Race the Lake

Nothing like starting your day at 3 am - Dale and I decided to do the 90-mile road race, Race the Lake, and with its start time of 5:50 am and location in Fond du Lac, that meant being on the road by 3:30 am! We were happy to see our fellow early risers Shelley and Forrest at the start as well. Expected it to be a tough race (last year's average speed for the lead group was about 27.5 mph!), but since there was no longer a prize of $20,000 (yes, $20,000!) if the winner broke the previous year's record speed, the incentive just to win (rather than win and be 20 G's richer) meant a somewhat slower race (we only averaged 25.6 mph). I think Rashaan Bahati won - so there were definitely some strong guys there (in addition to us, of course!).

As a result, there was a huge front group (and it became even larger due to the second wave catching us!) - probably 100+ riders. I did the race 2 years ago and recalled one section of road where the organizers had placed cones along the centerline, and as riders hugging the centerline veered at the last minute each time they came to a cone, meant carnage behind as whoever was following did not see the cone in time. Well, needless to say, carnage again this year too! I managed to swerve around a couple falling riders, only to hear the large crash as riders in the pack barreled into those who were down. And unfortunately Dale was one of the victims, his knee hit pretty hard, but amazingly his bike was pretty unscathed - man those Madones are tough bikes!

All-in-all it was a nice ride (great sunrise over Lake Winnebago), but not sure I want to do it next year as riding with 100 or so of my closet friends for 90 miles is a bit much (I think they probably had close to 1000 overall)! Although how many of you can say that by 9:30 am you had already driven 80 miles and raced your bike for 90 miles!