2013 Tour of America’s Dairyland

Results
Wednesday – Fond du Lac road race – 70th out of 150 starters, 124 finishers
Thursday – Road America road race – 94th out of 150 starters, 102 finishers
Friday – Fond du Lac criterium – 59th out of 105 starters, 61 finishers
Saturday – Downer Classic criterium – 62nd out of 150 starters, 116 finishers
Sunday – East Tosa Grand Prix – 37th out of 119 starters, 86th finishers

Somewhat disappointing results, but still some great racing/training over the past five days. I missed the first six days of the series so I could race the SRS race weekend in Montgomery — hard to pass up on such a great venue so close to home. Still working on a race report for that weekend, but I thought I’d go ahead and finish this one up first. We started driving up immediately after the Montgomery race on Sunday expecting to make it 700 miles up to La Porte, Indiana but instead only made it about 400 miles up to Elizebethtown, Kentucky. On Monday we finished the drive up to La Porte to stay with Kristine’s grandmother. Then on Tuesday we finished the drive up to Wisconsin where I dropped Kristine and the kids off at Kohler-Andrea state park to go camping on the shores of Lake Michigan while I headed back down to Milwaukee to race the last five days of the 11 day Tour of America’s Dairyland.

Wednesday – Fond du Lac road race
First day of racing at the 2013 Tour of America’s Dairyland

I finished near the back of what was left of the field in a field sprint after our race was cut short by the county sheriffs for center line rule violation. This was my first race of the series as we started our drive up on Sunday immediately after the Montgomery SRS race but didn’t arrive in Wisconsin until Tuesday. On Tuesday, I had a nice ride starting from Saulkville and heading west into the hills.

On Wednesday, I headed up to the race where I found out there was a waiting list to race (field limit of 150 had been reached). Fortunately, I had pre-registered but that meant that our field was huge with 150 riders. As you can see in the rollout video below, there was no pre-race instructions that I could hear and so I wasn’t sure if we had the whole road. For a field of that size and roads that small you have to have a rolling enclosure. Even though we weren’t supposed to have the whole road, that is how the race ended up playing out as you can see in the videos underneath the jersey pic above.

During the race, there were several breaks but with such a large field there was always somebody chasing. This kept our pace extremely high as we averaged about 28mph for the race, but that was only because of the slow uphills. The rest of the time we spent well above 30mph including bouts of closer to 40mph with some nasty crosswinds that had us guttered. I heard several people comment that this is what a European race probably felt like. I managed to get in one chase group that worked well for about 2 or 3 miles but we got caught shortly before the field caught a small break that was still off the front.

It was crazy being in a field that large, at one point I crested a hill with most of the field stretched out in front of me. It was amazing to see so many riders strung out over a distance that probably measured a quarter mile and 30 seconds of ride time. In the end, there was well under 100 riders left in the main field as many people had been guttered and dropped in the heavy crosswinds. There was several times that I thought I was going to open up a gap with how hard I was working to just barely hold the wheel in front of me while also trying to get as close to the edge of the road as possible without hitting debris or holes.

With about five miles to the finish, I was moving up on the left when the field swerved left and I ended up going off the road on the wrong side of the road (that’s how closely the yellow line rule was being observed). At this point, I realized I was the very last rider in the field! So I tried to move up again and stayed attentive to see if there was any chance of blasting up one of the sides and passing a lot of people — but the opportunity never presented itself and so there wasn’t much point in contesting the sprint from the very back.

The course was a really great course with classic Wisconsin farm fields covering rolling hills with cool barns dotting the landscape. There was hardly any traffic (maybe saw three or four cars the entire race) so it really would not have been hard to have a rolling enclosure with one lead moto ahead of any break, an official with the field, and then the support cars behind the field. That’s actually pretty much how the race played out, but the sheriffs were not happy since I’m guessing they were told we would be on one side of the road. They cut our race short by two laps (20 miles).

Thursday – Road America road race

The last time I raced this race (2010), I was much more aggressive staying towards the front, and the field was quite a bit smaller … maybe 100 guys instead of more than 150 which we had in the race this year. I ended up 4th having made it into the day’s break. I figured there would be a break again this year, but I was too far back to make it into it when the break went, or when any of the several chase groups established themselves. I always seemed to find myself finally making it to the front just as another chase group had already left. So by the time our field was sprinting for the end, there were more than 30 guys up the road. I had been fighting off cramps so I didn’t bother sprinting the uphill finish and risk locking up my leg and throwing off the rest of the weekend. The one highlight of the race was finally making it into a chase group with about 3 laps left but we only lasted a lap and a half before getting reeled back in by the field.

Friday – Fond du Lac criterium and chasing windmills
My bike at the base of a huge windmill (probably 100 feet tall with 50 foot blades Cycling and Don Quixote
I blogged about this race separately here: Cycling and Don Quixote

Saturday – ISCorp Downer Classic criterium
View of downtown Milwaukee on my ride back to the hotel after the race

Fun commute to/from the race … huge field again, raced well until big surge on inside late in the race. I remembered this from two years ago and was on the correct side moving way up the field, but this year I opted to stay on the easier, safer, slow side and lost tons of position. Finished mid-pack of the field sprint. Awesome commute back on North Avenue – lights were easy to time and even in the dark it was really well lit. Rode right through the finishing stretch of Sunday’s criterium.

Sunday – East Tosa Grand Prix criterium
Awesome warm-up on the bike paths of Wautosa
Fun neighborhood criterium. Definitely my best race of the series – missed the break though. Rode well near the front until again a surge on the inside saw me lose a lot of positions. I favored the outside and found it easy to move up each lap on the downhill between turns 2 and 3 – but the problem was how many positions I would lose through the start/finish on any slow laps where everyone would surge up the inside. Felt great during the race, though, so this was a good way to end the series in preparation for the elite amateur national road race and criterium this week in Madison, WI.

Heartrate/power data
Tons of data, these are all in chronological order: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
2013 ToAD, Wednesday Fond du Lac road race summary