This race had it all, wind, rain, hail, a gravel road and some pretty gnarley holes in the road along the way. If it wasn’t for the weather this race course would have been somewhat easy compared to others. The course was mostly flat with every few turns so you didn’t have that slowing and acceleration to deal with like a lot of road races.

The wind was the biggest factor at the race. WOW, I have never ridden a bike in wind conditions like this and did anything possible to hide from it.

It started to rain and hail for the first 15 min of the race and I thought that was it for me because I started to get wet and cold. Fortunately the rain stopped and I began to warm up.

You had to be careful on the backside of this course because the roads had some really bad pot holes in the middle of the road. I watched a couple of guys on the first lap nearly crash due to the pot holes.

The gravel road basically had two lanes to ride down, one lane on the far left side and one up the center. If you got out of either lane you had an 80% chance of running into problems (crashing, flatting).

After we came off the gravel road the second time the first attack took place. I got in the breakaway but could keep pace with it. I fell back with a couple of other guys and we waited for a group of 5 to catch us. Now in the second group (8 of us) we worked really hard to keep a sizable gap between us and the main peloton while keeping eye contact with the lead group of 5 to 7 riders.

As the race wore on a few riders from the lead group started to fall back to my group. One of the riders we picked up was Doug, was I happy to see him. On the fourth lap Doug I and guy from Mack racing attacked, we stayed away from our group for the whole fourth lap and got caught on the fifth lap because of the wind. Again the wind was BRUTAL! We worked with our small group of riders on the final lap just to survive.

I came in 14th place but will wait for the results to come out.

I enjoyed this race and will absolutely do it again!

Pat D.

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Tower Racing-

This coming Saturday (04/25) is the Flatlandia Road Race (The Leland Kermesse Road Race) in Leland, IL. It’s my understanding that Leland is one hour or so west of Chicago. It’s not to often we get road races this close to home.

The course is a 10 mile flat loop with one mile of smooth gravel. I plan on doing the Men 30/40, 5 laps/50 miles race going off at 9:00 a.m. If the race starts on time and all goes well you should be able to be home by 12:00 to 12:30.

I spoke to the promoter last week and he told me it is recommended to run a 24 or 25 cm tire because of the gravel road. Registration is morning of the race or you can mail in your registration form.

Please let me know if your going so I can get a head count.

http://flatlandiacyclingteam.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-day-new-blog-leland.html

This is who’s going as of April 21th.

1) Pat D
2) Don H
3) Terry O
4) Mark M
5) Doug B
6) Tad F
7) Ron G
8 ) Mike W
9) Eddie E
10) Jerry K
11) Jim H
12) Matt S

Pat Dillon

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I’d like to do the Leland Road race where, I hear wider tires are necessary for a gravel patch, but I don’t want to spend $100 on tires for a $25 race. Any ideas?

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Hey those are some nice pics,  thanks for sharing……………….

We will have to post a few of our own from the scenic vistas and quaint little eateries that dot our ride  May be Ed will take his shirt off or something!

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Unfortunately, I was not able to make the Ashville trip this year.  I am getting quite jealous of my Tower brothers that are making the trip.    I have Friday 4/16 off and going to do Phil’s Hilly route leaving the Tower at 9:00am to get some hills and mileage in.   Afterwards, we’ll be stopping for lunch in or near Western Springs. 

So far the list of riders includes:

·         Me

·         Tony Kassel

·         Jeff BRG

·         BRG (maybe) 

Let me know if you are interested.  Send me an email.  eekstrom@comcast.net.

This will be a no drop ride covering approximately 70 miles.  See the link below for the route

http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/il/western-springs/43225334

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Since no one has replied back to my post I wll be leaving from the Tower at 7:00.

Pat D.

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nice job to all those who raced……. I commend you all on your efforts. Doug hopefully zipp will work with you.

again nice job
GaryC.

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It was the nicest thing to see the race unfold with blue and green all over. Doug’s efforts in his small break were remarkable and the bridge accomplished by Pat was brilliant. The taming of the pace by the rest of the team while other courageous attempts to bridge were made is undeniable proof that Tower operates as a proactive team. I have never seen so many happy faces after a race; not as happy for their own performance as for having carried out together a team plan that worked to perfection!

Pascale

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