Wheels on Willy

Gambling with weather is never any fun. With a 30% chance of rain and a 20 degree temperature difference, a few of us Atlas folks headed to Madison, Wisconsin instead of Gilbert, IA. It ended up being the right choice, for me anyway. There were many reasons I opted out of the road race and chose to do an out-of-state crit. 1) Gage my fitness level in crits against out of state competition in preparation for this coming weekend (Memorial Day Weekend) 2) Prize list of $700/7 places 3) I like crits better than road races. Those are just a few of the main ones. Anyway, the weather turned out pretty nice actually. No rain and temperatures hovering around 58. It was a bit chilly and I had to wear an under layer, but not a problem. My race was extremely late in the afternoon (3:30). I got to sit around and watch the races. Sort of got a feel for the course from just watching.

I didn't warm up to much. Mostly because I feel like crap right now. I don't know why, but I'm sick, again. Kind of bums me out. I hardly ever get sick and this year I've been sick 2 times in the past month. Anyway, after my brief warm-up, I headed to the start/finish line. The announcer did his usual and told us there were 55 women in the race...WHAT?? Ok, he accidentally counted wrong, there were only 30 riders. Still, decent sized women's field for the Midwest. I didn't know any of them except for Anne Meyer. There were a few America's Dairyland (you know, the cow team?) riders, a rider from the Advil-Chapstick team, and several Nova IS Corp riders. The Dairyland and Nova IS Corp teams did a lot of attacking. Nothing stuck. There was a crash the second to last lap going into the last corner. One of the IS Corp girls was off the front with two to go. She had quite a gap but we reeled her in on the last lap. Everyone was confused on the last lap because the officials were blowing their whistles and motioning us right as we headed into the last corner on the last lap. I got lucky and had an awesome position. The sprint for the finish was on a slight incline. Unfortunately the girl who won had an even better position than I did. I think she was leading through the final stretch before we came around the wreckage. Anyway, I sprinted for 2nd. I was happy with that. Our average was like 23.5mph. The crit was 45 minutes long. It was a pretty decent course. There were four somewhat challenging corners, a downhill, and a gradual uphill. I had fun, but it was a long day. That's all I have to say about that. Time to get rid of this cold! Have a good one and hope to see you all this weekend!
-A