Iowa Collegiate Crit

Saturday night, Bethany and I went out with my aunt and uncle to friends for the final four basketball games. A great first game, and a lackluster second game. I wish Butler could have won the national champs, but oh well. It's baseball season!!!

Sunday was the second day of racing for the Iowa Collegiate race weekend. A 1hr crit was on tap for the Men's A/B group today. Race didn't start until 12:15 so I was able to get up and watch the livestream of Tour of Flanders. What a great race! It was awesome to see the huge group at the front, and that no one guy could break away and win by a minute or so. Every person in the lead group seemed to be on the rivet and it was awesome to see Nick Nuyens beat Chavannel and Cancellara.

At the end of the road race on Saturday, I could feel my front derailleur was not shifting very well and sure enough when I got home on Saturday, it was shredded.....crap. Good thing was that Scheels opened at 10:30 on Sunday and I was able to get a cable and my shifting back to normal! Got to the nice race venue in a new development area, no traffic! Iowa had a couple extra guys to race today which was going to make it even harder to control. It was extremely windy, with 30-40mph winds, but 70 degree weather! We lined up with a few more guys today and the race started off fast. UNI was well represented with Finn, Will, Brian West, and myself. Brian ended up getting in a four man group off the front that lapped us towards the end of the race. Our group dillydallied around, with Iowa, ISU, UNI putting in some digs to try and break up the field a bit. The break lapped us with 2 laps to go and I was going to try and lead Brian out for the win. I got Brian on my wheel going down the hill and I punched it at the bottom, a little early to get a great result, but I was hoping Brian would slingshot past. Unfortunately, he must have lost my wheel and an ISU rider and 3 Iowa riders came around instead. I sprinted for 5th in the field sprint, and ended up 8th overall. A good win by AJ Turner. Not the result I wanted, but it was a decent workout and worked on fitness! A really great job by Iowa on putting on the race, and thank you to Mark Guthart and Brett Griggs for officiating!

Results can be found here

My USA Cycling write up here

On tap today are a couple tests to see how the power is "hopefully" increasing after the Tucson training camp! Tour of Hermann this weekend with the American Equity boys!