5th - 1st at Chequamegon

Photo courtesey of the guy in a firetruck
bucket hanging over the road.
This link for Chequamegon homepage pictures

2 seconds is what I lost Chequamegon by this year and about a tire width bumped me off the podium.
The race was supersonic speed and I just never felt great during the day. I struggled to catch the back of about 20 dudes across Rosie's field and then hung on for dear life as the elastic snapped back and forth over the first 10 miles of the birkie trail. Lucky I finally got warmed up and moved towards the front as the field fell apart by "00" thanks to some pretty serious attacks by none other than Chad "I'm not scared to attack" Sova!
A few times the race came down to just the five of us (Tily, Doug, Hall, Matter, and I) but everytime the wide open course allowed numerous others to catch back on the train and make it pretty stressfull to us all.
Well, to make the long race short, I finally had a shot at it about 1/2 mile from the finish up the last climb. I had been gapped on the downhill going into the climb but somehow was gaining on Doug and Tilford and just as we crested the top I busted past them for the lead. Tilford then full on sprinted me big chainring down the skihill and proceded to run me right into the barriers on the inside of the corner. Doug took the outside line around the corner like a formula 1 car and carried his momentum up the hill to take Tilford in the sprint while I tried to hold off Ian and AJ. I guess it didn't happen but if you follow the link under the picture above look at the back of the picture and you can see me rounding the corner just off the back of Doug and Tilford. That's how much I lost Chequamegon by!!!

I made up for the close finish by winning the Sunday Funday criterium though which was pretty cool. I guess all those NORBA short tracks finally paid off.

Anyway, thanks to Chris Shaw and Jason Schumacher for hanging out the whole weekend. I think they should have some good pictures for me the next couple days so check back for that.

Tristan