
In the middle of the Master's race, the rain slowed down a little before it began pouring again.
This weekend, I was in Downer's Grove, IL, to spy on the domestic pro teams participating in the National Crit Championships. My attempts to liberate in the name of the people some of the Toyota United and Slipstream team vehicles parked in my hotel's parking lot were less-then-succesful, but I did have fun participating in a couple of rain-soaked amateur races on Saturday.

It's not as fancy as those other expensive carbon-frame bikes, but it works:
Explaining a break-away bike to a by-stander.
Despite the rain, and the usually high amount of crashes due to the rain, the course is great: technical enough to be interesting (eight turns, most of which are 90 degrees) but not so much that it was slow (on the contrary, in fact!); a couple of small rises, which are unusual enough for the Chicago area; and some really enthusiastic spectators (even in the rain) made it all worthwhile, even though one of my races was only 20 minutes and the other 30. Both races were super-fast and very hard, though I'd say the second race I did was faster and more difficult. The 3/4 race was a bit disappointing for me, as my poor placement at the start was compounded by the fact that I dropped my chain on the first lap and had to actually stop to re-adjust it. D'oh! I spent the rest of the time playing catch-up, and nearly connected with the second pack before I was pulled on the last lap. They seemed a bit anxious to pull people, even though I was not even close to being lapped and was making good progress, but oh well.


Lousy camera phone pictures from Sunday:
The elite women round a particularly accident-prone corner, and the elite men at the start.
There's some Clean Currents guys in there somewhere,
along with Kelly Benefit Strategies' Tom Saladay, who snagged third place.
The second race, the Master's 30+/40+ race, was harder. I hung on to the back of the lead pack for much of the race in the pouring rain. The pace was so fast, it was all I could do from falling back. About two-thirds through the race, the blistering pace (at least it was a blistering pace for me, and apparently for them too) really caused a lot of guys to get dropped, and I kept passing people then - especially on the "hill" and the slight incline on Main Street. During the last two laps, I decided it was "now or never," so I pedaled my ass off and ended up finishing mid-pack. I'm pretty sure there were about 75 at the start, maybe more (the rain, I believe, discouraged the full field limit of 100 from showing, though I know registration for the race was completely full), 58 finished, and I came in at 31st. Not great, but I can report that I enjoyed it and tried to do the best I could with what I had. Doing the best you can with what you have is all you can really expect, right?
-- posted by Chris