Stage 2 - Mankato Road Race

Thursday - June 9, 2005

About 81 miles South and slightly West from Minneapolis lies the lovely little college town (although, now that I live in a small town, it didn't seem very small at all!), Mankato, Minnesota. I navigated my way to the race start/finish just as the women's race was heading out of town, and that's when I saw the finishing circuit climbs! 6 times around 2 mile laps with a 200' wall---and this was after an 80 mile road race...for about 93 hard miles in the saddle for the day. Ouch!

The guys' TT placing set me up right in the middle of the caravan...I had bottles in the front seat and Dan in back. The weather was warm ( some might call it hot) and humid, but dry! The course was an 81 mile big loop, which rolled through lush green lake and river valleys. The climbs weren't big climbs...but constantly rolling from 800' in elevation to 1000' in elevation.

After feeding opened up, Roman dropped back for about 6 bottles for the guys. About 10 minutes later, radio tour announces a break and rider #58, Devon was there with a few other guys. Sweet! Not long after that and we hear that rider #56, Erik had bridged up and the break was now over a minute. As the gap increased, we rolled up to com 1 and asked to go up to our rider's. Com 1 said go, and I got on my horn and began to make my way through the peloton. Suddenly we came upon a fast right hand corner, and wham...the peloton was almost on the car. With no where else to go I practiced my 4-wheelin' skills, while Dan handed Roman a couple more bottles and off we went....whew!

Soon the gap was close to two minutes. It was a good group of rider's and they all worked together. As the miles ticked away the gap time increased. Erik took some "sprint" points out on the course. There's nothing more fun than hearing your rider's number's called out on radio tour for being in the break...or taking points out on the course.

Could this be the winning move? It seemed as such. And so it was. I got to watched the front of the whole race, thanks to the smart moves and fast legs of Erik and Devon.

The race finished on those darn hilly circuits though...so I jumped out of the car as the caravan was deviated off while the riders did their finishing laps and I just crossed my fingers that they still had enough juice for the final kick.

As the rest of the field started to trickle in it got a bit confusing as to who was racing and where they were in the race. This "confusion" continued through the next 3 days. On every stage they continued to let rider's get lapped in the field and there were frequent instances where the results were (way) off as a result.

Erik finished a strong 11th on the day...and Devon was given a 28th place...but I counted 23rd. Still a fine day of riding for the "worm"...you think? We finished at around 9PM and I finally made it home at around 11:30PM...