Iowa City

Just got back from a really fun weekend of racing (rr and crit) in Iowa City with Chris and Aspen. The road race was ~15 miles outside the city in a Mennonite town with horses and carriages. The cat 3 field raced 4 - 13 mile laps on a windy and rolling hills type course. None of the hills proved severe enough to cause a break in the field and it turned out be a rather boring race due to that fact. When the sprint came guys were all over the place and way across the yellow line even though the rule was in effect, Padfield was the only one on our team who could get decent positioning and came across in a respectable 8th place (without cheating his way to good positioning i might add!). aspen and i were caught back in the middle of the pack.

Day 2 was a .8 mile crit with a steep downhill with a somewhat technical 90 degree turn at the bottom followed by a steep big ring climb. The day was pretty windy but the wind was only really felt on a couple short stretches after the climb. A breakaway took place at a smart point just after a prime when most of the field was gassed and no one responded. This was about lap 5 of our total 25 laps and the guy stuck it out to the end with a 30 second gap on the field. Aspen put in a really hard effort for about half a lap trying to break away with one other guy but the field wasnt gonna let anyone else get away and we went to the line together. The team had talked about the finish trying to figure out where best to be and we managed the field sprint pretty well. Aspen pushed really hard the last time after the hill and i couldnt catch his wheel. he rounded the final corner in 2nd and won the field sprint while i rounded it in 4th and took 3rd in the field sprint giving us 2nd and 4th on the day. padfield raced strong all race and had bad luck with a mechanical with only a couple laps to go.

overall im really happy with how the weekend went. we raced hard and are learning each others strengths and weaknesses and learning to race better as a team. the weather was great too, couldnt ask for more! next up winona lake rr and vernon hills gp