half the State Police were tied up marshaling the course.

UWW race report

The official at the starting line said 7 laps. At the end of seven laps, I moved up through the field in the final mile, contested a three-man sprint to take second, to hear the sounds of....the bell? WTF?

(The flyer said 5.5 miles per lap, 43 miles = 8 laps, but the guy with the patch clearly said 7 laps...and that's what the counter said as well...)

I'm not a total idiot, there were a bunch of us that got screwed and left flat in the final lap. I would have been more likely to trust the bell (or lack of it) if the field wasn't so screwed at the end of lap six. Long story short, the Masters 4/5s started ahead, we caught them, they caught us, we commingled and some tried to do the right thing, some tried to gain advantage, but really, there's only so long you can expect two packs to ride side by side without interacting and taking a draft or two. So coming through the s/f in a 100+ mixed pack and NOT hearing a bell was not surprising.

Overall, it was a decent day, as my teammate Brean took second in the "real" finish. (Oh yeah, I'm on a team now, go Cuttin' Crew! Messenger trash, woo!) From what it sounds like, the field was whupped and unable to chase down the eventual winner, and even too spent to keep him from winning the field sprint. At least SOMEBODY on the team got a podium. It would have been nice to see what might have been with both of us in the final sprint...