iowa city RR and capital crit

The rain gods were good to me this weekend.  After checking the weather 100 times trying to figure out what clothes to bring in prep for high winds/rain/thunder/lightning/hail it ended up being a very calm weekend.  Good too see the bro at school too.

Saturday's road race was in the corn field's of Iowa, which also happened to be home to many Mennonite's, complete with horse drawn carriages.  The course was fairly straightforward, nothing too hard, not to windy and only 2 small hills.  I tried to be pretty aggressive to get a break going.  I was feeling good and I was antsy to get get away with a few riders and go hard.  I made several moves, a couple strong ones, but nothing was materializing.  The closest I got to an actual break was maybe 5-10 seconds with a group of 4, but we were soon reeled in.  With a lap to go I switched tactics and did more conserving and followed wheels.  A break of 5 finally got clear with about 10 miles to go, and I'm surprised it didn't get brought back by some of the teams in the pack.  Nonetheless I was in the peloton for the sprint finish and managed a 16th place overall.  (The sprint was a bit shady with the strict yellow line enforcement all the way to the finish line.)

The crit the next day was a wake up call to myself that I need to work on my cornering.  I will admit that I was having a few flashbacks of my bad crash last summer in the Elgin crit.  I went head over heels in my first race back from Belgium on a fast corner out of a downhill and it was not fun.  I need to gain my confidence back because I know I can corner well, I used to do it all the time, but I was just being very cautious and it cost me dearly in this race.  As hard as I tried I couldn't lay off the brakes and I'm sure I made a couple of people behind me mad (sorry bout that, promise I'll be better next time).  The legs felt pretty good, but I was wasting too much energy dealing with the one hard corner in this race.  A break got away and I was fighting to regain ground every lap out of the infamous corner.  I think I finished in the top 25.  I guess I need to keep the long season in perspective, and that avoiding crashing myself in a crit now is best for a good healthy season.

So this weekend at the Vernon Hills Gran Prix I will be practicing my cornering and gaining that confidence back to hold wheels in any crit situation.  I hate being limited in racing by anything else other than just not having the strength to hang.

I will also be supplementing the VQ Lake Geneva century ride this Saturday instead of driving 7 hrs round trip for a 40 mile road race.  Joe Martin is fast approaching and is a goal of mine for a peak in my training.