Weather up/down (spring time!) and Schababerle RR

This weekend I went down to N/E Kentucky (just south of Cincinnati) to do the Schababerle road race. I've heard about this "spring classic" race for year but have never done it. The weather has be typical spring this week; totally crazy. It was noce and mostl warm early in the week and spitting snow late in the week. The forecast for the race venue (and here) went from 1-3" of snow to 2-4" of snow then back to 1-2". We got a very light dusting here, and that's all the race town got too.
It was cold though. And w/ temps changes come winds.
Looking at the race all the names I knew on the pre-registered list for the 1-2-3 race were people I race with/against in all other disciplines. And if that had been the field I would have done pretty well. But what I didn't count on was a bunch of "pure road racers" showing up day-of.

(climbing that hill)
The course was very tough. It has 1 flat stretch of road that is maybe 2miles long. After that you hit a road maybe 3miles long that is brutal climbing. Then it's narrow, rolling, open-to-the-wind road for the remainder.

(me coming unhitched w/ one to go [looking down is a sure sign of defeat]. I would regain contact, but quickly loose it again w/ in ~5minutes)
My real goal was stay toward the front so 1) I didn't get caught behind dropped chains and stuff on the climbs and 2) so if a move went off the front that I thought I could go with, I would be in a position to do so.


I made the split every time up the hill (except the final times of course) but the moves off the front were too much for me. I settled into the group pic'd above and we made a valiant chase, but a big Cat 1-2 road team showed up w/ several guys, so they were the major players. They made good moves and got the break ~3minutes up the road so were really just hoping to pick up remnants of the break away.

We picked up a few of them, but 4 or 5 stayed away. I came completely unglued w/ 1 lap to go and I flogged myself for while to get back on the group, but it wasn't happening, so I just shut it down and rolled in it to finish. I ended up 10th and am pretty happy w/ that. Doing a 1-2-3 race w/ out being on a big 1-2 team is risky. Plus this course was brutal and the wind and a high temp ~40 made it even worse. The first race of the year is always extra hard and this was 3hrs of mostly torture. It can't get much worse, right?

(this was not a terribly uncommon sight. The "actual hill" was at the end of a 2-3mile road that was nothing but up and down. And I'm guessing the big hill itself had a ~20% grade in its vicious mix)

In other totally unrelated news I have been needing to do laundry and I realized there are cloths in my dirty basket that I wore to the Park Tool Summit which was Jan 24-25. I'm pretty sure I haven't done my laundry in 8-9 weeks. I think that is a new record for me. I'm a little proud of it, but not really.
More racing for me this weekend in OH. My favorite pro race of the year, Tour of Flanders is Sunday too, but I'll likely have to miss it to go race myself. I missed my second favorite race, Ghent-Wevellgam this weekend, but I made it back in time for the end of the Supercross from Canada. I did miss the F1 race from Australia though. This weekend is Moto GP, Supercross form Texas and Flanders. Sacrifices...
(all photos courtesy of Jeffrey Jakucyk)