After putting in strong finish lat year (10th), I was hoping for the same in 2008.

Those hopes ended after about 20 minutes when I found myself off the back of the main group on the second climb. Hmmm. And only 40-or-so more miles to ride.

I got caught in no-man’s-land working with a pair of guys and took a look behind me to see a few team members a little ways back. Figuring it was Julie and Andrea, I decided I was better off doing work for teammates than people I didn't know and dropped back.

Another teammate, Gerry Hansen, was also in the group and we set about the task of finishing off the next 40 miles as quickly as possible while limiting the amount of work Julie and Andrea would have to do. That meant a lot of time on the front.

We eventually picked up Kyle Schmidt , so there were five Big Ring Flyers in the group which held together until the end.

Julie and Andrea sprinted for the overall women’s win with Andrea taking top honors. Bean Linzmeyer, another team members, finished third, so we had a nice sweep of the podium with Big Ring women.

It may not be a bad thing I missed the break early in the race. A late crash took out six or eight riders in the front pack (including one of our riders, Jim Frame), and sent most home with some combination of road rash, slings, or broken bones and broken bikes.

Even our group saw some carnage with a rider going down after he touched the wheel in front of him. He went home with a broken collar bone . That happened right in front of Julie and she calmly took evasive action, barely moving to avoid hitting the guy. 

I will post results when they are available.

Video from the event can found here:

Next week Julie and I are riding a 50-mile two-person-team time trial in Grandview, Wisc. at the Firehouse 50. This event is apparently one of the Meccas of road racing for Wisc./Minn. We’ll see what the hype is all about.

Based on stories from people who have done it in the past, we opted not to do the road race due to the amount of carnage this race allegedly produces each year. I’d rather not write off the rest of my season due to injury for one race -- but even in just about any event anything can happen and nothing’s guaranteed, even in a TT.

Terrain-wise, the Blue Mounds Classic may be the hardest road race I’ve done with about 2,775 feet of climbing over 24.5 miles -- but I had a blast.

(Course profile)

I was chucked off the back of the lead groups (plural) that formed on the first climb, but I was fine with that as my expectations on a super-hilly course like this didn’t including finishing anywhere near the leaders.

I spent part of the first lap riding by myself , picking off a few guys at the start of the second lap and shortly after that picking up a couple other guys in a small group (including teammate David Goetzinger) that I worked with during the second half of the race, doing a lot of tempo riding. 

I found the climbs challenging in spots, but they were surmountable and actually it was sort of fun to suffer on the long and steep sections. The longest climb of the day was to the finish and was about four miles long. The grade was pretty gradual so it was not at all like climbing Mounds Road at Alpe Bl’Buze (which is long and steep).

I finished with an average speed of about 18.3 mph (for comparison, at a flatter road race my average will hang between 23 and 25 mph) and noticed my descent speed topped out at 47.5 mph.

But the BIG news of the day was Julie winning her first race of the season. Blue Mounds features a women’s start and Julie and few others made the last-minuet switch from the men’s field to the women’s start.

While Julie got beat to the top of the first climb (and the $60 gift certificate that went with it), she was able to breakaway from the rest of the women’s field at the top of that climb and stayed away to win the race. Even at the end of the four mile climb to the finish line, she showed no signs of suffering.

I finished in 1:19:55 while Julie came home in 1:21:37. Hmm, that's getting too close for comfort in an RR.

PRELIMINARY results can be found here: http://www.wisport.org/BMC08Prelims.pdf 

Video can be found here. Thanks to Richard Alderman and Darryl Mataya who shot the race actrion, and Julie who did the montage at the end.

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The season rolls on next week to northwestern Wisconsin with the 47-mile road race at Mellen. This is probably my favorite event of the year and I’ve done pretty well there the last two years (tied for tenth in 2007), so I’m aiming for a repeat of that effort this year.

We’ll see what happens!

After my early departure from the main pack Saturday, I was looking for a good ride Sunday at the 16.4 mile Stanley Time Trial and pulled off one I was happy with.

Organizers opted for a rolling alternate (out-and-back) course die to construction on the normal course. That was all fine and good, a few more hills no big deal. But the real fun was provided my mother nature in the form of a 21 mph quartering crosswind with gusts of 32 mph.

The outbound leg had a slight tail wind and I made the turn with an average speed of about 24.3 mph. Needless to say that meant some sort of headwind coming back.

I lost a lot of speed coming back and finished with an average just a tick or two under 22 mph, finishing in a time of 44:55. That was good enough for 24th, and third in my age group (by 1.5 seconds).

I rode with a reverse rabbit knowing that one of my teammates, David Goetzinger, was coming from behind and I just wanted to hold him off… which I did by a few seconds. He still finished well in front of me in 11th place, but that was another small victory of the day.

As usual Julie suffered in the wind and finished 4th overall in women (49:14). She didn’t spend much time riding in the aero position due to control issues caused by the extreme crosswind (a few other riders also said they were out of the aero position quite a bit to keep the bike upright).

A photo slideshow of the event can be found here:

This weekend’s action takes back to the hills around Blue Mounds, Wisc. in what is described by many as a 27-mile sufferfest. We’ve missed this race the last two years, so this our first time riding it. Should be fun!

Advice given by David Vogt on the race at Blue Mounds:

Here's a good strategy:
Descend
Climb (OMG)
Descend
Climb (OMG)
Descend
Climb (OMFG)
Descend
Climb (This freakin' sucks)
Descend
Climb (I freakin' hate this sport)
Finish
That's about it in a nutshell...

I was hanging with the pack (but in a sharp quartering head/crosswind wind), and the next thing I know they’re gone and I’m off on my own. Wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.

The Greenwood race is one of those I really look forward to each year and managed to hold the main pack last year until the last turn. this year, however, I was chucked off the back after about 12 miles and surprised about it.

All I can figure is as I was letting up to get a better position out of the wind, the peleton put on a sustained surge and I was caught off guard. I can't tell if I was riding dumb or just in a bad spot.

Either way, I was off the back and spent the rest of the day working with smaller groups which was still pretty fun. I spent most of the day riding (in one form or another) with Brad Tennis, otherwise it was mainly people I didn't know.

I managed to finished 44th and have claimed this as my first sprint win, since I had to get out of the saddle for the position. Whoopee. A sprint victory for 44th (yes, I’m saying that tongue-in-cheek, but with a smile). Regardless of the result, I had fun.

Julie finished 4th overall in women after losing the main field somewhere around mile 10. She spent most of the day riding with Jamie Haag and David Vogt and is still talking about how much fun she had riding with those guys. Sounds like they attempted to coordinate a synchronized finish as a nod to efforts each made to finishing.

Video from the race can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIVGRuvewII

Twenty-four hours later we were again racing in Stanley, Wisc. Look for that blog in the next 24 hours.

It felt good to get back into a group for Saturday’s race and hearing the sounds of tires and riders around me and seeing the multitude of colors that make up the peleton.

(photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24340367@N08/)

The race 35-mile race in Omro got off to a brisk start and was punctuated throughout with attacks and riders going off the front that kept the tempo high and created a ton of surges (speeding up of the group). That, coupled with all the turns in the course, wore away at riders further back thanks to the “accordion effect” of riding in a big group.

The biggest surprise of the day was seeing Julie pull up next to me about 8 miles in and say “Oh, hi guy.” She managed to survive some pretty fast surges and the early tempo that was in the high 20s (mph) to low 30s range to hold on the to main pack. She was eventually spit out of the group and ended up working with other riders and finished third in the women’s race after being dropped on a descent (where she was dropped at the State RR as well).

She sure can climb, but going down hills is another matter. Maybe she needs to eat some red meat....

I continued to hang on to the lead group until about mile 26 or 27, when a sustained attack and crosswind finally popped me -- and a handful of other riders -- off the back. I ended up working with four other guys for the remainder of the race to finish 44th, about four minutes behind the winner. Sounds like most of the lead pack got pretty broken up over the last 10 miles or so.

Video of the race can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPMvLf4H70U

All in all it was a fun day in the saddle and I was about five minutes faster than last year for total time. More importantly it’s the first road race in a month that is filled with them.

This weekend it’s three races in two days in central Wisconsin with a road race and an inaugural crit (think of Nascar on bikes) in Greenwood on Saturday and a time trial Sunday afternoon in Stanley. This is a weekend I always look forward too.