Elk Grove Village

I love Elk Grove Village. Nice Payout. 30 min from the house. Everybody's there. Fun race.

My cousin Lynn from Minneapolis was hired by the production company to write the copy for the hour long Comcast special on the race so she was there all weekend documenting everything. It was awesome to get to see her and hang out a bit. Also super cool was she asked if they could hook up a camera to my bike to film the race. It turned out great. They promised to send me dvd and as soon as I get it I'll try to post at least some parts of it.

We had two races, Sat & Sun on the same course. I have never cared much for the hairpin turn in corner 1, and mid race on Saturday I crashed in it. In ten years of racing this is the second time I've crashed in a race....I know I know, I'm totally jinxing myself. I was going pretty slow, smacked mainly my elbow and only got run over by one person. I got minimal road rash, a little soreness, and a headache. I'm fine, but it was unpleasant and I hope I don't do it again soon. When I got back in after my freelap I was nervous in the corner so I was finding myself struggling to stay connected after it. At 2 to go I moved up with the intention to hit the corner first so I could maintain a good position. After the hairpin I looked back and had a pretty big gap. "Oh $#(^!! " I thought. Now I have to go. So I went for it, as hard as I could. I held the gap until the final 1/4 of a lap. When the leadout train came by I had the right instincts to jump in but was not strong enough to maintain it and got knocked out. I fell to the back of the pack and that's where I finished. I got a gambler's prime at 1 to go, and it was a glorious feeling to be off the front so late in the game. Thanks to everyone who was cheering! It was really fun and I only wish I could have pulled it off. Jen Purcell won, Laura Van Gilder was second and Lauren Tamayo was third.

Sunday other than being a little sore I felt alright. The race was fairly fast, and we quickly whittled our field down to about 20 or so riders. At 1 to go I was in second position (perfect!) into the hairpin turn and felt good about things until the final stretch when things got slow and we all bunched up. I got boxed in and had no where to sprint. When I checked the results I was twelfth and felt lucky to get that. Carrie Cash won, Laura Van Gilder was second and Sam Schneider was third.