Superweek Pro Tour Recap: Cedarburg Crit and the drive of shame.

The Cedarburg Crit has notoriously been a haunting demon for me. In the past, the course contained a hill with four corners. During my first year, I lasted about 20 minutes. Last year, I hung in until 12 laps to go out of 70.

This season, the city of Cedarburg had changed the course due to construction. The new course contained 6 corners and was flat. After pre-riding it, I seemed confident in a good finish.


The race started fast and furious as always. After about ten laps in there was a crash in turn one taking out about 20 riders. I managed to avoid it and attach back onto the pack. However, my nerves began to rapidly go downhill from that point. I found myself rolling the corners like I was a Cat. 5 again and sprinting to make up the lost positions in the straight aways. After about forty minutes in the race my nerves were shot. I kept visualizing myself sliding out in a corner and furthermore donating more of my epidermis to the blacktop. I allowed the demons to fill my mental with bad thoughts and rather than dismiss them I dwelled on them. In the matter of a lap, I found myself deciding to withdraw from the race. My legs felt great, I hadn’t suffered or hurt at all, I just let the pressure of Superweek and the course get the best of me.

As I took my last “lap of shame” around the course before I got lapped and pulled I heard a little girl in the crowd ask her dad, “Daddy, what’s the matter with that guy, did he give up?” The question echoed in my head as I rolled off the course and headed south out of town to get some cool down miles in and to collect myself. I did give up, there was no fight, no mental or physical digging.

My teammate, Luke Cavender had also drove up that day and had a bit of misfortune in the race as well dropping out fairly early.

Tired and defeated, we conceded to drive through the night and head home.

Once again, from the highest to the lowest...thats bike racing.