(Dramatic Reenactment – photo from the 2015 CX season. Credit: Anders Nystrom)
For the past 7 years, Fox River Grove, Illinois has hosted a crit unlike any other. After sprinting off the start line, riders almost immediately turn left onto Ski Jump Hill (yes, like the ones they use in the Olympics), where they face a quarter-mile climb averaging over 8%, with the first half averaging over 15%! From there, riders shift into the big ring and begin the steep downhill which sends them flying through the local neighborhood at 35+ mph. There’s a sharp, left-hand corner at the bottom, and then a couple of rollers and winding roads before the final 90-degree turn into the finishing straight.
This is not your typical Midwest crit course.
My day started out like most over the winter: riding rollers in the basement at 8AM. I had the Giro d’Italia on, so the time flew by.
[It was Stage 15, the third stage win for Simon Yates in the maglia rosa. Here is an amazing, and brutally honest quote from Tom Dumoulin on the lack of cooperation in the chase group:
“I don’t give a damn at this point. I’m totally f*cked now. I had to dig so deep to stay with those other riders after Yates’ attack. And in the end it didn’t even matter, cause everybody there was just taking the piss.”]
By the time I finished watching the race, and had almost 2 hours of riding in my legs. However, I wasn’t sure if I was done for the day – it had been pouring rain all morning across Wisconsin and Illinois, and I had yet to decide if I was going to race that afternoon or not. My dad and I refreshed Weather Underground at least 27 times that morning, because if I was racing, we needed to leave by noon.
At 11:47, the radar looked clear, and I decided that I was going to race. No worries, we’ll just pack up and leave by noon… Oh wait, we haven’t eaten lunch yet. Oh, and I don’t have any clean kit. Race wheels? Oh yeah, we should probably bring those too.
We pulled out of the driveway at 12:36. No problem, still plenty of time. I’ll just change in the car and shorten my warm-up. I checked Google Maps and there’s a 20-minute traffic delay ahead. Fantastic.
After all the stress, time crunch, and nervous driving, our race’s start ended up being delayed by nearly half an hour – I haven’t even gotten to the interesting part yet…
The Interesting Part
The official blew the whistle and we were off. I clipped in fairly quickly off the start line, and prepared for the first sprint up the hill. It was hard, and I was under-geared – I had shifted into my easiest gear in a panic – and I was starting to get dropped not even halfway up the climb.
Oh my God, this is so hard. I’ve made a huge mistake. All the hassle, all the stress, and I’m going to get dropped on the first lap. Great.
I caught back on over the top, and tried to catch my breath while descending at 35 mph through a quiet neighborhood. When we hit the climb on the second lap, I felt good, really good. Everyone around me was breathing really hard, but all of a sudden, I felt comfortable. As we came around to start the third lap, I knew that there was a KOM sprint coming up (the race was part of the Elgin Omnium). We hit the climb and there was an attack up the left-hand side of the road. I knew the attacking riders were super strong, and acting on instinct, I jumped hard to get on their wheel. But the guy next to me had the same idea…
I’ve bumped shoulders with lots of guys in lots of races, and I’ve never had any real problem with it. But when you’re sprinting out of the saddle up a 15% grade, and you bump shoulders, elbows, bars, and heads with the guy next to you, one of you is probably going to lose. While neither of us went down, I was the unlucky one who happened to be on – and then off – the edge of the road.
(In a similar to start to the last paragraph) I’ve gotten pushed off the road many times, and most of the time, it’s no big deal; I lose a few places, try not to crash, and hop back in the pack. But on this day, I had no such luck. The edge of the road dropped off into a muddy patch of grass that was so bumpy I could barely keep my hands on the bars. I didn’t crash, but I had to come to a stop. Coming to a stop in the middle of a race isn’t the worst thing in the world, but trying to restart from a standstill on a 15% grade is. I couldn’t clip in, pedal, and shift all at the same time, and it was only after a super nice spectator (THANK YOU!) ran down the hill to give me a push, that I was able to get going again.
SOL
Now is probably a good time to mention that this race offered no Free Laps – when a rider suffers a mechanical or crash in a Criterium, they are usually allowed to sit out one lap and then rejoin the field, without losing a lap on the official time sheet. Fox River Grove is a unique course and a unique race, so I understand the race organizer’s decision, but it still sucked to know that I was now off the back and chasing solo for the rest of the race.
By the time I finally came around to complete Lap 3 (a lap of failure, calamity, and embarrassment that seemed to last 3 years instead of 3 minutes), I had lost 50 seconds. Without thinking, I sprinted up Ski Jump Hill as hard as I could. I needed to take my anger out on something, and going hard up a hill is probably better than punching someone in the face.
I came around at the end of Lap 4 and just kept going. With anger and adrenaline abundantly flowing, I was going to go as hard as I could until I got pulled. But then, a few laps later, I started catching people. The “field” – which had blown up into groups of 3s and 4s – was spitting riders out the back every lap, and I was catching, and immediately dropping them. With 8 laps to go, my dad yelled to me that I was 13th place on the road (we had 28 starters).
What I did not know at the time was that I was actually catching the field. Despite being off the back, by myself, for more than 30 minutes, I was catching the field – I was the fastest guy on the road, and I couldn’t believe it.
Inside the final 3 laps, and I could see a group of three in front of me. I went hard up the hill to catch them, and then went immediately to the front to start pulling. Why the other riders did not work with me (i.e. they sat in my draft) I will never know. Sure, they could sit-on and sprint around me for 8th, or we could work together and catch the next group (which was in sight), and we would be sprinting for 5th. But whatever, I didn’t care. All I cared about was going as fast and as hard as I could until the end of the race. I felt bad for whomever was on my wheel on the last lap – I went so hard up the climb that I thought my legs were going to explode.
In the end, I couldn’t quite catch the Top 5, and I finished in 9th place. But none of that mattered. I had wanted to quit 8 minutes into the race. I had gotten pushed off the road and was in last place, all by myself. But instead of giving up and leaving the race filled with shame and embarrassment, I turned it into one of the best days I have ever had on the bike.
After a few laps of solo chasing, people started realizing that I was catching the field. Spectators were gathered around the KOM on Ski Jump Hill, and lap after lap, they were cheering for me, saying things like: “Look at this guy!” “You look better than everyone else!” “There he is, you’re crushin’ it!”
Thank you to every single person who cheered for me during the race – I may never know who you are, but you made my day, and turned one of my worst races into one of my best.
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Here is a link to my race file on Strava:
https://www.strava.com/activities/1585611531/
Thanks for reading,
Zach