Director’s Cut: Monsters of the Midway

Today we had almost all hands on deck for the 20th Annual Monsters of the Midway Criterium. The race is a flat, fast 4-corner race held on the University of Chicago campus. John Meyers won this race in 2008 and I actually won it back in 2002.

Going into the day I really only had one objective for the team: get a good workout. It’s already mid May and next week we’ll have some stiff competition at the Tour de Champaign and in two weeks is the Quad Cities weekend, then the Tour of America’s Dairyland kicks off in just over a month.

Fortunately, a field of 86 riders at today’s race helped make sure it was tough- and it was easy to go fast on such a wide open course. I consistently looked down and saw 32 to 34 mph on the back stretch.

We had eight guys in the race including myself- the only one missing was Waylon, who had spent the week training and vacationing in San Diego. The team definitely raced hard and stayed near the front. (From my spot near the back) I looked up to usually see a group of Verizon p/b ABD jerseys near the front. Now, we didn’t race the smartest by always attacking- but again the workout was our primary objective. I did manage to sneak up front a couple of times, but I could immediately tell that my twice a week training regimen wasn’t worth much so I tried to just stay out of the way.

I don’t think there was any breakaway that stayed away for longer than a lap and late in the race I found myself wishing I’d told the guys to back off with 8 or 10 laps to go and start thinking about the leadout. It was going to take a ton of horsepower to properly execute a leadout on such a wide open course, and two of our biggest horses- Will and Ryan- both put in late efforts.

With three and a half laps to go (or maybe even four to go) the XXX guys started a leadout that was pretty fast but also pretty early. They were signaling for more teammates to come help, but it was too late. This was one of the times I found myself at the front and I slotted in behind their train and in front of Meyers.

I had mainly wanted to just help our team organize the leadout since I wasn’t worth much, but after my pitiful pull with two laps to go Meyers came through and the team was still a few riders behind him. John put in a HUGE effort for about a lap, but without a fresh Ryan and Will behind him that Hogan still had almost half a lap to go with Sherer on his wheel and Danny running sweeper. I had pulled out with a lap to go so that I could cut the course and yell at them during the sprint (mainly to move left and protect their inside), but by then I could tell it was going to be tough. Hogan was digging deep and Freund put in an extra effort, but Sherer still had to jump into a light headwind with at least 350 yards to go. Unfortunately, Danny had lost his wheel too so he wasn’t there to help finish off the sprint (I was dreaming of a 1-2 finish) or even just let a little gap open up when Mike jumped. As I watched them stomp towards the line Sherer had a sizeable gap but the long sprint and that light headwind were just enough for a rider from the pack to slip up past Mike in the final 40 meters. (My sincere apologies to the winner that I don’t remember his name or I’d give him some well-earned props. I glanced at the results and hightailed it out of there pretty quickly with the cold weather).

This evening I asked Sherer what his data was for the race and he averaged 350 watts for the whole thing with a sprint that lasted 22 seconds- that’s a pretty long sprint. So, although we didn’t get the win the guys definitely raced hard. Tomorrow we all head out to Fox River Grove for 50 minutes of suffering. I’ll be sitting this one out and working on my cheering skills for Snake Alley- that other race with a hill.

A few semi-related race notes:
- @rsanmarchi and I moved into the city two weeks ago and are loving every minute of it. However, today I learned that I need to give myself at least 15 more minutes than I think I need to get anywhere in the city on a weekend.
- I also learned that living on the second floor means I should give myself 15 minutes on top of that to load up the team car with the tools, extra wheels, first aid kit, POV cameras, MiFi’s, etc…
- I’m also very grateful that I have my own garage so that I don’t have to unload and reload all that stuff for tomorrow.

Ebert

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