A cool little city with a kickass criterium--Grafton, WI

Grafton Twilight Criterium--

Believe it or not, this was a WCA race. $6500 prize list and big crowds and live music? It probably had the largest and strongest P/1/2 field I've ever seen outside of Superweek in the midwest. Kelly Benefit, Priority Health, Colavita, Monex, W & S, ABD, IS Corps, Bianchi GP, it was the whole shebang. And with 90 minutes to entertain the crowd, I think we put on a good show!

On lap 2, I'm at the front of the field. It's kinda fast, so I'm just staying right at the front and watching for a split in the field. It happens, first with a group of 6 of us, and after 2 hard laps, we're a dandy group of 13 riders. Kind of a big breakaway, but all the big teams were well represented so it stuck. Rob White and I were in the break for ABD. We were content to do a bit of the work in the breakaway, but not enough to cook ourselves. Rob and I each took a $50 preem in the process of lapping the field, which was a nice bonus.

So we lap the field after 70 minutes of racing. Booya. But damn, we lapped with a bunch of good finishers! Maybe that wasn't such a great breakaway after all....Eric Marcote, Steve Scholzen, Andrew Crater, Cole House, Garret Peltonen, Anthony Colby, man oh man this was going to be hard to pull off in a field sprint! Alex helped me get to the front of the field where Rob and I chilled until the sprint. W & S lead it out for Cole and Crater, and in the process whittled the field down to 25 or so guys. Thanks guys!

On the last lap I am forced to do a bit more work than I'd like to, but hell, I'm not one to be claiming that I can sprint with those caliber of riders that lapped the field with me. Anyways, Bret Glembocki and I bumb some shoulders and narrowly miss a nice pavement pitch in the last corner. I hit the brakes to stay upright--and subsequently didn't place well considering there were only 13 guys in the race really. I ended up 10th or 11th, Rob was 8th or 9th.

Scholzen pulled a 4th out of the bag of Freshie Steve tricks, while Garret managed 2nd place.