State Fair Crit

Doin' a little road ragin' on an old school bike.



With some pretty heavy rain in the morning, Julie and I were up in the air about doing the State Fair Crit. The course was still wet for Julie’s race, so she opted for heckling and beer with some of the other hooligans on top of hooligan hill. The course had dried up for the old man’s race, so I suited up and got a quick warm up in. I rolled to the start line and slotted in near the back o’ the pack. I got off to my usual start and rolled up the hill somewhere near the back.
I finally got my race mojo going after the first lap and picked my way to the front. As we hit hooligan hill, I upped the pace a little with the hope of thinning the lead group out a little. I did it about every other lap and our group eventually shrank down to myself, Shim and Dominic. Shim and Dominic didn’t seem like they were going anywhere, so I upped the pace a little more and noticed that Dominic had fallen off. I found out after the race that he had flatted, too bad because he was riding well. So it was down to Shim and I. I wasn’t real keen on it getting down to a sprint, and I also didn’t want to cook myself for the 1/2 race, so I put in a couple of 80% efforts going up hooligan hill, hoping to shake Shim but he wasn’t going anywhere. So on the last lap, I tried to back off the effort a little for the sprint. I led the entire last lap, and as we hit the last corner I hit it full throttle. Shim still managed to come around me and nipped me at the line. He rode a good, smart race and deserved to win. Me? I led almost the entire race, which I know is not the preferred tactic when racing on pavement. On a course like this, there isn’t as much of a benefit in drafting as there might be in a flatter course anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t really care as I was primarily looking for a good, sustained high intensity effort that’ll hopefully make me faster on the dirt.
The 1/2 race was all about hanging onto the lead group for as long as I could. I felt pretty shelled between the previous days workout and the old man’s race earlier in the day, but I did manage to hold on to the main group to the finish. I think a few guys got away from the group and soloed to their respective finishes. Mike Secenbaugh (spelling?) took the W for the Zealous Racing boys, nice to see the race host take home a win from the weekend.
Hopefully next weekend we’ll be back on the dirt in Minnesota on Saturday and Banner Pits on Sunday.

Thanks for reading,

CK