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In the (Feed) Zone - Long Road Races
7/1/2009 By: Mark Swartzendruber

Well kids, once again it’s been far too long. As I left off last time, I promised to talk about a couple of long road races, which I will do in good time. Right now I have more important things to discuss of pressing urgency regarding the inaugural Tour de Champaign on July 11 and 12.

Online registration is open on TrueSport.com. You can link to the registration page HERE. Online registration does not carry a fee. Pre register and save you some money over race day registration.

WOMEN: I have a special offer (challenge) for you! Yeah, you women who complain that the prize lists aren’t big enough and then when presented with the chance to race for $1500 purses – 12 of you show up. I’m talking to you. If I get a field of 40 women for the 1, 2, 3 women’s races, I will raise the prize list shown on the flyer to $1000. So – Kenda, Revolution, Big Shark, BH, TX Road House, Alderfer Bergen, ABD, XXX, Priority Health…Let’s see ya.

Here is what we have in store for you at the Tour de Champaign
• 2 days of racing excellent criterium courses
• Reasonable entry fees…You know, I just paid $50 to do a race with a $2900 payout? It was a great race and all, but The Tour de Champaign, is asking $35 for a $3000 payout for the Pro 1,2 race. Sounds fair to me.
• FLOWERS, TROPIES, PODIUM GIRLS!
• Live music both days at the race venues…for FREE. Local talented band will be performing, so you have something to do after or before your races other than sit in your car wearing compression tights and wondering which post race recovery drink works better with your physiology.
• Stellar night life – Downtown Champaign has award winning, Zagat rated eateries and some of the coolest bars and pubs south of Chicago. AND…Saturday’s racing will be followed up by Champaign Street Fest, featuring more live music, and BEER!
• Two days of racing announced by the curmudgeonly Sage of Hooterville, the Right Reverend William H Stone. I will be stepping in for color commentary from time to time as will Big Z.

If that’s not enough, we’ll have kids’ races on Sunday. Bring the kids and their big wheels…they can take a spin on the old race course!

OK. Ready to report on the happening inside the ropes.


LONG ROAD RACES

As reported last time, I have been feeling old tired as of late. Maybe my rock and roll lifestyle is catching up with me after all these years of poisoning myself with gin and Dunhill’s. I don’t know but I figure the only way to defeat the progression of one’s own demise and insipient death is to confront it head on. You know, beat it back with clubs, chains and torches. Thus, I entered a couple of long road races in the Pro 1,2 fields.

O’Fallon G.P.

Last year was the first edition of this race. I entered and won the Old Guy race – a 68 mile slog along twisty, turny, hilly wind swept country roads in Southern IL. The race was well organized by the sponsoring club (Metro East Cycling Club) and I was looking forward to returning. However, to beat back the ravages of time, I opted for the 90 mile Pro 1, 2 event this year. The temps were high and the field was quality with stalwart riders like Dave Henderson, Brett Stewart, Justin Macjekowicz, Brian McVey and John Jacobs from TX Roadhouse. Did I mention the wind? Steady at 15 per.

Long and miserable story short…I launched an attack about 30 miles into the race up a cross wind false flat grinder and the race detonated. The next 40 miles were brutally hard and the race was whittled down to 11 riders in the lead group. Literally, every rider who missed the break, DNF’d. Seriously.

End game, Macjekowicz, Henderson and a couple of other guys weren’t cramping and dehydrated so they got away from the chase group. The acceleration from 19 to 23 mph in the hot headwind splintered the small pack and we all dribbled across the line in various states of shambles, a few of us weeping and swearing off bike racing forever.

Ageless 41 year old Henderson won. I was 7th.

I rode down with my potential superstar Cat 5 Pete Garde who won the Cat 5 race easily. He has yet to NOT win a race he enters, but he needs to enter more races. In the Cat 3 race, by Verizon Wireless team mate Russle the Muscle took second place. For Russ, it’s just another in a string of stellar finishes.

Tour de Mont Pleasant

On the back of being able to finish a 90 mile road race, I made the decision that the team would send a pack of us up to Michigan. Now, this was purely for selfish reasons. I love Michigan and racing in Michigan is a great excuse to get across to the beautiful side of the lake buy some Bells Hop Slam and a couple of bottles of Barrien County Wine.

The plan was to fund a team of Stone Pony, Z, Sharpie, Moso-man, A. Dillon and Druber to enter the Tour de Mont Pleasant for a 1:20 minute crit and a 105 mile road race which had $6500 to the top 25 finishers. Well, Stoney caught a case of highly contagious appendicitis and had to have the useless little nodule removed, Moso jacked up his back doing Velodrome racing and Z was stranded in the Boulder, CO airport. So, the skeleton crew of Sharpie, A. Dillon and I made the 6 hour trek to Mount Pleasant to race bikes.

Mount Pleasant is the home of Central Michigan University. The Chippewa tribe of real Indians allows the use of their image and name by the athletic teams without claims of such usage being hostile or abusive. Hell fire, we even had a real tribal chieftain bless us with a mixture of tobacco and “sweet grass” and other aromatics that smelled strangely like the stuff mountain bikers huff before they hit the trails and he didn’t appear to resent the use of Indian imagery and ceremony at all.

Before the crit, I got a call up by Joe Lekovish who was announcing the crit alongside US Postal Service legend Frankie Andreu. I was honored until I staged next to Jake Rytlewski and Paul Martin, then I just felt simply out of place. Ben Renkema of the Kenda Tire team won the race in a bunch gallop.

The road race was long and had the terrain been a bit more challenging or the wind a bit higher it would have been quite a contest. As it was, the winning 8 rider move went only 15 miles into the race. With only a 3 rider squad we didn’t really have the option of gambling on an early move so we missed the move, as did the Jet Fuel team from Toronto and the very large Wolverine Cycling squad. The Jet Fuel guys chased and I helped with that a bit but the Wolverine guys didn’t do jack which was a bit frustrating as they had at least 20 guys in the race or so it seemed.

Anyway, the break was up to 6 minutes ahead and I tried desperately to get away from the field at various times to no avail At one juncture I was with a promising trio of riders, Danielle Defranchesi from Canada, a Priority Health rider and myself. We were rolling along with a gap to the race. After a turn at the front, I looked back and much to my dismay a second Priority Health rider was trying to bridge up with the field in mad pursuit. I do believe I cussed at him when he caught up to us. Once again kids, here it goes. Druber’s lessons for life and bike racing tactics.

“When you have a team mate up the road in a newly forming break that the field seems content with allowing to get away, for GOD’S SAKE don’t get greedy and chase it. Let the break get established and make other teams
chase. Later, if you’re still feeling frisky, attack the chaser when they’re tired from the effort you idiot poser.”

Why? Must you ask? The pel may be willing to allow a single team mate or even three singles from separate teams to get away for a while, but they most certainly won’t allow two or three guys from the same team to get away from them to gobble up money spots.

In the end we covered the 105 miles at a clip of 25.5 per and the race ended up with an 80 rider bunch sprint. A. Dillon took spot 18 and Sharpie hung tough for 21st. I did my part towing them both to the front in the final 10k of the race and dropping them off to let them do their thing. Graham Howard of the Bissell Pro team took the big money with his win.

All in all, the race was good training ground for young A. Dillon, who did a splendid job of riding in his first big time big money race. Maybe the kid has a future in this sport.

Borderless traveling bike racer Chips Black and his wife Trisha won the masters men and open women’s races. Chips won both old guy races. Clearly retirement is agreeing with his training schedule.

Cobb Park Criterium

This long standing ritual along the Kankakee River is a lot of fun. The course is semi residential and the people who live in the big brick house on turn 3 that has no doubt depreciated terribly in value in the past 4 years as Kankakee’s economy has taken a nose dive have a band playing in their driveway and bleachers set up in their yard.

I did the old guy (30+) race and it was again restorative of my faith in masters racing, but then again, when Wayne Simon, Jim Flora and Scott Pearson are in the field, it’s bound to be good racing. I won.

RobosMACK was up the road after a late race attack along with VQ rider Stan Watkins. I bridged across with Rizzo from the Comcast team and we rolled the break pretty well until 2 laps to go. The field under the pressure applied by the Albertos team was hot on our heels and closing the gap. On the first turn of bell lap they were nearly on us and riders were jumping out of the field to catch us. RobosMACK was on the front of the break and once we cleared a chicane on the back side of the course, I jumped out of that, sprinting into turn 3 past the band, through the bratwurst scented smoke and bleachers into the clear. I was actually sprinting, which for me is a seldom if ever occurrence. I managed to hold my lead for the last 500m to the finish. Flora was right behind by about 2 bikes followed by RobosMACK, BobbakronsMACK and something called a Stathy Touloumis. The field had absorbed the break at the end of the race and all hell broke lose behind me I guess as the last lap completely shredded what used to be a field. It looked like this…



Looks painful. I couldn’t flippin’ breathe for a half lap after the race. People who sprint for race wins tell me this is common and nothing of any particular note. I never knew. I would rather win solo about 30 sec or more ahead of a field with plenty of time to zip up and look pretty. Screw that sprinting shit. Anyway, my parents were there watching and naturally my mother took credit for the win, as she was yelling encouragement every lap. That was nice, as they haven’t seen me race in a couple of years.

The next day, Stone Pony celebrated his return from an appendectomy 10 day earlier by winning the masters race at the Winghaven NRC race down in the St. Louis suburbs.

News Flash

Rebecca Much, Al Urbanski and I are top Chicago are cyclists. www.mychicagoathlete.com You can read the magazine online. I’m on page 50. I give props to my mentor HeadsMACK in the interview.

ToADs

Druber gives bick props to the Tour of America’s Dairyland. Bill Ochowicz and Tom Schuler and their volunteers have put together an outstanding race series with super venues and awesome courses. I did only two events due to time constraints imposed by buying and selling houses, running a business, organizing the Tour de Champaign and trying to ride a bike here and there. Next year when life settles back down, I shall do more races. I raced at Sheboygan in the Pro 1,2 race. The course was fast the race averaged 29 per, Adam Bergman won and Andy Crater made the most athletic “save” I’ve ever seen in a bike race.

Last lap, turn 4, in a full on sprint, Crater gets a flat tire. As his bike is skidding toward the curb, he grabs a lamp post with one arm, and spins around it, still on his bike avoiding falling down and taking several riders with him.

Contrast that to the morons who made a 6 rider pace line bull rush into turn 3 on the left side of the road, swinging violently back to their right into the pel and eventually taking 10 riders out with them on the last lap. Idiots.

The next day I discovered that doing a hilly road race with a bent derailleur hanger is an exercise in futility.

IS Corp manhandled the masters fields from day one and borderless bike racer Chips Black was present at all races and even won a stage in Waukesha.

Warm up TT in Paw Paw was so so

Strong wind and a hilly course for 40k. I rolled a 52:36. Al Stern was there too.

State Criterium Championships

Once again the IL state crit championships were in Peoria. In the Masters races Moso-Man was nipped at the line by one of the nations’ fastest master sprinter Mike Heagney. Moso got silver medal in the 30+. In the 40+ race Big Z got away with BobbakronsMACK in a two rider break. Z ended up winning the race by about the length of a 747 for the state crit championship. Z owns BobbakronsMACK. This is the 5th consecutive year a rider from Scarletfire Racing in its various manifestations has won the state crit gold.

The Pro 1,2 race was harsh and brutal. The wind was gusting up to 30 per and it was hot. An early break with eventual repeat winner Jeff Schroetlin got up the road. Jeff was accompanied by an IS Corp rider and a Nuvo rider from Indy. The IS Corp dude got shelled eventually. Verizon missed the move an dutifully chased until it was futile. The race devolved into a series of attacks and breaks that would refuse to work together and disintegrate. At one point I made a pretty good attack and was joined eventually by 4 riders. 3 of those guys were on the Nuvo team and had a guy up the road. We had a 15 second gap. I suggested we work together. I’m tinking this is to their benefit as if the break works and stays away, Nuvo has 4 guys in the top 6. Pretty good money. Instead of working with me, though, they attacked me one by one after I took long pulls and then chased. I believe I may have cussed at their boy wonder Adam Liebowitz as he was blasting past me. Anyway, it was harsh treatment and well within their right as the team in control to do, I just personally thought it would have made more sense for them to have worked with me until like 3 laps to go, and then start attacking me. As it was we all got caught and none of us did as well as we could have. But, the race was very cut throat in nature. So it goes.

A. Dillon was our top finisher at 13th with Moso-Man 22nd, Stone Pony 25th and me at 27th.

Masters Natz Eve

I’m sitting here in my hotel room having put out some administrative fires for the Tour de Champaign. I will be racing for the national time trial championship tomorrow. I’m not as nervous this year as I was the past two. Turbo isn’t registered to ride this year. Maybe the lack of butterflies is due to that. I’m not afraid of Turbo passing me 5k into the race. Perhaps it’s because I no longer have the Madness I caught last year which made me believe that I could actually beat Turbo. Maybe the lack of nerves is that I feel pretty well prepared. More likely the lack of nerves is that here at 8:00 local time I have downed an entire 5th of rare Kentucky small batch, single barrel Bourbon, smoked and entire pack of Dunhill’s and taken 3 Ambien. Forgive me if I’m a bit incoherent.

I pre rode the course today. It’s a tough but fair course. Definitely will favor a complete rider who can adeptly climb 4% grades for a mile at a time and who can also handle a TT bike downhill at over 40 mph and hammer the rollers in between. Reminds me of a combination of the Salt Lake City and Pennsylvania courses on of which I won silver medals. We shall see but for now, I’m comfortably numb.

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