Today I won Bike the Drive on my first attempt. Bike the Drive, an event sponsored by Bank of America, Kozy's Bikes and numerous other companies, is an open category race along Chicago's lakefront on scenic Lake Shore Drive. It's an impressive and well-organized event, and if you have the opportunity to do this race, I highly suggest it.

Riding on my Colnago bicycle and Zipp wheels (Zipp is a division of SRAM), I was pretty confident I would be able to hang with the leaders and put in a strong performance. It's probably worth noting that I also was wearing Rudy Project glasses and Pactimo shoe covers, and I carried in my jersey pocket delicious Clif bars.

I decided to get in a good warm up, so I left straight from my house at the top of Lake Shore Drive and headed south to the start-finish on Jackson. While I was warming up, I noticed a lot of other cyclists also heading to the start/finish. While many of them were also smartly wearing Rudy Project glasses, riding Maxxis tires, using Saris PowerTap hubs, and riding SRAM equipment, many others were not. Too bad for them!

I got to the start/finish and started sizing up my competition. Trek, Specialized and Giant all seemed to be fielding exceptionally large teams, so I knew I'd need to be attentive of any attacks from people on those bikes. I decided my strategy would be to follow the wheels for the first half of the race, and once the field hit the turnaround at the Museum of Science and Industry, I'd attack to try to draw out other strong riders.

With a strong headwind heading north, my tactic played to perfection. I simply rode away from everyone else, kept it in the gutter on the left lane, kept hollering "on your left!" and never looked back.

As I crossed the line and posted up in celebration, I was already thinking about how I'mm approach this race next season. I'm really glad I set this race as a season goal, and I know that next year I'll be able to dial in my training even more so that I reach peak fitness in time to podium again, or even win!

Have a really super Memorial Day...I know I will :)