Lindenwood Road Race

It had seemed like forever since we raced at Lindsey Wilson, so we were eager to get back out there and race at Lindenwood. After a long drive late into the night we finally made it to St Charles, Missouri.

The race had a reputation for being hilly, and the guys in the c/d races confirmed this as I was warming up. I still didn't know the extent of "hilly" but oh boy was I about to find out. 

The B race was slated to be 3 laps of the 21 mile course for a total of about 63 miles. The course map and elevation chart is shown below. You'll probably notice that the finish and start don't match up, but that's a bridge we'll cross a bit later.

The race started off gentle enough with everyone kinda just hanging out until the first climb. This proved to be the calm before the storm. The climb was way steep (avg 8%, but kicked up higher than that) and seemed to go on forever. The leaders opened up a bit of a gap on me, but I was able to catch them quickly after the terrain leveled out. After a bit of meandering through flat land we hit the descent. It was a fun and fast one, but unfortunately I had to ride the brakes all the way down since I was in the field.

After a smaller intermediate climb everyone started preparing for the big one at around 10 miles in. This one was another beast. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hang onto the field and got shelled out the back about half way up the climb. I kept pushing up the climb and eventually it finally ended, but I had some work to do.

I teamed up with a guy from Minnesota and we traded pulls in an effort to catch back on. At first I thought our effort was hopeless, but then a group of 2 came into view up the road. I dropped the Minnesota guy on a descent and bridged up to the Notre Dame and Lindenwood guys that we had seen earlier. Now we formed a group of 3 and kept pushing on, sharing pulls at the front. Eventually another group of 3 became visible up the road and they became our new target. 

A few minutes later we caught the group and formed a group of 6. And alas, the main field was in sight! We had about 2 miles left in the first lap so we inserted ourselves back into the field and accepted the draft. At the finish we discarded our empty bottles and grabbed new ones from our teammates before embarking on the 2nd lap.

The 2nd lap started much like the first with everyone loafing it towards the first climb. About a mile before the first climb I clipped a big rock sitting in the middle of the road. After hitting it I thought, "oh great, that'll probably be a pinch flat." But the climb was coming so I set my mind towards getting over that. I put myself towards the front of the field so I could fall back as we climbed, but it wasn't enough as I quickly got spat out the back with the other big guys. I grouped up with a few Minnesota guys as we suffered towards the top. We finally made it and I sat down. Uh, oh. I felt the rim hit the road. Sure enough, the pinch flat happened. I didn't bring anything to fix a flat so I just sat there till the broom wagon took me back to the start.

All in all I wasn't really too upset. I was probably going to DNF after the 2nd lap anyway since I was out the back and wanted to save some of my legs for the crit. Apparently a bunch of guys thought the same as 14 guys DNF'd out of a total of 34. Over 40% of the field didn't finish the race. Dang.

Oh well, the crit was always going to be the focus of my weekend. We headed back to the hotel before heading out to St Louis to get some frozen custard and check out the arch.

Michigan Cycling - Album Cover Edition.
Photo by Harvey Elliot