Tippecanoe State Park is located in the northern reaches of Indiana, not all that far from Chicago. So there were mostly different faces at this event than at the OVSS races near Cincinnati. Thankfully, there were a few familiar faces, too, including Cindi Hart and her family. The women's 1-2-3-4 field, which started with 16 riders, consisted of 6 or 7 from Kenda (all formerly Jamba Juice), two from SHC, and a sprinkling of independents including a Master's 60+ rider, a cat 4 from Muncie, IN named Cheryl, and a junior from MOB Squad named Abby. All were presumably from the Wisconsin, Chicago, and Indiana. Interestingly enough, all but one of the Kenda riders were cat 1/2's.
Who says RR's are less dangerous than crits? It seems to depend entirely on who's in the race. Cindi commented that the riding was very erratic at this one, and I'd have to agree. Even though the course was essentially flat and had only one corner, an Apache rider went down about 2/3 of the way into the first out of 8 laps. It looked like she took the corner too wide, went off the edge of the pavement, and landed hard on her shoulder/head. Meanwhile, Kenda kept blocking and repeatedly sent riders off the front, sometimes into the wind, but nothing stuck. During one of the early attacks, Cindi made a comment about Kenda blocking, and I made the same costly and impulsive mistake I made at PUR Tour last summer of going out into the wind alone. I never did catch the rider off the front, but the group caught me in short order, and I nearly got dropped as they passed. Seems that nobody wanted to pull, so the group zig-zagged back and forth from one side of the road to the other as the rider up at the front unsuccessfully tried to pull off. A lap or two after that, the three riders just in front of me got close together, bumped elbows/shoulders, and the rider on the right side of the group ricocheted off of the middle rider and crashed on the pavement to my right. During the recovery phase after the next attack about 14 miles into the race, a Kenda rider who was riding to my right decided she wanted to attack up the left side of the road, so she suddenly swerved to the left and cut me off during her jump which nearly knocked me off the bike. My legs died during that attack, so that was the end of my race. Another lap later, Abby caught up to me and passed me. I was working as hard as I could, but didn't know why I was going so slow that I had a hard time even passing some casual riders who were on mountain bikes. A mile or two down the road, I heard a rubbing noise and discovered that there was major brake rub going on with my rear brake. Once I released the caliper, I was cruising down the road in the low 20's without that much effort. I'm not sure how much the brake problem contributed to my final demise, but it got me seriously wondering whether I'd even finish the 25 miles before they started the next group! All I saw after being dropped was a lone Kenda rider off the front by a huge lead followed shortly by one of her teammates and then the remainder of the peloton. Cindi fared well, stuck with the group, and placed in the field sprint.
