Hillsboro-Roubaix

Hillsboro-Roubaix was this past weekend on Saturday. Going into the weekend I was given the option by USA Cycling to upgrade and race the 1/2/3 race or race the cat 4s...I decided cat 4 would be a perfect race for this weekend.

So me and Kip drove down to Hillsboro to meet up with IS Corp and stayed at a pretty shadey hotel. Since we were sharing we found an air mattress in the back of the jeep, but was unable to blow it up properly, so we had to use a bike pump. It took a good 30-45 minutes to get an airmattress to have a "comfortable" night of sleep...

The next day was bright and early for breakfast at the local restaraunt and headed out to the race course. It warmed up during the race, but was about high 40s to low 50s. There were some crosswinds out on the course but also sunshine.
My race started off pretty large. I think they said there were about 50 starters. Wow! What a field size! It was a lot of fun and we had a 2 line group going. Not long into the race the first crash happened from losing control on a gravelly straight. Luckily I was moving out of the way when people were getting sketchy and I missed the crash. This helped split the field.
The race continued and there was soon our main group with a few stragglers...I soon would be a straggler. There were no breakaways, a couple of attempts but very unsuccessful. I did not have the power that day to even attempt a breakaway, especially since the main group was dominated by teams that had planned on pulling back any breakaways. I was content with the main field.

There was fun gravel, rock, pot holes, red brick for a finish!

The race continued on the 22 mile loop. We hit about mile 19 and there were two large hills coming our way. Hill one, made it up with the pack. Hill two, definitely fell off the back and we were all strung into a staggered line. We hit the cobblestone and I knew the finish was very very close. I pushed whatever I had left to pass 3 women at my finish, for a 9th place. Wasn't too terrible. I thought there were more women in front of me which was a bummer, but it was decent. I was hoping for a top 3 but it was a strong race.

Kip's race was crazy, and I doubt had as many crashes as ours, especially on those corners! He finished 25th in a very strong field that Steve Tilford won.


On the painful drive back to school, which was about 6 hours, we hit flood land. There is a poor farm that now has to canoe to get to.

Overall: A fun fun weekend and I am currently waiting to get my upgrade request fullfilled. Also, Sebastian, my beautiful SWorks, is still being rebuilt, but should be done shortly so I will be able to test my strength out on some trails in a couple of weeks!