Superweek Race #3: Cudahy

I woke up crabby for the Cudahy Crit - I'd gone to bed exhausted the night before and only managed to get about 4 hrs of sleep. And I hadn't gotten much sleep the two previous nights, so my first goal for the morning was to try to caffeinate my crabbiness away.

We arrived in Cudahy (pronounced "cud-ah-hay") without incident (unlike the day before when we had to take the airport exit so I could pee, and we almost drove under an overhang that would have totalled our bikes and Pdiddily's car). One look at the crit course and I knew I wasn't going to like this race. It was a relatively flat four corner crit that encompassed a boring park. And the road conditions sucked. There was a huge pothole and a big concrete lip in turn 2, and the roads were just generally crappy.

Having gotten dropped after 25 minutes in the two previous races, I had decided that I would do an extra long warm-up, with the intention of doing "something" early in the race. I wasn't sure what "something" was, but I didn't want to just sit in for 25 minutes, then get dropped.

The race started out pretty slow for once, so SpecialK took a little flyer off the front and I saw that BHar was at the front of the field, so I rolled up there too and we did some blocking, but eventually someone got ansy and chased SpecialK down and the field was back together. Then GW-NoH attacked and eventually got caught too. As we rolled through crappy turn 2, I saw an opening on the outside of the road, and I decided it was time to do "something" - so I got up out of the saddle and attacked as hard as I could. Some chick on the other side of the field was kind enough to yell to everyone else that I was attacking, but I didn't care. I got around turn 3 and I was afraid to look back - I was certain I would see that the field was right on my wheel - but much to my surprise, a quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that there was only one rider with me. So I gunned it again, and the nice rider with me took a few turns pulling, and we were able to stay off the front for a few laps, but the charging field eventually caught us. My moment of glory was gone, but damn, it felt good. And then I was tired. And the race got fast again. And I noticed there were a lot of riders now standing on the sides of the course. I recall looking down at my computer one time and seeing 30 mph as the field was flying down the front stretch - I think I was in my biggest gear and I could not turn the pedals over fast enough to keep up. I got dropped (again). And I wanted to quit because two of my teammates were now hanging out watching, and that looked like more fun. But then GW-NoH rode up, so I had someone to do laps with. We jumped in the field a few times, but we basically just had a nice little chat for the rest of the race. In the end, I finished in the top 25, so that tells you something about how many people must have dropped out. But once again, SpecialK did awesome, so check out her race report.

My lower back was hurtin' after getting jostled around by the crappy roads...and it still hurts. The heating pad is my friend this week.

That night we headed to Downer Ave with the GW ladies to eat some meat, drink some beer (or wine in those tiny bottles, as the case may be), and watch some bike racing. Pete had decided to come to town to race, so it was fun to watch him and the GP boys (and Snide!) mix it up with the pros. Pretty Paul and Pete both did awesome...Paul was hammering at the front for half of the night, and Pete ended up 14th overall, so that was fun to watch. I was determined that I was going to sleep that night, so I made sure I drank enough to help me reach that goal, even if it had consequences for the next day of racing.

Up next...the last day of Superweek...the Whitefish Bay crit.

SS