Saturday turned out to be a perfect day for racing with warm temps and light winds in Ripon, WI. The course setup for the State Criterium Championships included six corners, one minor climb, and a long false-flat to the finish line. The cat 4/5 race was delayed a half hour due to a serious crash on the last lap of the prior race which allowed me to get a little bit more warm-up time in. The race was fairly fast with a lot of sprinting up the short hill but the corners were painfully slow. It was a brake-smashing party on every corner! Truly unbelievable… we are halfway through the racing season and people still haven’t figured out how to pedal through corners. As the race progressed I moved around in the field and waited to see if there would be an attack. There were no serious attacks throughout the race so it was quite an easy race to stay near the front. With 3 laps to go I made a good pull into the hill but went way too hot and shallow into the corner and almost sent myself into the outside curb. The final two laps I sat in about 10th wheel. On the final lap with 3 corners to go a rider in front of me skipped his back tire out over a manhole cover and caused a 4 man pile-up. I should have moved up past this rider earlier because he was consistently skipping out on that corner. Due to the crash 7 riders opened a gap around 40 meters on the rest of the field. It was a sprint from there… I was able to catch one rider at the line to finish 7th. I’m happy with the top 10 finish but at the same time bummed because I would have been there for the sprint for the win and a chance at some Rippin’ Good Cookies. Oh well though, there’s always the 10 races in the Tour of America’s Dairyland for a potential win.
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