The Gateway Cup is usually a good weekend to get some year-end speed work in.  It’s 4 criteriums in four days.  The first 2 are night time races.  The last three are on good hard courses.  Small hills that wear on you.  I love racing at night.  The speed sense is increased so much it seems like you’re going 40 mph all the time.

Friday’s race started pretty late.  Nearly 10pm.   It was only an hour 15 because of permit issues, etc.  Nothing to really report here.  Was suprised I felt better riding.  I was having some issues with cadence.  Thought my leg speed was down the drain.  The field was together at the end.  I had some other issues with positioning.  I had to make a big effort on the last lap to just get up to 10th in the last corner.  I was on my team mates, Bill Stolte’s, wheel.  I told him to punch it.  He rode me off his wheel.  He finished 7th and I was 10th.  I was perplexed. Dan Schmatz won which was good for the hometown crowd and his local sponsor.  He’s won the race something like 5 times or so.  He has that sprint timed perfectly.   Anyway, got to the hotel after 1am.  Ordered some pizza, took the dog for a walk and got to bed an hour later.  Around 3 am I woke and figured out that I was riding the wrong rear wheel and only had a 12 on the rear.  No 11.  I wasn’t really thinking about the race, but somewhere in the back of my mind, it must of still been there.  If I have to sit down, the sprint is over for me.  I need to put on a bigger front ring.

Saturday was a good race too.  Evening.  New course.  Hard.  Felt good.  I won a couple primes and felt better again.  But, I missed a huge move with about everyone in the race up the road.  Brian Jensen won.  He outsprinted Colby Pierce who nearly made the Olympic track team a couple months ago.  Pretty good result for sure.

Sunday and Monday were both field sprints also.  I was off the front for a few laps both days, but nothing was working.  Actually, Sunday was a field sprint for 2nd.  Coby Pierce rode away by himself and made it two for THF Realtry.  Sunday was hot.  95 maybe.  Middle of the day.  Hour and a half race.  Alot of guys melted.  More than half the field quit.  The end was pretty chaotic.  Brian jumped hard a half lap out on the uphill back side.  Kind of caught the field by suprise.  I was 10 or so back.  Had to weave my way through a few guys dieing.  I was 3 or 4 bike lengths off Henk Vogels going into the last sweeper.  Then it is 600 meters downhill to the finish.  I was paniced not drafting into the sprint.  I got onto the front group, onto Henk’s wheel just when he went by the small group at 300 meters.  But, I miss timed it abit/alot and ended up 5th at the end.  I should of been 2nd, but should of’s don’t really mean much after the fact.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised Tuesday that I was pretty fresh still.  Even with the sleep deprivation going on over the weekend.   Maybe it’s the start of something.  Cooler weather at least.

I’m building up a few cross bikes the next couple days.  Getting my MTB bike back in racing order.  I’m going up to Chequamegon early next week.  I guess Lance is coming, so it’s going to be a circus somewhat.  Good for the promoter, Gary Crandell, though.  He deserves it.  Anyway, there’s still a ton of racing to be had.  I’m doing 6 races in a 9 days period over the Interbike week.  5 cross races and 1 criterium.  I’m pretty sure that is a receipe for disaster.  But, you never know if you don’t try it.  OK.  I’ll find some photos to post later.  Out.

OK.  I’m supposed to be writing about Labor Day Weekend in St. Louis.  I’ll get to that later.  That was the last 4 days.  But, it’s the time of year for apple pie.  I’ve scoped out most of the apple trees in the county on our rides.  It’s amazing how many people have apple trees and let the fruit  drop on the ground.  Kansas probably isn’t the best climate in the world for apples, but the trees that are established seem to produce good fruit most years.  So, today after 4 days of racing, we did a rest ride and picked apples from a couple different trees.  I’m not an expert on identifying types of apples, but most  pies seem to taste better with a good mixture.   Anyway, I love pie.  Pretty much any fruit- cherry, apples, peach, pumpkin, whatever.  I can eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Snack too.   I don’t cook too much, but I do bake some.  Bread, pizza, pies, etc.  I bought a new oven last winter specifically for baking.  It’s a double convection wall oven with a ton of bells and whistles.  Probably too complicated for me.  But it bakes great.  OK.  Photo exposé of pie making below. (Click to enlarge).  St. Louis writeup tomorrow.

I got this photo today from a guy that collects “old” US PRO team bicycles.  He has a bunch of 7-11 bikes and has expanded his corral to Wheaties/Schwinn bikes.  All custom painted by Joe Bell.  He emailed me asking me exactly what components we rode on our bikes in 1988-89.  He said he found a guy to sell him a NOS Paramount frame that was built for me.

It’s kind of weird because a couple of years ago, someone contacted me with a link on eBay of an auction of a Wheaties/Schwinn Paramount of mine.  I thought I knew where “my” frames were, but no.   I ended up getting the bike back from the eBay guy after convincing him that I was “really Steve Tilford”.  He was super cool. It was  a pretty new Wheaties/Schwinn Team bike with my name painted on it.  The serial number is my last name stamped in the bottom bracket shell.  Good addition to my basement.  Anyway, I’m not going to have a problem giving this guy a list of components from 20 years ago.  I’m going to take a few photos of the bike in the basement.  White Rolls seat, old Shimano SIS, Wolber tubulars, Avocet computer and all.

Try to make out the name on the chainstay of the first frame on the right. (hint-double click on the photo and it’s easier to read).  The rest are photos are of the bike in my basement.

OK.  Haven’t been writing much about bike racing lately.  I’ve mainly been moping around the country trying to emulate a bicycle racer.  I raced in Superweek some.  Never finished worse than 20th.  Never better than 10th.  In the Chicago $$$$ Criterium, I was 2 places out of the $$.  Then Tour of Kansas City.  All three days riding worse than mediocre.  5th at Cliff Drive Road Race might look OK on paper, but it wasn’t much of a result.  Now criterium Nationals.  Again.  Elite race. Again.  Anyway, below is a picture of what a nice result would have been. Check the wheel position at the line.  And the form.

Anyway, it was the final result, minus me.  Ken Hansen, winner of the race, on the right,  was most likely always going to win that race if it came down to a field sprint.  He is super fast and has the course dialed.  I was having a pretty bad weekend.  Even comparing it to recent horrible weekends.  I woke up in Chicago early Saturday morning feeling like s**t.  Super achey, flu symptoms.  I was in bed virtually all day and night Saturday.  Didn’t eat anything, but the $55 entry fee for the Saturday night race.  I think that puts me close to nearly a $1000 worth of entries this year of races I didn’t start.  Probably more than the rest of my “career” combined.  I had a fever of 96 degrees most of the day.  Go figure.  Then all of a sudden around 10pm Saturday night, it popped up to 101.8.  I felt pretty bad.  I watched the Olympics until late, then fell asleep.  I woke sometime after 2am, dreached in sweat.  Like a gallon of water.  Pretty much the next 5 hours, that was the situation.  I woke up again around 9am, took my temperature.  96.8.  Aches gone.  Felt OK.  Ate some pancakes, put on my cycling clothes and rode to the course to get my number.  I was super weak, but it is the Elite Nationals.  That race historically has been less than fast.  And that was the case this year.  I never made an effort the whole race.  Never got close to winded.  And below is the result.

Yea.  Going into the last lap, Texas Roadhouse had 4 guys lined up.  I was around 10 guys back.  I dove the inside of the first turn and moved up to the back of the leadout for the 2nd corner.  I started turning left before they had finished swinging out to turn.  I tried, of course, to correct my line, but no.  User error would most likely be the best description of the fall.  I’d have to say I wasn’t 100% at fault.  Maybe closer to 90%.  I wasn’t having the best balance day for sure. I felt pretty weird, and still do, from the flu. I got up and rode back to the 4th corner from the end and Texas Roadhouse was still there at the front.  S**t.  What a drag.  But, Ken Hansen smeared everyone, so the race probably wasn’t winable.  Alex Boyd finished 3rd.  Good result.  So, I’ve only ridden one day in the last 5.  Good rest before ‘cross season?

Speaking of ‘cross, it is coming up pretty fast.    Below is a photo of a weird sign I got a couple weeks ago.  I took Bromont, our dog, for a walk in Lake Geneva, Saturday, before the Chicago criterium.  I came back to the van that I had parked in a residential area and laying there, on the ground, behind the van, was a single inline ‘cross brake lever. Really weird! I went running that night. What are the odds of that being there?  Strange.  Nothing like running when you’re riding like crap.  You thought bike riding was painful.  Not that bad compared.

Did you guys see that they found maybe something like 125,000 western lowland gorillas in a very secluded place in the Republic of Congo in Africa? It made my day. Maybe week/month. I didn’t realize how worried I was about the gorilla situation until I heard of this discovery. It is very rare that something like this happens nowadays. It goes to show you how big the planet is and that there are still places above the water’s surface that haven’t been altered by man’s dominance. There are less than 700 mountain gorillas left in the wild still. Their numbers are being reduced to make charcoal. Anyway, this discovery a good thing.

OK. Behind again. Superweek. Chicago. Home. Not many good results to report for me. It is 1 million degrees in Kansas right now. Training is kind of fruitless, but still attempted. I was looking in my toolbox and realized it is a mess. Then I saw the culprit. Caught in action below.

OK. I’m a couple weeks behind again. But, I need to stick to the chronological order thing I suppose. So, I’ll try to play catch up. Went up to Omaha for a couple criteriums. The guys up there always find fun, technical courses to ride, so I try to get up there whenever I’m around the midwest. I’m not sure what the deal was, but there were less than 20 starters in the 1-2 race on Saturday and Sunday. Whatever the reason was, I wasn’t into it at all. We had 7 guys there and that isn’t fun bike racing for anyone. But, it was. At least for me. It is very rarely in this sport that I am pretty surprised. But, Saturday was one of those days. I had finally felt OK riding for a couple days and was looking forward to riding hard. With the majority of the field riding on my team, I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out. It played out strange. I got into a break immediately with Alex Boyd. Local Omaha guy that is national level. National Collegiate Road Champion a couple times and a good rider all around. Then Bill, Shad and Chris eventually showed up. That is 4 of us, 1 of him. Anyway, the photo below shows the outcome. I could go into a long process how that came to be, but the real answer was that he was riding the best. Maybe, by miles. I’m not sure still. But, I’m still amazed. As a rider, this is a photo that you never want taken.

Sunday was a do over. I don’t think anyone was looking forward to it. It was pretty hot and a pretty hard course. It went pretty much from the gun. Then Alex managed to throw himself onto the ground in a sketchy corner. He took a free lap, but I think he had enough of the jumpfest, so finally let me go. Sundays photos are better from my perspective, but he had the better weekend by far. Up at Superweek now. Update tomorrow. Oh, sure!

I’ve been kind of just hanging around the last couple weeks.  Trying to get going good and catch up on some stuff I put off from travel.  Like hanging some drywall, prunning trees, giving blood ect.  Recovery type stuff!  I’ve been riding abit better in training, so maybe things are going to be OK for the last half of the season.  It’s always nice to have the Tour on live in the morning over breakfast.

I went to the doctor a couple times.  Had a blood test.   I waited over an hour for a 4 minute draw.  They are way more interested in your drivers license/insurance card/bank account statement/prize winnings than actually helping you medically.  It’s amazing how much blood they take.  I thought they took too much, then they took more.  I said to the guy, “do you actually use all the blood?”  he said no.  I said, “shit, I need that blood, can I have it back?”  He didn’t reply.

There have been a ton of turtles on the roads this year.  Maybe because of all the rain, but I can’t swear that is the reason.  I have serious personal rules about encountering turtles when riding. I’ve seen way too many squished in my lifetime to ignore them.   The short list-always move turtles out of the road when training.  Especially box or green turtles.  It OK just to kick a snapping turtle off the road.  I actually don’t mind seeing snapping turtles not make it across the road.  I hate them. They are super mean.   But, if they are alive when you come upon them, then you have an obligation to move them.  Moving turtles when racing is a different matter.  You have to use common sense to decide if you have enough time to spare.  Or enough energy to catch back on, depending on the situation.  I’ve moved a lot of turtles during races.  Most the time everyone will wait for me.  It’s better to be in a break.  Trudi moved a turtle during a time trial last Monday.  She didn’t get her time back though. Bad call by the timers.

I raced twice in Nebraska this past weekend.  I’ll post the results later today.

Catherine Walberg’s cover shot below. Guess there is a photo of me in the article too somewhere. But, it’s always fun getting the cover.