This past Saturday was the UW Milwaukee Road Race in Greenbush, WI. They held the race out in the Kettle Moraine State Park which was very hilly and quiet, which made for a great course. It was my second race in the Men’s A category, and my first ever 80 mile road race. Thankfully the weather was a gorgeous 70-75 degrees and sunny all day. The race started off fairly calm for the first three or four miles and then the hammer dropped. There were a flurry of attacks and counter attacks for the next 10-15 miles until the right combination of people were away. This ended up shredding the field by over half by the 40 mile mark. The weather began to heat up and I ended up drinking 7 bottles during the race, which meant we got some good practice navigating through the craziness of a feed zone. After coming through the feed at mile 70, someone skipped it all together and tried to attack into the first major crosswind section. This caused a big split amongst those who were left and really hurt the legs. After catching the break, it was a nervous run in to the finish with everyone looking at each other wondering who was going next. There are two big hills within a quarter mile of the finish, followed by a false flat and then downhill sprint. My teammate Sean and I followed a group of 4 others up the climb. We had a good gap and I knew we were in the right place. Sean had a gap of about 15 feet on the other 4 in our group over the last hill, so I took the lead of the pace line behind him and started to soft pedal. The other guys figured this out pretty quick, but it gave Sean a nice gap for the downhill sprint. He ended up winning the field sprint for 5th place, and I came in with the four others chasing him for 10th place.
-Nick
