Tour de C-U

For the first time in 2 years, I pinned on a number and turned the pedals in anger.  Wild Card Cycling (my club) and Scarlet Fire (the fast local club) put on the Tour de Champaign-Urbana; crits on both Sat and Sun.  

The early spring training camp gave me a decent start on fitness for the year, but since then I have been doing very short intervals less often than I should.  But I'm in decent shape, and I survived both races.

Officially, I got a dnf on Sat because I failed to make sure that my number was seen in the sketchy camera.  Unofficially, I got 8th, 2 places behind Thomas (below).  I possibly could have gotten all the way up to 7th, but a car entered the course with 2 1/2 laps to go.  We neutralized that lap, and I got squeezed towards the back of the pack at the restart.  I gave all I had to move up in the remaining laps.  I passed no one with my feeble sprint.

 It was hot for the first time all year.  But that didn't slow the race any or dampen our local crowds, led by the courageous Janny.

 There was a strong (for bike racing) TCBC contingency on both days.  Here is the Sat group.  I saw 2 other families on Sunday, not including Jill and the kids.

 Mark brought his family back to town for the races.  He used to race with us cat 4's 2 years ago before he decided to take racing seriously.  He's now doing well in the cat 2 realm.

I learned about my dnf on Sunday morning, so I made sure to check my result at the end of that race.  During the race, I rode to my limit, having nothing left for the sprint.  I had learned a valuable lesson on Sat:  no one outside of the top 1 -2 has anything left either.  So I got myself as far up the pack as I could during the last 2 laps and held on for 7th (officially!), about 6 inches ahead of the guy chasing me down.

Racing is quite funny in a way.  I don't think that I have much fun during a race, and I generally feel exhausted to terrible afterwards.  But one day later, I am scheming about signing up for another one.  We'll see.  In any rate, hopefully I'll train better.

Club member Paul has a ton of additional photos here and here.