Monday, July 2, 2012

TOAD.. Fondy road race

So it was to be this year that I did my first tour of Americas dairy land road race, a four lap race that equaled 40 miles. I took off of work and headed down to Fond du lac. When I got there I was pretty nervice as I don't do many road races, but once the race started I was fine. The race started pretty slow and it windy so I tried to stay near the front on the corners. The first two laps were carbon copies of one another, hammer the corners and hills and take it easy on the straights and know what way the wind is going to be coming from on the next corner. Lap three started out the same until we got to the hills. I over geared one of the hills and found myself shot out the back of the group, I played it cool though and waited for someone behind me to pull through to pull us the rest of the way back to the group. Once we got done with lap three I wasn't really sure what to expect from lap four and I told myself to be extra alert for crazy stuff. The first half of the fourth lap was fine but the start of the second half I found myself off the road more than once and I hit a biiiiiig! pot hole that you'd think I would have saw before the fourth lap. The last mile or two of the race sucked. I was boxed in, people were getting jumpie and at that point I just wanted to get to the finish with all of my skin still on my body. When we got to the finishing climb which was about 1/4 mile long I was still on the right side of the road (boxed in) but as people started making there moves I moved to the left and made mine, by the time I saw day light I wanted to get as far away from those jumpie roadies as I could. I put in a huge effort and kind of surprised  myself when I started pulling away from the group and only saw four riders ahead of me. Buuut I burned out a little to early and two guys caught me right at the line so I settled for 7th. They paid out 10 deep in the race so I even got some cash!

Now, back to the trails!