Howdy all,
So under some pressure I'm updating my blog although no one reads it apart from my mum...It's been a while since my last update so I'll try and bring things up to date.
Two weekends ago the team made the long trip up to "America's Dairyland", Wisconsin. They really take the dairy thing a bit to far as you can buy cheese curds by the kilo almost anywhere, god knows why you would want to eat cheese curds anyway. There are dairys everywhere and out in the farms everything seriously smells like cow shit and I thought Paterson was bad.Anyway enough about cow shit. The road race was on a rolling 80mile (128km) course and we were blessed with some good weather for once so things weren't all doom and gloom. The cross winds and the Marian College-Lindsay Wilson showdown shattered the field about 30miles in leaving about 20 guys left. Owen, Stroot and myself were the only survivors left from Lindenwood. I gotta give big props to Stroot here, as Marian and Lindsey Wilson started attacking each other the group got strung out and I got caught out and had to chase hard which is when Stroot dropped back from the front group and rode me on. A truly hard man effort. I finished the day in 7th in a downhill bunch kick with Owen and Stroot rounding out the top 20.
Bikes ready to roll.Sundays crit was held in downtown Madison around the Capitol building. It was a really cool course, not to technical and a bit of a hill which is about as good as any crit gets for me. Thing’s were going well until about halfway through when the heavens opened up and it started flogging down. Now before you start calling me soft and asking whether I’m made from sugar I have to explain that the course was on slick concrete so when it gets wet it’s like ice. I crashed twice but still managed to roll over for 17th. Owen got away in a small group just before it started to rain and held on to out sprint the rest of the breakaway for Lindenwood’s first victory of the season.
The Capitol Building in Madison
Last weekend was the Mid West Cycling Conference regional championships and was the last weekend of racing for the season. We had another long drive to Athens, Ohio for the race. The road race was another 80 mile undulating course with two challenging climbs. First lap I dropped my chain completely at the bottom of one of the climbs and had to get off and put it back. I had to chase for the next 10km to get back on and was suffering pretty hard in the hottest day I have had since leaving the Australian summer months ago. The rest of the race was fairly uneventful and I finished 19th after a fairly average sprint.
As about as scenic as it gets in Wisconsin...
Sundays crit was in Columbus, Ohio around part of the Ohio State college grounds. Ohio state is a MASSIVE school and they obviously party pretty hard there as the when we were driving in it looked like a war zone (if said war was fought with beer). It was another hot day and the wind was blowing a gail too, as such not many people finished. After about the halfway mark the group started to feel the heat, and for about 15 minutes there I felt like all I was doing was closing gaps left from the people getting shelled. Finally I made the chasing second group with about 6 others and that’s how it finished rolling over in 10th.
Following and attack by Will Nowak at the Regionals Criterium.
Lindenwood have qualified for Collegiate Nationals which are being held in Fort Collins, Colorado between Friday and Sunday next week. I should be really excited and motivated for these races but there have been some really big distractions here lately and my head definitely isn’t in racing at the moment. After this weekend I’ll be taking some well needed time off to reassess some things.
I’m looking forward to a big summer of racing and seeing more of this great country before going home at the end of July to focus on the track.
(More pictures to come soon)
Just making sure that I did come last in the sprint...
Take care y'all,
Chev.
