ABD Fall Fling

After returning from UNIVEST in Philly on Sunday night the 13th, and starting work the following morning at 7am, I thought I was fully ready for the season to be done. I didn't touch my bike for 9 days, nor did I do anything physical at that. It was a bit rough on my system trying to get back into the swing of early mornings and 8 hour days at the office, but after a few days it was fine. The next weekend Kim's sister got married, so that was full of wedding activities. Then my van overheated on Monday and had to be towed back to Arlington Heights. Luckily my dad's old car was still at the house so we had a spare. But on Tuesday its battery died at work, so I had to be driven to the car parts store to get a replacement and install it in the parking lot. By this time I was sick of everything going on and I wanted nothing more than to get outside and ride, or run, or something. I didn't have enough daylight on Wednesday night after the dead battery situation to ride, so I went for a 4 mile jog. It felt good, but everything hurt afterward. I stretched a lot and the next day I got out and rode for an hour. It was again a really good feeling and I knew then there was a looming winter on the horizon and that I didn't want my season to be over just quite yet.

So the real last races of my season took place this past weekend. The fall fling series put on by ABD is a series of 4 races over 2 weekends consisting of a criterium, road race, time trial and circuit race. Saturday was the criterium around a very circular course in a business park. There was only one wide right turn followed by a large sweeping right that took you back to the start finish stretch and again to the right hand turn. My plan was to stay near the front and follow the threatening moves. There were about 5 guys to mark, and I'm pretty sure the entire field had them marked. It was a bit hard by myself since I seemed to be going on the defense quite a few times during the early laps. A hard counter attack from Hartley (Geargrinder) and Freund (ABD) established a gap with one other guy. They stayed out front by 15-25 seconds for the entire race. There was still a lot of action in the peloton to get a chase group formed. One or two times I thought I had gotten into a strong chase that could stay clear of the pack, but it never worked. The break of 3 stayed away for the win, and the field sprint was pathetic on my part. My legs were cramping up a bit and I really couldn't stand for the sprint. That's probably what 9 days off the bike and then racing will do to you.

Sunday was a bit more of my kind of race. A 10 x 6 mile 4 right hand turn square in rural Crete IL with lots of wind. The wind was pretty constant from the south so there was a tailwind on one stretch, head on the other, and cross winds on either side. The first few laps were pretty aggressive to get something formed and I just followed what I though might stay away. There was never the right combination of riders in the breaks and the peloton wasn't letting anything stay clear. Finally I got into a group of 3 with Will Nowak (Alderfer Bergen) and a Bicycle Heaven rider. The peloton pretty much let us go, so we organized quickly and started riding hard. We stayed away for about 3 laps, but I our gap stayed around 30 seconds instead of gradually rising. Will and I were driving the pace pretty hard and the strong wind wasn't making the 3 man break any easier. We finally got caught in the tail wind section by a chase group of 3, but within the next mile the peloton caught all of us. I was hoping that when the chase caught us we would then be able to stay clear with more numbers, but the pack was riding hard to shut us down. Within the next few minutes I was following wheels and again got myself into a break of 5 riders this time. We quickly got a large gap, and I tried working at first but soon realised that my legs were completely toast. I sat on for the next lap, pulling through every so often, which then turned into just sitting on. There were still 2.5 laps to go when I finally had to pull the plug after yo-yoing off the back of the break. I shut down everything to give myself a chance to try and recover enough to hook on to one of the chasing groups. They weren't too far back at this point, so when I got caught, I got passed pretty quickly. I soft pedaled in the last half lap and called it a day. I had worked myself into the ground, and made all the right moves, but my legs just weren't responding. I think in a mid season race it would have been a good hard, but manageable day, but after a long season with a big training gap before the weekend, it was painful.

Although this weekend was exactly what I wanted to do to myself. I wasn't ready for the season to be done, I think my mind was a bit ready, but my body wasn't. After this race weekend my mind and my body are both ready to take a break. The rest of October should be pretty relaxed for me, and I'll start my winter training again come November.