Parkside Criterium Series - Week 2 - March 18 - Masters 40+

This day was almost a break with tradition at Parkside. Typically, we have beautiful weather for the first week's "practice crits" then the subsequent weeks are cold, grey and sometimes wet. Today we have bright sunshine again. The down side is that the temps are 15 degrees to the south of last week and the wind is pretty stiff off of Lake Michigan almost straight out of the east. I estimate that the cold and wind will drop the speed a bit from last week but the effort will be higher.

Teammate, Dan Verner and I will be the only Team Mack riders in the 40+ today since Mike Zellman is probably off on some exotic junket for his day job with SRAM. Hey Mike, Dan and I got the new racing frames last week. Sure would be nice to get that Force Group so we can build them up! Hey, If you can't gripe to your own teammate about sponsor gear, who can you gripe to?

Right from the starters whistle, last weeks solo break winner Dave Schimp was on the attack but since we all saw what kind of early season fitness Dave has, we kept him on a short leash. The occasional lulls in tempo would cause mushrooming from the back of the 38 rider field and every time the back of the field folded over and moved on to the front the pace would drop 3-5 mph. While the recovery can work to your advantage, it also works to the advantage of all the weaker riders so you want to keep the pace consistently high to string out the field and thin out the ranks by spitting riders off of the back. This is tougher to do on windy days because those sitting in will gain more of an advantage in the draft than in calmer conditions.

Below is a shot of Dan, myself and Met Life's Ansgar Graw on the front cranking up the pace early on.

As the race progressed, the attacks, counter-attacks, mushrooming kept repeating but nothing got off the front for more than a one mile lap or two. With three to go, the marking process started at the front with everybody watching everybody else and the back of the field folded over the front as we came out of turn one. The traffic was stiffling and I hate being boxed in like that. As we rounded turn two and headed straight into the headwind on the back side of the course, I literally dropped to dead last in order to get out of that mob and look for an open route forward. I found it along the inside and sprinted forward. By the time we came across the line for two to go, I was back at the front about 5th in line and the teams with riders to burn came forward and started the leadout train for their sprinters. Great, this will keep the field strung out and only those able to keep pace will be able to stay out front.

As we came around for the bell and one to go, the usual too early attack from one of the perenial back sitters was off the front with a couple of other's in tow by about 40 meters but going nowhere. We caught them on the uphill approach to turn two and the strongest 10-12 riders accelerated across the back stretch toward turn three. I pulled to the inside of LOT Airline's Richard Adamczyk as we entered turn three to bait him into a block so that I could use him as a leadout from turn three to turn four. Richard took the bait but then he made an aggressive move up the curb with about 600 meters to go that was the norm for Richard but certifiably nuts in my book so I decided not to stay on his wheel and I waited for the hole to open up a bit. A second later the field snaked right and I had my hole but Richard was 25 meters up the road and jumping on teammate Dan Verner's wheel into turn four. I followed Dave Schimp and Ansgar Graw into and out of turn four and the three of us picked off several sprinters on the 250 meter rise up to the finish line. Neither Ansgar or I could match Schimps final 100 meter kick at this point in the season and he accelerated away from us at the end.

My instincts about Richard had been right because he had drafted Dan all the way to the last 50 meters and pulled around for the win. Schimp caught and passed a gassed Dan just before the line to pick up second. Below is a shot of Dan coming across the line third with Ansgar Graw and myself fighting for fourth. The angle makes it look like I had the advantage but Ansgar actually had me by a few inches as we approached the line. I ended up fifth.

All in all, a successful early season race with Dan and I both making the podium. I picked up my first hardware of the season and improved my sprint and finishing position by three places over last week.

Stats: 18 miles / 46:45 / 23.1 ave mph / 34.4 max mph (sprint) / 156 ave HR / 184 max HR