Square Lake, St. Cloud, and Dakota

Saturday was the Square Lake Road Race north of Stillwater. I won’t go into the gory details. So here is a brief recap: Too many squirrely cat 4 women—the group needed to be broken up sooner to get the squirrelies out. Tunnel wasn’t too bad. Scary right turn at the bottom of a downhill. “The hill” three times—wasn’t fun. Heart rate was OOC after cresting the hill the first time. Took 10 miles to bring it down just in time to do it again. Hung on to the group until the top of the second climb and I was done. Considered DNFing. Yelled at the officials to find out that I wasn’t the last one so I kept going. Found that there was more rollers then I thought there was the first couple times around. Considered walking the hill since no one was around. Didn’t. Instead sang a song to block the pain. Funny the only part of the lyrics I could remember was “…keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding…” It’s a love song—but seemed to be perfect words for the situation. I came in 11th out of 16. Congrats to Points, she scored some serious points during the race for 5th place.

Later that evening I went over to Holly and John’s to watch the 5pm news. TSH had a featured story. Then we headed over to TH for the welcome home party for TSH. Lilly had me rolling with her extensive vocabulary for a 4 year old. Unfortunately, I didn’t win the Kinetic trainer, but I did see Neil eat a plate of frosting with no cake. And we all wonder where he gets all the extra energy. After the party we all went over to Holly and John's for drinks. I was so exhausted from the race that I left early and was in bed by 11pm.

Points recoving from Saturday's race
and a hangover on the way to the St. Cloud Crit.

Sunday was the St. Cloud crit. I was up at 5:30am, on the road at 6:30am, raced at 9:30am, didn’t get home until 7:30pm. The course was changed due to the bridge being closed so we raced around Tech High School. The course wasn’t bad except for the last turn all the women in my category took the last corner like there was a center line rule. There are no centerline rules in Crits!—we get the entire road to race. Every time we came around that corner we had to break. I should have taken my own line and probably would have gotten around the peloton. I came in 9th out of 15. Congrats to Jackie, she got the prime and the win over Patti.

After our race the men’s 4/5 raced. Marc Kermisch (Loon) came around the final corner with a nice lead. Unfortunately, he clipped his peddle before he could straighten out. The sound of him going down was so loud and drawn out it was scary. He got up but had some pretty bad road rash. The nurse bandaged him up and I took him the hospital to get scrapped and receive a few stitches. I picked him up 4 hours later after he was done, you had to feel for him sitting on the retaining wall outside of the hospital all mummified on his right side.

We hung around to watch the rest of the races. The men's 1/2/3 was a great race to watch. We clocked them doing 1:20 minute laps. GP, Timmer, and Adam Bergman got a good break on the peloton and started to TT the race. They ended up lapping the group with Adam Bergman taking the win.

Tuesday night I thought I would try out the Dakota Crit in Rosemount. I don't think I'll be doing that race much since it took me 1.5 hours to get there. It’s located on the Dakota Tech College semi-truck driving training course. The roads were extremely nice to race on. This time I took what I learned from Sunday and applied it to Tuesday’s race—i.e. I took my own line. There were 3 tight turns that the women would take short causing the whole group to brake. I don’t think taking my own line gained me anything aside from not crashing, but I practiced my sprinting skills. I got 4th out of 7.

I’m staying off the bike until Friday.

Here is what I've got planned for this weekend:
· Friday--Northfield Crit
· Saturday--Spam Jam Road Race in Austin, MN
· Sunday--Hamel TT (Medina/Baker Park area)

Holy Moly—if you’re counting that’s 6 races in 9 day!

What has been learned:
1. Jorge is a celebrity.
2. Don’t mess up your morning breakfast before a race.
3. It’s a race, not a group ride. There needs to be a lot more calling out to squirrely riders.
4. Riding with men is easier then riding with women.
5. The line taken may not be the best line to take.
6. I need to be more aggressive.