Sunday night: Evanston Crit, 100km (62 miles)
Sunday evening was indeed a fun race with plenty of spectators and a great atmosphere.  I felt pretty good after the two recovery days and raced a pretty good race.  100 or more guys started the race and I spent most of the time in the front third of the pack.  I think I made one or two short lived moves attempting to bridge up to small breaks but that was it.  I was positioned a bit further back than ideal in the final few laps but I was holding back waiting to ride the wave of riders up to the front on the final lap or two but it never really happened and I finished 30th.  I actually had a good sprint but had a wall of people in front of me so I had to cut all the way across to the other side to pass through a small hole and pass a few folks just before the line.  Shout out to Ronnie Strange guest riding with Team Hotel San Jose who was in a three man break for the first 53 laps of the race.  The move was brought back with just 18 laps remaining.

Monday afternoon: Whitnall Park RR, 100km (62miles)
Monday found us once again in Milwaukee this time however for a road race on a 2.3 (or so) mile loop through the Boerner botanical gardens and Whitnall Park.  I raced a pretty good race once again and this time was fairly active.  I was active in the first lap or two covering and rolling with short moves and accelerations and then in the middle of the race I went with several breaks and counter attacks.  I ended up being in two solid breaks for two laps in a row.  The second break I was in ended up being the winning break however I was dropped from it on our first time up the hill after going with the counter attack when it formed just after the first break I was in was caught.  It was fun to be covering moves and attacking with strong guys like Mike Friedman (Garmin) and Brad Huff (Jelly Belly) but I just don’t have that fitness especially right now.  After I came back from the break I sat in and recovered getting ready for the field sprint which ended up being for like 14th place and I finished up in 34th.

Tuesday night: Cedarberg Crit, 100km (62 miles)
Cedarberg is another race that is a favorite of mine simply because it has a great atmosphere with lots of fans in a quaint downtown main street.  I wanted to be aggresive early and I was as I tried to bridge with a Rock Racing guy up to a Garmin-Slipstream rider who went from the line.  I spent the first 2 laps (2.4 miles) off the front of the pack trying to bridge and then spent the next 35-40 minutes recovering from that move.  In the end I led the pack through turns 2 and 3 on the final lap but was passed on the downhill before the final corner and had to jump back in line.  I ended up .21st in the field sprint out of the 92 riders that started

Wednesday morning: Lake Front RR, 150km (93 miles)
After Tuesday night’s race we had a quick turnaround for Wednesday morning’s long (93 mile) road race which started at 11:00am.  The course is beautiful and probably one of the nicest road race courses I’ve ever done and it is by far the nicest 4.5 mile road race loop I’ve ever had the pleasure of racing.  The field split in half in a hard head-cross wind section along the lake and I was on the wrong end of it.  So with 55-60 or so miles still to go there were 40 racers up the road and I was in a group of 30-40.  With each lap the gap got bigger and my group got smaller as people dropped out of the race since we were out of contention.  I decided however to keep going and use the day for training miles and mental toughness.  Besides I was taking a rest day the next day so I would have 50 hours of recovery before my next race.  Anyways, I thought that the group up the road would end up thinning out as guys got dropped from the accelerations with attacks or as they simply lost the will and dropped out so I wanted to keep going.  The group I was with was down to 14 or 15 riders when we were about to get lapped by the leaders so I decided to attack hard thinking that once lapped the officials would pull and place us all and well I wanted to placed in front of the others in the group.  What happened is that the group was pulled and placed but I put so much distance between myself and them before going by the finish line that the officials kept me in the race.  I ended up doing the last 3 laps (30 km or so) by myself.  I was eventually lapped by both the leaders and the field and finished in 33rd holding off all the other guys that were dropped and lapped.  Afterwards I was completely beat down and exhausted.  My legs even hurt throughout the entire rest day.

Thursday: Rest Day…..
Thursday was a much needed rest day so I took an easy hour and twenty minute spin in the morning which included a stop at a bagel shop for a nice second breakfast and then spent the rest of the day relaxing, watching movies, and eating to make up for the calorie deficient day the day before.

I will now race Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings to finish out the series before having five rest days in Chicago next week.

Thanks for reading!  -andrew-