Cannon Falls Road Race

Yesterday we raced the Cannon Falls Road Race at the North Star Grand Prix. The stage is a very flat 83 mile stage that starts out with a 75 mile road race loop with 4 two mile finishing circuits. It was not very windy, it is early in the race, and there were a lot of motivated riders. We thought a break would not roll, but we placed riders at the front of the peloton to go with moves just in case. The race started off and one mile in there was a crash that took down about half the peloton. Nicolai was the only rider on our team to crash, and he only has some road rash and broke a set of wheels. Other teams, including the Rally Team who is leading the race, lost multiple riders in the crash. It really stinks to see a lot of guys go down and go to the hospital. I hope they all have a speedy recovery. Fortunately our team was fully intact after that crash. The whole field sat under the only tree in the area for about a half hour while riders were hauled off in ambulances, and team cars came up to us. We then resumed racing, and the pace was very fast. Many guys were attacking, but they never got a significant gap. We were trying to put riders in moves that only had Rally riders because if Rally had a guy in the break they would not chase. The constant attacking made for a hard day of racing. Finally about after 50 miles of racing a break of 4 went clear. The pace was not fast after the riders went, but as we approached the finishing circuits the speed increased and we closed in on the leaders. We had the leaders within about 20 seconds on the circuits and Evan Huffman of Rally jumped across to them. Evan tried to go with him but just didn't have the legs. I was floating in the top 20-30 but could just never get all the way to the front as the field was swarming. I wanted to get on the front to chase, but I just kept getting swarmed. Evan and Nicolai were able to do a couple of turns on the front, but Huffman stayed away for the win by 9 seconds. We finished safely in the field behind. All in all it was a good day because we did a good job following the significant breaks and got in the splits that mattered. It was an error missing Huffman in the finale, but there are still 3 more days of racing left. Tonight we have a flat crit in downtown Minneapolis.