Big time bicycle racing comes to Madison this weekend! It's year 2 of Centurion Wisconsin- European style road racing, right here in Madison- or I guess the Madison area to be more (or less) precise. The races start and end at the airport in Middleton and for the most part head to the west.
And that means...
...Hills!
I'll get to the hills later this week.
Today let's talk about the Friday night Time Trials...including the Media Challenge Team Time Trial. For the Media Challenge race there's $500 on the line going to the charity of choice of the winning team. I will be racing with my team to pick up $500 for the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin.
No pressure there.
Not only is bicycling a big passion for me- so I want to do what I can to support the organization that helps keep bicycling safe for the people of Wisconsin, but it would also look bad if the Bicycle Federation team didn't do well in this race. Actually- it probably looks bad if we don't win it. We are representing the BICYCLE Federation after all.
My Ironman teammates have accused me of stacking the deck, but I don't care.
The rest of my team is Petra Kilian-Gehring (co-owner of Speed Cycling here in Madison) and 2 of my training partners- Matt Agnew and his wife Julie Murphy-Agnew.
I'm going to assume that Petra is fast- I've actually never ridden with her, but I've met her at a couple of races. She looks fast. And she's the co-owner of Speed Cycling. I think she's fast.
Julie is fast- my best example is when we first started riding outdoors this year- Julie dropped all the guys on all the rides, I was able to keep up...until we hit the hills, then she dropped me too. I'm guessing it's lonely up there.
Matt is faster. Matt, Julie and I ride together at least 2 or 3 times a week. Matt regularly has to stop to wait for Julie and me. He claims that he doesn't wait long. But he waits.
We're racing on Friday night. The Time Trials start at 6 and we start our race at 7:15.
The Time Trial is very spectator friendly. In fact- I can honestly say that my favorite day of watching the Tour de France in person was in 2009 when my wife and I spent the day at the Annecy Time Trials. There's always something happening at the Time Trials and as a spectator you can be right in the middle of it all and watch it all up close! On that day in Annecy, Laura and I picked out our spot, just about 100 yards from the starting ramp- the nice thing about the time Trial is that we could sit there all day and watch racing all day- another racer went past us every 2-3 minutes. We could watch him getting ready at the ramp, start his race and then fly past us on his way out of town. Annecy was set up really nice in that we only had to walk about a block to then get to the finish line, so we could bop back and forth between the start and finish. We didn't of course- at one point it started raining and we headed for the nearest pub- where we watched the race on TV. That was cool too, we would watch a rider start his race on the ramp on TV, then we would turn around and watch that same rider fly past us, right in front of the pub. The Centurion won't be on TV, so you won't be able to do that- but you can have a beer while you're there...
Head down to the Middleton Airport on Friday night- bring your cowbells, make a little noise- and make a night of it. In addition to the races, the Centurion Wisconsin Expo will be open, plus there will be food from Biaggi's and beer from the Capital Brewery! When I get off the bike- I might join you for one!
Tommorow I'll look at Saturday's Centurion events + Jessepalooza!
If you believe the hashtag, #johnmayerisback!
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