Monsters of the Midway

Sometimes  athletes need some extra work, even elite professional athletes can use a little one on one time to help to dial in their craft. Our new Pro team has shown some good results since the start of the year but they are by no means perfect....yet. The difficulty is brining together a totally new group of guys and asking them to race like a perfectly oiled machine. This is not really a fair ask since our guys live all over the midwest and really only get time all together during races. Sometimes while racing you have to just know what your teammate is going to do, you have to trust in their ability and know that they will be there when they said.

Yesterday Matt, Shane, and I attended the Monsters of the Midway at the University of Chicago. This is a completely flat course on a long wide palisade on the UoChi campus. The road is a pretty tough with lots of cracks and pot holes. If the road was ever improved this would be a unreal super fun course. The condition of the course added a level of difficulty for sure. The level of talent at the race was quite high with 10 Ego Sammy's riders, a similar number of xXx riders, Cole House, Chad Hartley, and a handful of other very strong riders. For the most part our team strives to fight for control of the race but with our low numbers we were going to do as little as possible. This meant we would have to get a bit lucky with our timing but it also meant we could work on our techniques.

Matt, Shane, and I would try to make our way into any moves that showed any real promise and if we were not successful we would lead out Shane for the sprint. Matt works for the Astellas Pro cycling team so he has picked up some great techniques from them this year and we were going to practice them today.

The weather was too darn cold for May so I spent a good hour and a half warming up and trying to work out all the car legs from the night before. We lined up at back of the field and waited for the officials to get everything set. Luckily we did not wait too long and we were on our way in the normal speedy fashion. I took my time making it to the front and rolled off the front with a few moves that looked promising but went nowhere. Finally a move went up the road that looked to be the move and Matt had made it in. Cole House, Chad Hartley, two Ego Sammy's riders and a host of others. The problem was there were just too many guys in there. Once I realized there were too many up the road I should have positioned myself to be ready for the counter that was for sure going to go but hindsight and all. With just a few feet before the break was caught a counter attack was launched out of that by Cole House. That move started with two and swelled to 6 which was the winning number. There was not enough firepower left in the field to bring the move back. So it was time to practice our lead out work. With 7 laps to go we lined up with Matt, myself, and then Shane as our sprinter. Matt had to do his best to stay out of the wind as 7 laps is a LOOONG way to go for one guy, but we also had to position ourselves in a way to not get trapped and left out of position. Matt did a great job getting us around the course and keeping us in position. With one to go our lack of numbers hurt us a bit as we were swarmed by the pack. Shane was telling me we had to go! I found a gap and Shane did a great job to stay glued to my wheel. With only two turns to go Matt made his way back up to me and I jumped on his wheel again. I made a mistake at this point and did not make it through a hole Matt had gone through. This is something I will have to work on, I can't lose that wheel! It took me a few seconds but I was back on Matt's wheel, but Matt had slowed slightly to wait for us. This cost of a bit of speed for the last turn. We improved our position going through turn 3 and into turn 4. Coming out of turn 4 Shane jumped hard and had a lot of speed. He was able to make up a lot of spots and then waited for those in front of him to fade before going again. It was a long sprint, at least 400+ meters long. Shane ended the day 9th over all and 3rd in the field sprint. Sure we love to win, but getting some of our technical goals for the day was a big plus for us.

We all felt much better about the ride this week compared to last weekend at Urbana. Sometimes you need to fail hard to know how to improve.