1-3 Jun North Shore Crits plus Iowa RR

Receiving the Illionois State Crit Champion jersey.

After a full weekend of traveling and racing in the Quad Cities Friday through Monday, the week went by far too quickly and Friday arrived well before I was ready for it.  But arrive it did and with it the inaugural Lake Bluff Twilight Criterium presented by Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital. Lake Bluff is located north of Chicago on the lake front, an area often referred to as the North Shore. Since most of the racing I’ll be doing in the States is criterium racing, I better make sure everyone knows what a criterium is! For those not familiar, a criterium or ‘crit’ is a bicycle race run on a road circuit closed to traffic often near or around the central business district of a town. The circuit is usually about a mile or so long, giving fans a chance to see the riders come around every few minutes.

Early race, towards the back trying to move up.

As part of the USA CRITS Championship Series and partnered with the National Criterium Calendar Series race at Glencoe the following day, the Lake Bluff women’s race drew a top-class field of 50 riders with contingents from the top US teams. The large field and tight, windy course made positioning in the bunch difficult. Unfortunately, not being in full crit-racing mode quite yet, I didn’t head to the start line quite early enough to get a good spot and ended up on the very back row. Bad move. The consequence was that I spent the first 50 min of the 60 min race trying to move up.

Making ground, moving up in the bunch.

The only place to gain position on the narrow, 1.25-km course was along the start/finish straight, a head-wind, slightly uphill bit of road. My race consisted of sprinting full-gas along this straight, moving past five or six riders and then falling back four or five spots only to repeat the process the next lap, ever so slowly inching my way forward. After 25 laps of this, I could finally begin to see some road rather than just riders in front of me.  I was feeling pretty gassed from my effort and, with only 5 laps left to go, fighting hard to keep the position I had worked so hard to gain.

Sometime in the early part of the race, while I was way in the back oblivious to what was happening up front, three riders escaped the bunch and, although they never gained more than a 30-s lead, excellent teamwork aided by the windy course, meant that the break remained out of sight and survived to claim the podium spots. Devon Gorry (NOW and Novartis for MS) took the win with Liza Rachetto (Primal/MapMyRide) second and Kaitlin Antonneau (Exergy TWENTY12) third. I didn’t have much sprint left after sprinting so many times already, and the finish straight felt like it went on forever. In the end, I finish a very hard-earned fifteenth.

Grabbing a drink during the Glencoe Grand Prix.

Saturday afternoon, racing returned to the North Shore with the Glencoe Grand Prix. Glencoe is one of the best races in the Midwest, with an amazing job by race organizer Jon Knouse for five-year history of the race. I missed this one last year due to illness so was keen to have a good race. Although the field was just as classy with most of the same riders and the racing a bit more aggressive, I started with heaps better position than the previous afternoon and, with the wider course offering more opportunity for movement in the field, I was able to actually contribute to the race rather than just struggling for position as I had the previous day. 

Showing off my new jersey and medal.

In the end, despite a much better race on my part, my result was only moderately better as I crossed the line in twelfth. The bunch finish was won by the ever-amazing Laura Van Gilder (Mellow Mushroom) followed by Erica Allar (RideClean) and Christina Gokey-Smith (NOW and Novartis for MS). Although not the finish I was hoping for, twelfth was enough to put me as the top-placed Illinois-based rider, earning me the Illinois Cat 1/2 State Crit Champion title. Sweet!

Me and Brian checking out the view
over the MS River Valley north
of Sherrill.

Immediately following podium presentations, Brian and I hopped in the car and drove across the state back to Iowa for the HHS Debate Road Race early the following morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed for the early start, feeling completely exhausted from a very full couple of weeks. The race was on a gorgeous 10-mile rolling circuit outside of the small town Sherrill Iowa, just north of Dubuque. Unfortunately, due to lack of promotion, only a small field turned out of the race. Despite feeling exhausted, I was able to win the women’s race. Did I mention that I was the only woman racing? That probably made the win a bit easy. Just a note, anyone looking for a great road race in preparation for Tour of Galena next year, put this one on your calendar.

Next up, this weekend I rejoin my Psimet teammates to tackle the Tour of Galena, a four-stage omnium starting with a challenging circuit race on Friday afternoon.