Iowa City Road Race

David and I decided to head to Iowa City to take on the corn fed crowd in the short Iowa City Road Race. Short by road race standards that is, we still had to race/ride our bicycles 52 miles. The drive to the race venue was quite interesting and was probably my favorite part of the day. I chose to get off the beaten path and stray from my google directions. Bad idea. While traversing through Amish country I about took out an old man driving too fast down the gravel road we were on. He thought it would be a good idea to drive down the middle of the road, then upon seeing me heading straight at him he swerved to his right. This threw his truck into a fishtail that he barely was able to bring himself out of it. It was a close call. And while I say the roads were gravel, most of the gravel had been washed away and the Honda was forced to play the part of an ATV while it squiggled its way through the mud. It was a blast!

I did finally race that day, and it was pretty uneventful. Small field... 30 riders or so. David and I attacked quite a bit but nothing stuck. Field sprint seemed inevitable. The finish was a bit unusual as we didn't have both lanes to sprint, and things got a little sketchy as speeds ramped up. After positioning myself poorly for the finish I was able to cross the line in a tie for 6th. Not a great result, but my legs felt great. I'm starting to think road races are not my forte. Maybe I should just stick to crits...