Tour of St. Louis

I did the 3 stage Tour of St. Louis over the weekend. It went so-so.

Rule one. Don't eat sausage for breakfast, no matter how late the race starts.

The family and I went to the Crowne Plaza hotel for the weekend of racing. Everyone in my family is now sick, so that made things a little less fun for them. Anyway, we went to breakfast at the hotel and I made the mistake of having sausage with my omelet. Not so swift. Although the race didn't start until one, it still came back to haunt me. Literally!! After about 15 minutes of the crit, I felt awful and was having some foul burps. I was struggling to ride on the back, with my stomach in knots. I finally rid myself of said sausage, took another 15 minutes to use all of the water I had to clean up myself, my bike and get my wits about me and started to move up. At this point, there was a break of four up the road with almost a minute (they were gone) and a second break of 8 up the road at about 10-12 seconds. We chased pretty hard for the last 15 minutes of the race and I even made two efforts to bridge to the chasing break, but could not get there. As the clock ticked down, we were gaining, but it was slow going. In the end we caught the break during the field sprint and I ended up 8th. So-so, but good for someone who thought that they were going to quit 20 minutes earlier.

Rule 2. Don't TT up a mountain.

They had a 2.5 mile TT in the evening outside of St. Louis. It claimed a section of 24%. Basically, you start descending like a madman, get to the bottom and suffer like a dog on the way up. I hit the bottom of the incline and they were kind enough to write "big climb" on the road. Thanks, the trees way up at the top didn't give it away. Well, needless to say, I climb like a dump truck and made the mistake of taking a 23 cog, so we won't be discussing my victory here. In fact, in the 3's I only beat 1 person. At least I wasn't last. I should have figured out that I did not need to do this TT when 13 of the 58 guys from the morning showed up. HHMMM. In the end I lost 2 minutes to the guy who won the 3's. Did I mention that we only went 2.5 miles? 2 minutes! That is a sad, sad showing. This does not bode well for me considering doing Ed Soto. Hopefully, my James Bond jet pack will be here in time and the officials won't notice the turbine sound.

Rule 3. Don't come underneath me.

The crit on Sunday was much more my speed. Flat, tailwind sprint, some good corners and a big field to hide in. I stayed pretty low key during the race, trying to let the 3-4 big teams beat each other up. They were doing an excellent job attacking, covering, looking at each other and hitting it again, which made for a much better race than we get in Indy sometimes, at least from the willingness to take it to other riders and teams. They had announced that there would be 2 primes during the race, both cash for $25. The first prime, I ended up in a small group off of the front and in the run in, we got jumped by a guy who walked away with the prime. No luck there. As we hit the line, the official rang the bell immediately and we had back to back primes. I counter attacked the winner of the previous prime, kept the small group I was in rolling and jumped them out of the last corner. $25 in the bag. After that I laid low for the field sprint. With about 10 minutes left, I went to the top 10 just to play it safe. It was quite a bumpy ride with the speeding up and slowing down, constant surges and late attacks, but I was able to stay out of trouble. I was totally set for the sprint with two corners to go, double checking gears, closing the corner and focusing on the landmark that I had picked to jump from. With one corner to go, right as I enter the turn I felt someone underneath me. I closed the door and got a bit tangled for a split second. That was all it took. I went into the corner fifth, lost the draft and could not get back into it. I sprinted early from the corner, trying to get back on, but couldn't. The four ahead of me fought it out, I was two bike lengths behind and four ahead of the field. One small touch is the difference between first and fifth. Tough luck, but that is bike racing.

The slow kid on the island,

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