Art work by Matthew Crapse

The Verizon Wireless Cycling Team and Wild Card Cycling are proud to bring an exciting weekend of national caliber racing to the streets of Champaign.

Tour_de_Champaign_Flyer-4.doc

When Nick and I got to the race the weather was amazing and there were so many riders there. I felt like my bike was under dressed since I didn’t have any deep section carbon rims. While Nick warms up on his rollers I go out on the road outside the park and warm up get a couple of sprints in and came back. After doing those sprints I realized that my short hard effort the day before was a good idea since it got my legs back into the feeling of going hard for a long period of time. So we cheered Greg on and I got some pictures, sadly I didn’t get a shot on the field sprint since I wasn’t sure how much time I’ll have between races.

The course was really nice, and being on the roads to warm up instead of a trainer it allowed me to figure out where the wind was from and quickly pick the lines through the corners. A lot of people were quite squirrely in that field and in turn those people caused the rest of the field to always have to make slight corrections. The start was a mess, they started us with the women behind us and they were so rude...they would treat us as if we didn’t know anything and always yelled. When the race organizer offered the women to race with us they quickly put it down with a couple of light expletives. If the women thought they would be faster, the should’ve gone before us and not 30 seconds later. So off we go, or so I thought.

The pace was agonizingly slow. I think nick said the average was a hair over 20mph. I wasn’t even breathing hard the first 2/3 of the race. I kept in the middle of the pack closer to the front and the pack would slow down so much through some of the corners that I would end up blowing past them on the outside then I’d wait for them to come around. Since it was only Nick and I we didn’t feel the need to do work at the front so both of us were well in the draft. After the first couple of laps I got a hang of all the corners and the best lines through them which very few people ended up taking. I bumped with a guy and had a couple guys get freaked out when I came up behind them but overall it was very smooth. The prime lap wasn’t anything exciting at first, the way it was phrased “Prime next lap” made it sound like it could’ve been this lap or it could’ve been the lap after. Halfway through the lap nick and I take off with one of the Green and black guys on our tial. When Nick pulls off at the bottom of the last climb I jumped right on it, went hard for a second and looking between my legs saw no wheel. I looked back saw that the other guy was still with Nick then just went through the start/finish line easy and grabbed my 5$ cash . On the next lap the pace picked up and it seems like they thought the prime was that lap. It took the rest of the field half a lap to catch up to me and I was basically coasting. Throughout the rest of the race the Green and Black guys would constantly make futile attacks and most of them contained either nick or me so they would slow right down.

When 2 laps to go sounded, the pace started to pick up. The Green and black guys were forming a train at the front and Nick and I were going to hop on to that but it didn’t hold. On the last lap they dispersed and the pace slowed down a bit then picks back up on the back stretch about to get into the final climb. I’m further back than i wanted to be and must’ve been looking down the millisecond that the first guys jumped so when I jumped I was already at least 50 meters behind them probably more. I am sprinting up the side of the road almost in the grass and halfway up the climb get into third. I am still accelerating and blow by second and catch up to first. He did not expect someone in the 3 feet to his left so when he saw me right with him I hear him scream, at this point we are a couple feet in front of the finish line and it looks so close from my angle that I throw my bike in front of me. At least I tried...my saddle got caught on my shorts and at the point I knew I was second.

Nick was somewhere behind me and I wasn’t sure how he did, so on my cool down lap he finally catches up to me at just under the halfway point and asks if I won to which I respond with 2 fingers. Looking back on the race, it was pretty good. With what Nick told me from his St. Louis Crits and observing for 55 minutes in that race (before the 2 laps to go) I learned a lot. I did not position myself very well for the final sprint. With better positioned I am confident that I would’ve had at least a bike length on the 1st place guy. That’s what cat 5 is for, learning how everything works. I’m looking forward to 4s though, both to have more teammates and to ride with more experienced riders.

It’s a real shame that Mooresville got canceled, the weather was not that bad. I came home and right away checked the weather for the last hour (when we would’ve been racing) and there was nothing there but light to dark green. I would’ve raced in those conditions no problem.

Alexie

Yes, it was a pretty good day for Wild Card. The weather was perfect with little to no wind. I think there were around 35 riders in the Master 40+ field. Unlike Nick & Alexei’s race, our pace started out pretty fast and stayed that way. I ended up with a 24 mph avg for the 70 minute crit. There were constant breakaway attempts, but the pack didn’t let anyone get away. I was feeling pretty good, tried to stay in the front third of the pack, and was doing a fair amount of work helping cover the breakaways.

The course itself was a pretty flat 1.5 mile circuit, couple of little rollers, easy turns, and one final easy hill with a couple of pitches leading up to the start finish line. I took a flyer at about the 30-min mark on the uphill start/finish to see who would follow. Just one person was with me (another 50+ rider), but he wouldn’t work and I was gassed, so we fell back. That was pretty much the case in every attempted break.

So it came down to the last lap. I’d worked my way into 2nd place when the bell was rung. The pack was content to allow us to do all the work on the last lap, so the pace really didn’t pick up that much. We were probably riding 25-27 mph. They let us stay up there, and I’m thinking everyone’s going to attack on the final hill. This actually played to my advantage, because at the base of final hill, I was still in the second spot, and the peloton had begun to string out. The sprint started and I went balls-out like everyone else. I kept expecting the field to swallow me up but it never did. Two other riders got around me and I ended up in fourth. I was also the first 50+ across and they were scoring us separately. They had the scoring all screwed up, which happens pretty frequently at these IRS races, but when all was reviewed on tape I was clearly 4th.

Congrats to Alexei for his 2nd place finish, I know he and Nick did a lot of work in their race and represented the team well.

I encourage everyone to think about doing the Eagle Creek crit in Indy, May 9. These are fun races and the course is similar to Ceraland.

Greg

Ok so the day after Hillsboro I traveled into St Louis for my first taste of crit racing. I wanted to take the info that I learned at Hillsboro and use it to improve at this race. First up was the Cat 5 race in the morning. It was a 20 min race +4 laps. The coarse was 8/10th of a miles and pretty much flat, no corners to really speak of so there was no real gaining through the corners. I started out great, even lead for a lap and a half, I stayed up at the front for most of the race ducking in and trying to rest here and there. I found it very hard to get into a good draft though and was caught out in the wind too much. By the last couple laps people that I had not seen for the entire race were flying around me and there was nothing I could do. So really I did the exact same stupid thing I did at Hillsboro and the same result happened.
I did not place well but I finished without crashing. There was one crash right behind me that sounded bad and sounded like the guy slid for quite some time. I was also hung up with two guys at one point and was sure I was going down, a guy on my right moved into me and pushed me into a guy on the left. I had to work hard not to push the guy to the left into the ditch. We got untangled and rode out and I had a few not so nice words for the guy who couldn’t hold his line. There was A LOT of that, really pretty scary at times.
So for the second race it was the Cat 4/5 race. It was about 3 hours later so I just hung out tried to stay fresh and limber. I was determined to not make the same mistake for a third time and go riding off the front like I did in the last two races and blow up. So I started in the back and stayed there. I even at one point found myself in last place. There were a few attacking attempts but no one had the strength to stay out and the pack moved really well. This race was 40 min + 4 laps so I was in no hurry to get to the front, it was hard to fight that urge but I did it. Slowly I moved my way up, there seamed to be a couple times on the course that everyone but me would slow down and I would just coast up the field. By about 40 min I was right at the front and felt GREAT. I had tons of energy and plenty of kick left.
I ended up 30 out of 50 or so but that was really I think due to my inexperience in moving in a field. In the last couple laps I was in the wrong area and got passed and was blocked. I was pretty much stuck in in the same line the entire race and had a hard time getting from one side to the other. There were parts where it was faster to be on the right, and others were faster on the left. I was most happy with 4/5 race even though I was no where near the front at the line, I felt I followed my game plan the best and executed much better.
This race our average speed was 23 miles per hour compared to 22mph in the first and I felt ten times better in the second compared to the first. So that really drove home the fact that I need to listen to Luke more and remember that “good racers know when to go fast”.
There were a few close calls in this race too, right off the bat, 3rd lap two guys hook up in front of me and go sideways but save it. There was a large crash behind me close to the end don’t know what happened there, as well as one guy busting some spokes locking up with someone, he rode it out though. On the last lap the coolest crash happened, there was a slight curb on the back half of the course and one guy in front of me must have taken it too close and clipped the inside curb and went cartwheeling into the grass. That happened about 20 feet in front of me and bike and man were clear of the rode so it was cool to see, and the guy was in the grass so relatively ok I think.
All in all I am really glad I raced so much this weekend. I was really bummed about Hillsboro, and doing these other races really helped me. I really learned a lot more racing so often. I think I will really be ready to go in two weeks in Indy.

Nick Hand

15 WCC racers made the trip down to Hillsboro for the seasons first road race. All classes were filled and racing was exceptionally hard, I’m sure we all (especially me) were hoping for better results, but not bad for our first race. On to the next race.  Here’s the full team results:

Mens cat 5:
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5 Alexi Perelet
9 Scott Dahman
19 Nick Hand
31 Art Hess

Womens cat 4:
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11 Becky Chan
15 Anona Whitley

Mens cat 4:
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9 Tom Carlson
17 Luck Taggart
19 Rob Raguet-Schofield
38 Mark French
DNF Dan Sochacki
DNF Karl Crapse

Mens masters 40+
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38 Martin Gruebele
44 Gene McDowell

Mens masters 50+
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17 Greg Youngen

Thanks to all that made the trip down.

Check Rob’s blog

http://rob.ragfield.com/2009/04/hillsboro-roubaix-road-race.html