Tour of Kensington Valley Recap

Well, today I raced in the Tour of Kensington Valley. It's probably the longest road race I'll do this year. The flier claimed it was 97 miles, but my teammate measured it at 102 miles.

Given the length of the race, and the fact that it started at 7:15AM, nobody really warmed up for it. This lack of warm-up really played into the race, because the first attack came at around 500 meters. We rolled off the line, and before I knew it, a Bissell guy jumped, followed by Greg Christian of Team Turin. I quickly latched on to them with a few more guys. The pack didn't really seem to think we were serious, considering we still had to ride 100 miles, so they just sat up. A few more guys came across and we started a rotating paceline. I looked around and all the major teams were represented, with the exception of Wolverines. Luckily, Danny Klein bridged up. Now that we had representation from every major team, we could ride away.

We settled into a nice, strong rotating paceline, getting a big gap on the pack. I took a pretty hard pull and decided to go to the back of the group to recover. Some Lathrup Industries guy was back there and he created a gap. He, a Bissell guy, and I looked at eachother, playing the "No, you pull" game. This was a stupid move on my part because we all got dropped from the group. I attacked the two other guys up a hill and got a gap on them. Though now that I look back at it, Bissell must have been using team radios because the Bissell guy was waiting for his teammate to bridge back up so he could leapfrog him into the pack. I jumped on their wheels and they dragged me back to the lead group. The Lathrup Industries guy just disappeared. When I got back to the lead group Danny was like "Dude, where'd you go?" and I said "I was back aways for a little bit." He replied "Don't ever do that again," which cracked me up.

We kept the pace strong, getting a five minute gap at one point, according to Joe Lekovish at the feed zone. A bunch of my teammates and a bunch of Wolverines were worried I didn't have any food, so every time I came through the feed zone I had two or three people offering me bottles and gels. A thanks goes out to all my teammates as well as Maia Orabi and the Dubrishes for offering me bottles.

Anyways, with about 4.5 laps to go, going up the feed zone climb, Danny and Greg nailed the pace and made everyone suffer. They got a good little gap on us. A Bissell guy jumped across the gap and then Greg rode off the front of them. The five of us that remained suffered for a while and then the other Bissell guy jumped across the gap on the next lap's feed zone climb. We now had Pete Schilling of Priority Health, a South Lyon guy, and a Giant guy. The four of us suffered for a while until a group with John Card got up to us.

Once they reached us, the pace slowed quite a bit. Zach McBride of Priority Health went to pull off the front and nobody followed, so he just rode off the front and got away.

Coming in to the final climb and sprint, I tried to stay on the USA National guy's wheel, but I got separated to the other side of the pack. That separation proved unfortunate because he attacked at just that moment. Peter Schilling also attacked going into the final straightaway and got a little gap. John Card sprinted hard to try to get around him which gave me a good lead out. He didn't get around Peter, but I was able to jump around him before the finish line.

I ended up 9th overall, which I'm really happy with given the strength of the field. Greg Christian won the race on his solo breakaway.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Omnium Points Series at the velodrome. It should be interesting, to say the least. I'm still pretty tired from today.

Oh, and also I should mention that the University of Michigan now has a national champion! Julie Bellerose masterfully won the womens' division 1 criterium in Fort Collins, Colorado at collegiate nationals! She's now back in Canada, but she's going to return to Michigan for Leelanau where I'll be providing feed zone support for her Cascades pro cycling team.