Local Racing here we go

Our local season has officially begun. Let the cold and windy racing begin!

Last week was the Gaper's Block Crits put on by the Half Acre team. These are a week long series of Criteriums for beginning racers here in Chicago. They are USA Cycling sanctioned, and designed for folks to get racing experience and upgrade points. Last year was their first year, and as I recall the women's fields averaged about 6 riders per day. This year there were over 20!! The men got two races per night and they were all nice sized fields. I was keeping tabs on how the people from Pedaling With a Purpose were doing, and here's what we ended up with:

Men: one 8th, one 7th, two 6ths, one 3rd, and one WIN!!
Women: one 14th, one 12th, two 10th, one 9th, 8th, 7th, 6th, three 4ths, four 3rds, two 2nds, and FOUR WINS!!

The best was hearing from people who did their first crit ever and how now everything we'd talked about now made sense. Keep up the good work people!

This weekend we had two local crits around car race tracks. I couldn't make the Saturday one but my teammate Leah raced and easily won her race! Jason did his first crit in quite some time and did fantastic! He's got some good teammates this year and it sounds like they had a fun race. Jason was even able to help lead Ted out for a fifth place finish!

Sunday's race was at a car race track in Joliet. I headed down there to meet up with Leah and Kim for our first race with the three of us together. Got there in time to see the Flatlandia guys finish up their race. Nice job guys! Unfortunately the women had a fairly small field, I think we had 10 girls on the line, but we gave it our best. Kim attacked and Leah countered launching the winning breakaway. I let it go thinking I could just bridge up..... NOT :) It was too windy (Crazy windy!) and the other girls with us did a great job covering our every attack as Kim and I took turns trying to get up to the break. Leah won the sprint out of the break for her second win of the weekend and I took the field sprint for third. Lovely course and proud of our teamwork. Just would have been more fun to have a bit bigger of a field.