Tour of Ohio Stage 4&5

Friday and Saturday were the last two stages of the tour of Ohio. Fridays stage 4 was a really cool circuit race in a residential area. For those of you who are local racers, the course was very identical to the Grandview Heights race in Lancaster, PA. The course had a nice little hill on it, which really wore down on the legs every lap. It was a really fast race. The back side of the course was a gradual down hill, but even then I was always in my 53X11 holding on for dear life. Gabe got into a really good break containing (initially) 18 guys. They stayed aways almost the entire race until it was brought back with 7 laps to go. This was really weird, because all the teams were represented in the break. Apparently some guy riding essentially for himself, went to the front and pulled it back for no apparent reason. From there it was a sprint, and Inferno took 1st&2nd. Inferno is a really good crit team with lots of horse power. After the race, some of the locals invited us over for a party. They were incredibly friendly and we all had a blast!

Stage 5 was a really weird way to end this race. The race was supposed to be 50-miles. It left from Denison University and headed out to country roads for 4-laps on a 7-mile circuit. After that, we would head back to the University and do 10-laps of a 1-mile crit at the school. The finishing crit course was really strange/dangerous. You would go up a 20-25percent grade on a brick road for about 1/4 mile. Then make a right turn at the top onto some freshly paved asphalt (laid 3 days earlier, yet slick at anything!) then zig-zag our way to a 500meter decent down a cement hill that was at least a 25% grade! At the bottom was a 180degree turn, followed by a 90degree left, then another 90degree right, then you were on the finishing stretch. All we needed was some rain to make it even more sketchy! Sure enough, there was a severe weather warning. While out on the open roads for the first circuits, the sky got really dark. Greg got into the big break of the day. Winds picked up a lot, some hail came down, rain, lightening, and we even saw a funnel cloud forming. I couldn't believe the race wasn't stopped, but there was really no where for us to go! We were on wide open back roads, surrounded by fields. As we made it back into town, they lowered the laps of the finishing crit to just 4-laps. The roads were super slick making the course ridiculously crazy and the descent totally insane. The race shattered into little groups of 1s and 2s. It was like a cyclocross or MTB race. I am not sure where everyone finished, but it was chaos.

So that's the tour of ohio!

untill next time

TG