My third Superweek crit for this summer was the Shorewood Crit just north of Milwaukee on Thursday night.  This crit is a four corner rectangle with a long front and back straight and a small chicane between turns 3 and 4 and it is always a lot of fun for me especially since there are always thousands of spectators.  The race had over $3,000 in primes as well as a crowd based ’super-prime’ which ended up being $1,600.  I also had some friends watching which is always fun.  I started out pretty well in the race staying near the front and was able to hold position quite well.  Then 30 minutes into the race the moto official drove up along side us and stopped us while we were on the back straight.  By the time we slowly rolled to the front straight we found out they stopped the race because an apartment was on fire near the start/finish line and they had to get several fire trucks onto the course to fight the fire.  After a 20-30 minute delay and reducing the number of remaining laps they restarted the race.  The new race had a point sprint every 5 laps as well as tons of remaining money primes so the race was pretty fast and furious.  After the restart I continued racing well and went with a few short-lived attacks as well as a few prime sprints.  I even won one of the field prime sprints but then found out the prime actually went to the guy about 100 meters off the front of the field so that was a bummer but it was nice to actually be my usual aggressive self in the race.  I even set myself up in about 12th spot for the super-prime just in case the real sprinters hesitated looking at each other.  In the end I finished 32nd which is nothing to ‘write home about’ but doesn’t completely suck either.

After the race I went out for pizza with a few of my Milwaukee cycling friends who put me up every summer when I’m in town and one of whom was a friend and teammate of mine from college.  It was good to hang out with them and have some good pizza.

Friday morning I drove back to Chicago where I hung out Friday and Saturday enjoying back to back rest days.  I hung out with my cousins and aunt & uncle.  Saw a movie, ate Mexican food, Greek food, went on an easy recovery ride along the lakefront bike path, watched some beach volleyball, and recovered.  Pretty nice, then again that’s Chicago in the summer; pretty nice.

Big crit in Evanston, IL Sunday evening.  It usually has the second most fans of any of the crits probably pushing 10-15k so it should be fun.

Thanks for reading, -andrew-