Tour De Grove NRC.

Race started about 45 minutes late and it was very hot. I was very disappointed to see the course, it was very flat and slow. There was one small hill towards the start of the 3 mile circuit and that's it. I got to the front after a lap and started to get moving, nothing was sticking with so many teams so I drifted back to the middle while a group of 11 road away. During the entire race I was under the impression there were only 6 of them. I eventually started attacking again with a few others but there were too many teams protecting their riders off the front. The last 5 laps were really fast which helped me, I stayed in the front and with 1 to go some aerocat dudes went pretty hard but we all stayed together. The last corner is kind of a 150 degree turn with 300 meters to sprint, I was 5th going into the corner and 2 guys went down in front of me, I stayed up but the guy in front of me sprinting had a chain problem and was dead in the water, so was I. I ended up 20th overall, 9th in that sprint.


Best part about the race was that the entire stretch of the finish line was filled with gaybars. Throughout the rest of the course were small little chipped houses and cars parked on the street with orange gates in front of them. I didn't think you could have gotten any worse than the saturday course but it happened. It was funny seeing so many families and cyclists in the bars eating lunch and having beer while couples would be on dates and such. It was a crazy large elephant in the room of each place, no one would say a word about all the rainbow and what not. People were just happy to get out of the 100d heat and eat something.

Melissa, Benny, and I ate at the "atomic cowboy." We had some sort of chimichanga and chips/sals. Plus $5 for draft beer.


We stayed for the pro race which was a blast to watch if you are not a jb fan. Jelly Belly was racing really defensively and after a few laps there were 2 kelly benefits and 1 orbea guy with 30 seconds. Jelly belly had 4 guys at the front for the next 10 laps and eventually got tired while the kb dudes dropped the orbea guy and kept their lead. It started raining hard and the field was now down to only 14 riders or so, kind of pitiful for it being an nrc race. One by one the jelly belly guys were getting dropped after putting in hard pulls and they still weren't getting any time back. It started raining really hard with 9 to go and with 7 to go the judge made the decision to say 1 to go. The KB guys got 1st and 2nd while only 1 jb guy was left to sprint. Watching this race reminded me of the highschool rock bands where the only people who show up were the other bands and their girlfriends except at this race only half the other bands stayed around to watch.