Spring Prairie

Four days after the race and I'm now just talking about it. I already missed inclusion on CBR's write-up of the race, and now my memory of the whole affair is a rather fond one.

For all sorts of reasons mostly due to injury and surgery, I haven't raced road as much as I wanted to this year. I was registered for Hillsboro, but I could hardly walk, let alone ride my bike. I was planning on doing Snake Alley, but plum forgot. Now spring is over and I've raced four times, counting Spring Prairie, the Wisconsin State Road Championships, that I raced this past Sunday.

It's no secret of mine that I love riding and racing hills, even if I don't do as well on them as I'd like. I started my amateur racing career racing hills and it's what I prefer. Flatland freaks me out -- I like some terrain to string things out and shatter the field than hurtle toward a bunch sprint surrounded by 50 Cat. 4s. I may be turning out Cat. 3 power, but I don't have results or talent yet for upgrading.

Adrian got me all psyched-up for Spring Prairie, though. Lots of climbing on a 10-15% grade, albeit short, with lots of rollers. Count me in. Even if I bagged out, at least I'd do so safely and practice my climbing and descending (going 8 mph uphill and 45 mph downhill is difficult in each its own way). Race day, it was me, Adrian, Isaiah, Sean Fitzgerald and his girl Jessica, who I rode up with. All of us got to the registration at the same time, and I was reminded again that I need to print out or find my 2009 USAC license before next race I enter.

We all got suited up and went and did a reverse lap of the course to see what it was all about. Yeah, it was bumpy, alright. Ate some food, spun around and tried not to get hit by a car, and lined up in the field for the neutral roll out.

At the top of the big climb, the race was on and at a hard pace. I was pushing big numbers in the draft, with a tailwind. These 4/5 riders love to start stampeding, I guess. Two laps in, I fell off a little in the back stretch on one of the rollers, cramping up something terrible. I rolled back on on the descent and stretched my legs out while safely in the draft. Starting back up the climb again I popped, my calves just killing me.

And there I was, by myself, some people, nay lots of people behind me, but the pack, where I really wanted to be, was going up the road faster than I could muster. So I just pedaled as hard as I could and was joined by a WDT rider named Reed who worked with me. We were by ourselves for a bit until we caught up to Sean and a TATI rider who got popped off the back, too. Our little foursome worked well together, riding hard, but not killing each other with the gentleman's agreement to keep it tempo until the last trip up the sharp climb, of which there was seven.

Up the hill, Sean and I attacked hard at the bottom and he pulled away to finish about 3-4 bike lengths ahead of me. Reed and the TATI guy were rolling up at their own pace, just content to have finished. Isaiah and Adrian informed me that we finished maybe 2-3 minutes off the pack, not where I wanted to be, but not horrible considering that the race was a peak race for many riders.

Since the race started at about 5:15, it was already about 8 when we finished packing up and got ready to leave. We stopped at Culvers on the way out and I enjoyed a chicken sandwich, fried cheese curds, and a milkshake. Gotta replenish those calories with delicious, artery-cloggin' food.

End result? 25th or something out of 50 something. Eh.