Time to ride!: A little bit of Superweek & Chicago Crit

After not having been here for 3 years I'm back up in Wisconsin for the last couple of races of the 40th edition of Superweek and the Chicago Crit. Together with Chad and Chris Z. of Tulsa we are having a great time up here in Kenosha. We got a nice spot right.at the bay of Kenosha in walking distance from the local bike shop, coffee extravaganza and Kaiser's Pizza - a real post-race treat.

Friday night was a good opener, 100k crit with 29.6mph avg raced like a track race on a .6mile course. Lots of Texans up here: THSJ, Ryan W., RBM, and Ronnie S. along with some other guys. Good times.

The following morning we got to check out the beaches (!) and some history of Kenosha on our morning 1hr spin. Lots of interesting things to see here - not only beer and brats!

Chad pulled off a nice 9th place Saturday evening at Downer's Ave in Milwaukee and this was one of the harder crits I've done this year. A beer-drinking and screaming crowd of 15,000 was there to support the 150+ rider P/1/2 race. I got in a break of 4 together with my German 'brother' Markus W. At one point but was reeled in only 2 laps later. A couple of nasty crashes marked the race for the 2nd night in a row but I was lucky and stayed away from that type of action. The best part of the night were the friendly locals post-race who brought out a keg and cookies to us racers. Some Colombian family came up and took pictures while we chatted about racing, Colombia, Germany and beer (in spanish, of course).

The final day of racing for me was the inaugural Chicago Criterium on Michigan Ave & Grant Park. They are trying to set up a big event and a $25,000 payout for the P/1/2 definitely helped out. The Superweek organizers must be pretty pissed about that since only some 70 racers showed up to the final race of their series whereas 130 riders showed up in Chicago. Both races were only a 2hr drive apart.

Anyhow, after a short drive down from Kenosha we arrived just in time for Chad and Chris' warm-up: the $3000 Master race. Chad made some serious cash and got a nice warm-up in. For the big race, there was some good competition with Horner, Toyota, Kelly, and Rock Racing. The 50mile race seemed very slow from the beginning so due to a lack of warm-up I jumped a couple of times and only 15minutes into the race I found myself in a break of 20 which stayed away. We rotated very well, courtesy of every pro team represented. I did my share and felt good. With 10 to go the sh... started to hit the fan as everybody was chasing and attacking everyone and we went back-to-back from a 12mph granny pace to 36mph in an all-out attempt to decide the winner. Well, I followed wheels and tried my luck here and there but in the end I just finished in the group, 17th, just a few seconds before the field came back down on us. Thanks to the generous prize-list, 17th paid for most part of the 3-day trip.

Side Note: I don't know why everyone is talking about "end-of-season", "time to wrap it up", or "getting into base for next year" - it's still July and there are plenty of races until the end of September. For example TxTough is Sep. 11