3rd Place Winner for MN Rider of the Year

Yeah…that’s me!

My girls called me up and said I had to do the Birchwood Road Race (north of Stillwater) to secure my 3rd place in the cat 4 MN Rider Of the Year (ROY) competition. I was in 1st place but with everything going on—I had to stopped racing. Not because I didn’t love it, but because of the cost of the races. I wasn’t mentally or physically ready for a race, but they made some good points—plus it’s hard for me to say no—so I went, got 5th place and secured my standing. I couldn’t believe how seeing all the girls and the other racers brought me out of my funk and made me forget about everything—cycling is more therapeutic then I thought!

The course was different from last year. They moved the course north so we didn’t have the big hill that we had last year. The main reason was to get to the hill you had to risk your life going down hill making a right hand turn at death defying speeds onto a busy road. Let me tell you, I’m not disappointed that we didn’t do that hill for many reasons. First, I fishtailed twice on that damn downhill turn and second, that climb was a beast! I contemplated quitting that race last year. Instead, I road the last lap solo—not fun.

Although the new course was nice it made it hard to attack. I won’t go into details on this race because quite frankly it wasn’t that exciting. There were a couple of attacks but nothing stuck. I looked around at my competition and knew that it would be hard. Most of these girls are so good now except for Sketchy Wheel Betty (not her real name). Damn sometimes I wonder if I attracted these riders. No matter what I did SWB was next to me or in my way. Especially at the end of the race when we had to take a right turn and sprint for the line. SWB got right in front of me before the turn so I had to go around her and then put everything I had onto the line. I passed a few girls getting 5th place. I knew better—positioning on the last turn is so important.

It will be a Hellion sweep this year for ROY!