Amassing Miles: Michigan Criterium (Hurray Home Race)

The day had finally arrived! It was time for our home race! Its hard to believe that its already been a year since I was the guy that no one knew (besides John) who had never ridden a road bike yet randomly volunteered to help out at the road bike race. It was fun to watch and all, but this time around I would be able to get in on the action.

Our race was a criterium and was held on Varsity Drive and Highland Drive. We were scheduled to do 30 mins + 3 laps which ended up being right around 13.5 miles. Course map shown below. Exciting looking square eh?

As a whole the majority of the race was pretty uneventful. The guy from DePaul who won on Saturday tried to attack and get away a few times throughout the race, but he was unsuccessful as the field quickly chased down all attacks. We dropped a few guys here and there, but for the most part we just cruised around the course a whole bunch of times (although the guys who actually did work on the front might not consider it "cruising".)

With a few laps left it was time for some action. Zack went to the front and gave us a nice pull to get us onto the final lap. Just as we took the turn to head East on Varsity Justin went to the front and started what would be an attempt to lead us out into the finish line and set us up well for the final sprint. At first this was working flawlessly. The field was getting way stretched out and most of the Michigan guys were set up really well for the final sprint. However, as we made the turn onto Highland Drive things quickly went downhill.

Justin had fully fired up that diesel engine of his and we were cooking at around 34 mph going into the corner. Not surprisingly, that would turn out to be a wee bit quick. Justin said that he could feel his rear wheel sliding out from underneath him so he wisely aborted the mission of turning and did what he could to keep things upright. Unfortunately not everyone was so lucky.

I was sitting right on the wheel of a guy from Wisconsin when suddenly his wheels went out from underneath him and next thing you know he was sliding across the road on his side. Since he was just a few feet in front of me when this happened I had to quickly take evasive action. My choices were to either try to bunny hop over him (terrible idea) or to jump the curb, ride through a yard, ride through a parking lot, and get back onto the road while trying to lose as few spots as possible. Unsurprisingly I opted for the latter choice as did a few guys that were right behind me.

I ended up losing a few spots and any chance I had at contesting the sprint, but I'm not at all upset since the alternative could have been much worse. I'll gladly take losing a few spots in a race than having to sit here all covered in road rash and bandages while typing this. I saw the Wisconsin guy after the race and the state of his legs did not look fun in the slightest. Plenty of bloody road rash from hip to ankle with a pretty nicely destroyed set of bib shorts.

Anyways I managed to get back into the race and pass a few guys before the finish. After it was all said and done I rolled across the finish line in 9th. Below are the results from the top 20.