Race Report: Superweek Summaries, 2002
Saturday, July 20th, 2002
Schlitz Park, Friday. 88 laps, 100K. Rectangular course, left-hand turns, flat straight thru start/finish into short climb (like Seminole highway coming out from the arb), long downhill on backstretch good for coasting recovering. With 56 to go I was cooked, but resolved to hang on until halfway mark. I was riding the middle-to-back with many other Madison-area racers and all of the other 30+ guys. Then I blacked out for awhile and saw a split opening up with 15 laps to go so I made a hard bridge effort and made it off the front with a small group, including series leader Viktor Repinski. I heard Laurel yell, "you're in the top-18!". I took 2 feeble pulls but mostly regretted being there because there was no place to hide out. The field caught us after 3 laps away. The promoters rang the bell for $250 primes on 7 consecutive laps, and on one of them I actually came thru turn 4 in 2nd place but a guy jumped me and I had no will whatsoever. Submission. Still, I hung on to finish in the middle of the field on the lead lap, maybe 50-60 place. Ouch. Crawled into bed 11:30pm. Alarm rings 6:30am. Waukesha 30+. 40 laps, course running reverse direction with start/finish on the lower section of the course. Small field with 40+ opening day diluting a lot of the talent. Tentative break of 12, including Ben Neff (who instigated the break) and myself (who spotted an opportunity). 3-4 guys working, everyone else sitting in thinking about the finish. No real rotation or organization or urgency to the break. Marc Kebekkus attacks with 2 to go, then counters his own attack when caught and Micheal Martens, great racer from Team Wis, waves Kebekkus away from second wheel without giving chase. Kebekkus stays away for the solo win. Midway thru the last lap the pace picked up, we came through the final turn fast into long field sprint for 2d. In a close 5-way sprint, guy from Massachusetts gets 2d, Darren Pipp (GDVC) gets 3d, I get 4th in a come-from-behind bike throw against a guy from Santa Cruz, CA. Ben gets 11th. Mike Grinney is 19th, (first out of the money for the second time...damn!).
After doing a 1-2 race and masters race back-to-back, I really recommend the masters races...