It's cooler near the Lake

The last few days in Sheboygan have been awesome. Perfect weather with a cool breeze rolling of the Lake right through the front door....too bad this means the end of summer is approaching. The leaves will soon start to change colors, the road bike will go away, and the cross bike will arrive soon. Before putting away the road bike I had to do one last road event of the year. In a last minute decision(only because I didn't know about the race until 3 days before) I decided to do a ride/race around Lk Winnebago.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with open roads, expected finish times of 7 hours for 92 miles, and road bikes, mixed w/ tri bikes, mtn bikes, tandems, and anything else that had two wheels. Oh yeah....there was some money on the line too!

So I rolled out of bed Sunday morning at 3:30am. What am I thinking.... I forked over $90. What am I thinking..... Then loaded up the car for Fond Du Lac. The 5:50am start time had me a little dreary for the ride up the west coast of the Lake. It was a nice steady tempo set by some tri dude who wanted to win it in the first mile. Luckily he was steady enough for me to enjoy the beautiful sunrise over my right shoulder. Soon enough we headed into Oshkosh where it turned from steady tempo to crit national cahmpionships....Andy Crater was crushing it around the corners. It got a little crazy with some grated bridges, cones, and traffic islands. This continued for a while through Menasha and some other towns and then we hit the one climb on the course at High Cliff state park. Crater again crushed it to split the huge group into a lead pak of about 12 riders including Spiro and TJ Woodruff. A group of another 12 bridged 10 miles after the climb and then it was 30 more miles of headwind and 35mph tempo set by dudes on Tri bikes. Crater jumped the sprint early and I reacted a little slow but was able to finish 2nd.

All and all it was a good day. I ended up in the recliner with my eyes shut watching the Olympics the rest of the afternoon! Thanks to Gear-Grinder, Trek, Oakley, and Tristan for the sweet wheel hook up. I'm feeling the pain today after a hard effort yesterday and not enough sleep, but not as much pain as this.