Long drive on the cards to kick off the week. Scorching heat. One car with air conditioning. One car without air conditioning. Damn, I drew the short straw. It’s going to be rough getting out of the car and racing after a seven hour drive. We stop a couple of times en route to Chicago and my legs are like lead. The guys are all keen to race that evening despite the long drive - only a natural disaster will stop us doing the first race. Oh yes!!....A natural disaster, a storm hit Chicago. Roads are closed, power cables are down. I can rest easy and begin Superweek with fresh legs tomorrow.
The usual Superweek race format was a 100km criterium. The first two races were unremarkable. We raced aggressive but were unlucky to miss the major moves in the races and ended up scrapping for minor placing outside the top ten. The tactics seemed right so we vowed to persevere.
Thursday night South Shore Classic rolled around. I was starting to get the hang of these crits. I wasn’t getting gapped out of the corners. I am not saying I was comfortable through the corners but I was surviving. The corners are where the selection is often made so I was happy to be surviving through them. There was also a notable increase in standard at Superweek compared to the preparation Midweek crits I rode back in Toronto or even the Detroit and Windsor races the previous weekend. In the races the previous weekend we were the controlling force, dictating when breaks would be brought back and which breaks would survive. This was a different story. We were more at the mercy of the peleton but we still had a few cards to play. We just needed to be smarter about playing them.
The plan was for Ed to be active early, attempting to get into breakaways in the first half of the race. The rest of the team were going to play the waiting game and gamble on later moves. Mid way through the race we lost Kevin Hazzard with a back injury. As per our plan Ed was aggressive early but unsuccessful. A break of eight riders was away from about the half way point. They seemed to be working well together and considering the make up of the break it looked as though they would be the ones contesting the race win. With three laps remaining Pete lined the bunch out for me to try and take a flier across to the break. To be honest I don’t think I would have made it on my own. At the moment I attacked another rider, Michael Chauner from Team Cykelcity , also went on the attack. We rode full gas and caught the break just as they started the last lap.
I have played the moment we caught the break over and over in my head. It was the key moment and I shit my pants. I should have taken a run at them without hesitating but I choose to sit in, just for a moment. That moment’s hesitation was enough to cost me the race. As I drew breath my fellow escapees started their sprint. I had poor positioning out of the last corner and not much left in the legs for a sprint. SHIT! 6th place.
And the winner…….the lad Chauner from Team Cykelcity. He took the flier as we caught them and barely held of the pursuers. In retrospect it was a decent result in a tough race against a good field but at the time it didn’t feel like it.
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