Melon City and Rock Island Crits

Sunday-
Muscatine, Iowa and the Melon City Crit in Weed Park. A park over looking the Mississippi River. A 1 mile course with a fast descent and a speed bump to maneuver over before a long grinding uphill, a tricky S-curve. The course was 1 minute from Chad Bishop's house, which was sweeeeeet! Got everything ready to go and lined up for the race at 3pm. Over 70 riders started the Cat 3's 28 mile race and it was fast from the start. Many looking for a breakway chance for victory. The way the course is set up and with the wind yesterday, no break was going to make it. I sat in the pack and tried to conserve energy. I did win a prime, bringing home a new floor pump! So fast forward to the last lap, I was sitting about 15th-20th going down the hill in the group and moved to the outside, knowing this is where to be. Punched it with a couple guys in front of me and made it to the top of the hill before the S-Curve in 6th. Finished the race in 6th....not to bad. Two crashes, one at the top of the hill and other in the S-curve took a few guys out of the road, including GMac who hit pretty hard. Glad to see he was ok. So a 1st and 6th places in 2 days, I was pretty happy. Celebrated with some chinease food !!!

Monday-
Rock Island Crit in downtown Rock Island. Fast 8 corner figure eight loop with 24 laps. It started raining right before the start, which looked as though it was going to be just like Snake Alley. Started in a good spot and started to move up to the front when a break of 4 went off the front. The pack sat up and went curb to curb for some reason.....? There were about 4 crashes in one corner today....and I didn't think it was that slick. This disrupted our chase a couple of times. So we then started to chase after a couple laps, with 6 guys trying. The break kept getting farther and farther up the road and I quickly knew it wasn't coming back. With the pace high however, we did catch Derek Cassidy who fell off the back. With a couple laps to go, the field began to fight for position and on the last lap, I came around the last corner not where I needed to be and came in for 16th. I did end up in the money, but the race didn't end up like I wanted it to. The 2 men in the break fought it out for the victory. I wanted to get into a break today, but it didn't happen.

Will have some pictures of the weekend up soon, hopefully.

Next, I will be relaxing for a week or so and then start up again trying to build up for Northfield Crit/State Crit and Clear Lake Weekend. May do the Tour of the Dairyland at the end of June.

Good job to all this weekend, it was a lot of fun!

A large THANK YOU! to Chad Bishop for this weekend. Chad, you were a great host and thanks for sharing your home for me!

A few more pics from Snake Alley thanks to the Snoops.


Final Attack.
Win #2