First I will start with the Tour of Kensington Valley. I was really excited about this race since it was my home turf. I do practically all my training in the area. However the weather just wasn’t cooperating with my plans for the day. At race start is was about 45° with scattered showers, occasional hail and winds gusting up to 45mph. So much for a typical spring day in Michigan, the weather was gorgeous leading up till the weekend to. At race start I decided to take a chance and leave my aero wheels on, the gusts hadn’t gotten too bad yet. The early part of the race was ok, I sat patiently in the back taking it easy. I also was staying in the back due to the fact the wind would work me side to side a lot. On the 4th lap though the winds really picked up, heading along the lake the pack got blasted by some massive 40mph+ crosswind gusts. It really just blasted the pack apart. My bike was a handful and I could barely keep it upright, by the time I was out of the wind the damage was done. I was a good distance off the back in a pack of guys that had simply given up. Since conditions were far from safe I decided to rest for my race the next day and abandon after 36/65 miles. I hate giving up, but ultimately was the right call for the day. 
Sunday was a new day, the rain and storms were gone and the sun was back. All good right? Well the weather was still in the 40° range with winds up to 25mph with a super cold wind chill. Cone Azalia is a race that’s best described as a beast of its own. My race was scheduled for 50 miles, or 5 laps of 10 miles. The kicker is that about 4 miles per lap are on some very rough dirt/gravel roads. About 3 miles of the asphalt are just as rough. It’s really a giant survival suffer fest, only the strong hearted will make it till the end. At the start of the race I knew I didn’t have much, I was coming down with a cold from freezing the previous day. I also missed dinner putting decals on the team trailer. Oh, and I stayed up to 1am just to watch the Redwings lose. Off the start line I realized I had zero fast twitch muscle response, so any acceleration was going to be very hard on me. To make matters worse the race started off in a flurry, my teammate gunned it into the first dirt section near 30mph. People were flatting all over. I was doing my best to just hang on. The vibration of my bike was painful, enough to put my right foot asleep. However I got myself through it, on the next dirt section I wasn’t as lucky. There was a hard stop and then the field gunned it. I couldn’t get to speed quickly enough and got dropped. So I spent the next two miles in the dreaded pain cave. Hanging just off the back trying to will myself back onto the back of the pack and into the draft. Oh, was in a bad crosswind that didn’t help much either. Somehow I did it, so the next lap I took it easy recovering.
By the end of the second lap I went to the front to pace set some, even attacked off the front some. I was feeling a lot better. To my surprise, after the second lap our lead pack was down to 13 people. The third lap didn’t go so well for me though. I cramped up at the end of the lap and then got dropped on an acceleration. I spent the last 2 laps riding solo, for my efforts I hung on to a very hard 13th place. My lower back and right tricep went out on the 4th lap. It felt awful, but I didn’t want to DNF for the second straight day so I just decided to HTFU(google it). Sunday night and Monday I felt awful. To make matters worse I got a cold. Still though I am proud of toughing it out and getting 13th at maybe the toughest race in Michigan. Next weekend I am going to try my hand at racing in the velodrome. It should be fun and a good break from racing on the roads, plus the weather forecast looks good.
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