Snake Alley Criterium and Stuff

Spent the last weekend in Iowa racing up the world crookedest street. This was my second ever time racing the Iowa Memorial Day Races. However, this time I unfortunately did not get to meet a cycling legend before heading off to the races. This year's races were slightly different, because of road construction last year, the Burlington Road Race was not held. The Burlington Road Race was a glorified out and back course, with two turn around in small towns north of Burlington along the Mississippi. In a nut shell the race was very fast, easy, and boring...and I liked it. How could it simultaneously be all those things? Well, If you've ever watched a sprinter stage of Le Tour it was exactly like that. We averaged nearly 26 mph for the 80 miles of the race, there were no major hills except for a five mile false flat that simply made you ride tempo, and finally a day long breakaway got caught in the last km. The run into the finish had a small climb followed by a very fast 800 meter downhill straight to the finish. However, as the breakaway was being reeled in, while they still had about a 30 second gap, Greg jumped across like it was easy and gave the escapee's a second life. The world's fastest old man was seriously impressed. I was able to mix it up in the sprint getting 8th. It was a crazy sprint, after the pack crested the hill and accelerated you could not move up or around people because everyone was spinning 130 rpm in their 53x11's going 45mph, so the real sprint was over the small hill before the finish...oh well, live and learn. 

The next day was the infamous 'Snake Alley'. Cannot say to much about tactics for this race, you basically have to ride your brain out for an hour. The best part of the race was when the field got called up to the line. After calling up all the important people to the start line, the announcers started the most important race, the race to the start line. It went something like this: The announcer says 'And the rest of today's field may roll up to the start', everyone frantically clips in and sprints all out for three pedal strokes, then slams on their brakes so they don't slam into the important people already sitting on the start line because they're important. However, today it was wet, which meant when everyone went to slam on the brakes the entire field of 120 riders skidded across the wet pavement and ether stopped just short of or completely slammed into the riders already lined up. That was the fun bit for Snake Alley, Panther 'retired' rider Paul Martin got 2nd, Dan Campbell was 7th, and Vince was 16th. 

After the snake, we packed up our stuff to move race HQ to the worlds worst named hotel: The Muskie Motel. However it was really nice in the fact that the motel was across the street from the Mellon City Criterium. The crit went decently well, I was the designated sprinter, but finished 3rd from our team in 21st. That's what you get for making your move too late, you get boxed in. 

Finally the Quad Cities road race was the last chance to get another big result for the team. I played no part in this because I clipped a pedal and rolled my tubular. However this gave me the chance to watch Greg get a ridiculously large gap in the closing laps of the race and get a cool video of the last lap (including Texas Roadhouse f-ing up everybodies day by crashing in the second to last turn). Pay no mind to my poor commentary, I was talking to the corner marshals at that corner and giving them updates as to what was going on.