The Proving Grounds is an area outside Milwaukee where they test road surfaces and run school buses into immovable objects to see where they crumple. As nobody over the age of 8 wants this kind of mayhem in their backyard, the area is sparsely populated and pretty to look at.

The race itself was a 10 mile loop of rolling hills around the MGA test facility, no hill taller than 50 feet. The 4s race was short at 40 miles, but the heat and humidity helped keep things interesting. I don't know how hot it was during the race, though I write this a little before 10 at night where the temperature remains at 85 degrees.

Anyways. There were lots and lots of attempts at breaking away but none of them stuck. I jumped into a 10 person break that was at least half-full of riders that I had marked as being strong racers, but organizational problems kept us from getting a good rotation going and our time off the front was short lived. I'm still kind of peeved that it didn't work out, I was so sure at the time that that group would be a winning move.

We caught the last rider off the front about 2 miles before the finish. The finish itself was a maze of turns and chicanes that was not a part of the regular course that we'd been doing our laps on. I burned some people in the last hill 300 meters before the finish and hung on through the sprint to nab 8th.

This was the 3rd of 4 road races in the series, the last will be next week further north. Tomorrow will be a return to criterium racing, it should be fun and fast.

Whitnal Park: a smaller and hillier version of Golden Gate Park, complete with overcast weather and, in previous years, unexpected crossings of geese. The course was a 2.3 mile circuit, with rolling power climbs and a super acute off-camber turn leading into the biggest of the hills just before the finish line. A 30 mile "road race", we were done in a little over an hour.

Ben decided it would be a good idea to do the whole race in his little ring. I don't know what informed his decision but he described the effectiveness of this strategy with effusive gushing. My race was all big ring all the time, and though I didn't have one, I could have put an 11-tooth cog to spectacular use. The usual suicide breaks went out a few times, but were all shutdown posthaste.

I held my ground on the last lap and let her rip on the hill up to the finish. Passed some folks in the 150 pounds-and-over club and took 9th. That's good for a race reimbursement as well as a bit of money out of the Superweek coffer. Score! I dismounted the Pale Horse after my race to find my skinsuit completely sweat-soaked and probably 2 pounds heavier. It's Africa-style humidity out here, though everyone I've talked to so far says that this has been one of the gentlest summers in years. It's set to rain all of tonight, and worse mugginess is yet to come.

Today was the first of 4 road races in the series. The course was a 10 mile loop around one of the local ski resorts, with 2 pretty severe crossings through the valley each lap. Something of a departure from the absurdly long crit races, our race was only 4 laps, coming in at a little over 40 miles.

I woke up this morning with a shoulder that felt much improved over last night, but feeling dead tired and with only a middling enthusiasm to be racing. Ben, his parents and myself drove out to the course and put in a halfhearted warmup before our start.

The road races have twice the weight of the criteriums in determining the overall series leader, so things got hot and heavy early in the race. The climbs out of the valley were short but steep, and going into the last lap we had shed about 2/3 of the people in our race. The finish was a hard right turn with an uphill sprint bonanza for the 1k leading up to the finish line. Someone bumped my rear wheel going through the last turn, and my front wheel started to slide. I kept it upright but I found that I had dropped my chain in all of the mayhem. It took a few seconds to get it back into place, but by then it was all over for me. I rolled across for 26th.

Tomorrow we'll be going to Saturn Whitnall Park for what I hear is a circuit race disguised as a road race. Stay tuned.

The race moved to Bensenville today, a small town near O'Hare International that looks like it may be sometimes advertised as being historical or quaint. The course was a .7 mile, 6-turn crit. Totally flat. I don't have much to say other than that it may have been the fastest crit that I've ever done -- a 26 mph average on a 6 corner course? And this being superweek, the race was a little more than an hour. Yeah, seriously disgusting racing.

There were a couple of close calls, but the race was much safer than yesterday. I was pretty jazzed that there were no crashes, especially on a tricky course such as this, with lots of grandmas and grandpas offering up sweet distraction in the suburban detour off the main drag. My legs were heavy and they threw in the towel 15 minutes before I wanted them to. I stayed in, but only to get a middle-of-the-pack finish. Blah.

Post race, I took a nap, ate a few sandwiches, and eventually made my way to Wisconsin. I'm spending the night in Mequon at Ben's (roaring mouse) parents house. They've fed me and made me feel at home. I was throwing tennis balls for their golden retriever tonight after dinner when I felt a pop and lots of white hot pointy things in my right shoulder. I don't know what I've done to it, but I'm certain that it's very bad and could cause some problems for me this week. We're going out to Alpine Valley first thing tomorrow morning, hopefully things will get better over night.

Superweek started with a bang today. The course was a 1 mile circuit around the Blue Island business district (Blue Island: Chicagoland suburb, pop. 22k) At almost an hour and a half, this was by far the longest criterium that I've ever done. Maybe the most dangerous one as well. On lap 2, the rider at the front of the pack ate it in a turn by himself. I was right behind him following his line through the turn. I watched him go down and thought that there was no way I was going to not go down with him, my big Superweek adventure spoiled by some turkey who got a little overexcited 6 turns into the very first race. But I hopped the curb, unclipped, and jumped back into the pack at the very back. Crisis averted.

But with 140 corners and 90 minutes, there was plenty of opportunity for people to run into things, run over things, or run out of road in a turn. I don't think any of the riders were seriously hurt, though someone took a turn too wide with 2 laps to go and nailed a photographer who went to the hospital on a backboard.

Back to the sausage-making parts of the race. The first half saw a lot of attempts at a break, but none of them had more than 4 people, and with a 1 mile circuit the chances of anyone getting away and lapping the field was pretty slim. Just the same, I burned a foolish amount of power bridging and chasing. Halfway through, when everyone realized that it would be a pack-finish kind of race, people became more civilized. When the big rush came at the end, I lost a lot of ground in the sprint and finished a disappointing 22nd.

But there's always tomorrow. Stay tuned.