Bright and early this morning, Dan Andrews picked me up for the hour drive down to Kankakee to do my final race as a category 5.
I had 10 races as of last week at Sherman Park, but I've enjoyed racing with and getting to know the group of cat 5's so much, and already pre-registered for this race, so I decided to give it one more go with them.
When I changed and put on my shoes, I realized I'd made a grave mistake. I have two pair of matching shoes, almost identical, with the exception of one pair being mountain shoes and the other my road shoes. I was looking down at one of each. With home an hour away, and 40 minutes to my race, I thought I was doomed. I told Emanuelle about it and he rushed to help me out and loaned me his shoes which were a size too small for me. They also had Look pedal cleats on them, and I ride speedplays, so we swapped my pedals out and rushed to pin on my jersey and take a few warmup laps. I am incredibly greatful Emanuelle loaned me his shoes for the race, but sadly, they were too small. My feet were KILLING me by the end of the race. I also looked like a complete noob trying to clip into funky pedals at the start of a race when I've been on speedplays for a year. But anyway.. the race...
The course is a fun, small circuit along side a river, with a few scary corners into less wide roads, but overall, not too difficult. I'd hear rumors of an uphill section, but it really wasn't much more than a tiny spot where the road curved up at turn 1. SRAM Nuetral support was sitting there with an army of Zipp 404 wheels and I saw more than one racer looking over there like they wanted to flat, but as nice as Zipp wheels are, My HED/Rubino Pro combo has served me well, and I was glad to have it today big time.
Normally in cat 5 criteriums I am not seeing much in the way of breaks or splits other than a few riders getting shelled out the back, but today was a nasty one. Lap 4, a prime lap for a box of clif bars, I was riding about 5th wheel, and I heard a crash behind us. I believe it was about halfway through the pack, of course at that tight turn 3 mentioned above. Glad to be in front of it, I kept on going, and realized that lap we had probably a 20 man split in the field. Well, at least I'm in the front half of that, so I'm in good shape. As we get to the line for the prime sprint, I decide I don't have it in me on this course to sprint and then be able to finish well. I see a group of six or so open up between the rider ahead of me, and he looks back and asks me if we should pursue. Foolishly, I say no, assuming it's just a go for the prime, but they never slow down. This group of six would wittle down to 4 in the end, and your winner would be in there. Once we realize this, we chase. We chase hard. For the rest of the race. We end up in a small group of 4, Ken Roy, myself, a Vision Quest rider and a wheelfast guy. So, I've actually raced with all these guys before and we're a pretty good group for cat 5's, so we work together pretty well.
We realize with 8 to go that the lead group has half a lap on us, but, we've also got half a lap on the rest of the field, so we keep powering on. This is the second most I've worked in a single race (the TT last week was the most) and it was hard work. I was glad to have the HED aero wheels today, which, in big groups may not do as much for you, but I really felt the difference in the small chase group. At the last lap, the VQ rider turned to me and asked if I was gonna go for it or roll through, and I said, "Uh, you're kidding right?" At this point we'd lapped a ton of riders and we had no idea how many were still up front, so we could well have been racing for third or second for all we knew, so I jumped and fought the wheelfast guy almost to the line. He screamed and I knew he wanted it way more than I did, so he took it. What it turned out he took was 5th place, I rolled in 6th, and the VQ rider and Ken took 7/8. Feet on fire, I finally told my chase companions about the shoes and got lots of laughs. Couldn't give that away during the race you know ;) A good time and made some new friends in that chase group. What more can you ask for out of a local Criterium.
A great venue, and big thanks to the officials for straightening out the finish so quickly. It had to be hard to keep track of that race with all the splits and lapped riders.