Sunday, July 13, 2008

Superweek Day #2 The Windy City

So I managed to recover from yesterday’s race pretty well i.e. very little fatigue & pain. Today I rediscovered why they call it “The WINDY City.” You guessed it-suffer-feast! The course was actually pretty lame (rectangular with the majority being up &downhill) but extremely tough, with the uphill section into the wind.

So I mentioned feeling “recovered” but that only lasted about the first 3 minutes of the race. I suffered all day long but managed to hang in and not get gapped or popped (like many others).

The officials were aggressively pulling riders deemed “out of contention” because the course was EXTREMELY SHORT. We covered 40 miles (65 LAPS). Yes, you read that correctly-we did 65 laps. That’s a first for me. The course length and layout made it extremely difficult to move up in the field (usually not a problem for me) because the downhill section (tail wind) was followed buy a very sharp right turn (a lot of braking) that forced a lot of riders to break out their cyclo-cross skills-not kidding. With 8 to go I figured if I didn’t move up it would not only cost me too many finishing spots but probably my life as well. I was right. I dropped the hammer with 8 to go (wreck in turn 1 right behind me) and then again with 4 (wreck to my left) to go and managed to slide into the top 10. In the end there were 4 crashes in the last lap-and-a-half. Have I mentioned that “wrecks are common at Superweek?”

In the end I slid into the payout/point count (top 20) at 12th place. I failed to mention that EVERYBODY sprints in the end since they pay 20 deep. There is NO "sitting up" in this series! I’m feeling much better about today’s finish…

The aforementioned crashes aside, this is really a great cyclist/racer vacation. Awake, eat, watch the tour, race my race, eat, recover, eat, sleep & repeat.

I’ve been approached by about 10-12 racers that remember me from last year (don’t know if that’s good or bad yet) and met up with some friends I made last year.

I plan on dining & possibly staying with my friend Ricardo Otero (Team Mack) later this week. Additionally, I’ll be staying with my friends Megan & Mike when I race through Wisconsin. They were the GREAT couple that hosted me for a week last year.

I’ve had my 2nd dinner so that means it’s time for more recovery-bed…

1 comment:

The B's said...

Nice work JD. Nice website too.
I will keep this in my favorites so I can check on the races each day.
Shane