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Circuit of Sauk 1... As told by Trent...The Circuit of Sauk Cat 4/5 Road Race consisted of two laps of 14 miles, with two short steep climbs each lap. I raced with my brother Garrett and we rode pretty aggressively, trying to get on every attack or making our own attacks. However the race was dominated by Team XXX out of Chicago, with someone from their team attacking every few miles. The first lap was pretty boring; we each went with some attacks that failed instantly. John Schimek of the Borah Junior Team rode the first lap very aggressive, frequently setting the pace at the front. On the second lap I decided to attack on a roller along the ridge following the first climb, I opened up a good sized gap, but unfortunately was all by myself into a headwind. A group of three bridged up to me but only one of them was willing to work, so we got swallowed up by the group pretty quick. Now it was Garrett's turn to attack, he waited till the final climb and set a hard pace up the climb, stringing out the group, I followed up about seven riders behind him, when we hit the top five of us increased the pace, to pull away from the group, Garrett had a mechanical and fell back into the group. After the final climb the downhill comes right away (about 200yds) with about 3 miles to the finish. The group caught us on the downhill, so I just stayed about 10th wheel leading into the finish not thinking I had much of a chance in a group sprint. At about 400meters a group of riders started their sprints, and I just stayed on their wheels waiting for a hole to open up somewhere, and with 100 meters to go a hole opened up down the right side and I finished in 2nd place a bike length off the winner, who was a member of Team XXX. Thanks for reading, Trent As told by Mark...Chris and I drove over together and we planned on racing Cat 3 with Max who was to meet us there. Garrett and Trent were already done racing as their event started at 9 a.m. and is just another reason they need to get their upgrades as soon as possible. As we drove down Chris told me the course and we worked on a little game plan. I put it in my head what I should do but after the win at Durand and how well my legs were feeling I was really thinking about just attacking and having fun. Big mistake. I’ll spare you the details and try not to make any excuses but remember this (I know it already but tend to repeat mistakes now and then), NEVER underestimate your opponents or the course! I managed to do both and in my blissful ignorance managed to go from the front of the group, through the field and out the back in about ¾’s of a mile near the end of the first lap. I did have time to recount my mistakes as I was again in another race all by myself early on only this time it was trying to catch a motivated group of good riders on a course that didn’t really suit my riding style that well this time of year. Twice I got tantalizingly close (within about 20 yards) to the back of the field but couldn’t muster enough energy to bridge and ended up watching them float away up the first climb on the second lap. Most people would bag it at this point but I’ve only done that twice in my career and both times it left a very bad taste in my mouth so that wasn’t really an option. I wanted to finish and I didn’t want to finish last so I kept full on the gas and ended up riding harder for this race than I’d done at Durand. I’m not very outwardly cocky by nature as I feel its bad karma and generally in poor taste but the double helping of humility I was handed today was a good lesson in how you should approach a race and your competition. Chris rode well without any team help as Max had a very bad day (he couldn’t put a finger on what went wrong as he took 1st in a sport class mt. bike race the following day and felt great) dropping out shortly after the 1st climb. I believe Chris ended up 10th or 11th as it came down to a mass sprint and he got boxed in before he could let loose. I managed to pick off some stragglers and finished in around 25th out of 48 starters. Probably 10 dropped out? It was a good race all in all because I got to see my good buddies Paul Ellis (Grand Performance – elite team) and Mike Bobusch (Wheel and Sprocket – Appleton) along with a bunch of other faces I hadn’t seen in a while. The day was pretty nice weather wise too. Thanks for reading and hope to see you at another event! Later, Mark. |
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This site was last updated on: June 28, 2010 01:56:27 PM -0500 |