The races at Winona Lake have always been a good way to kick of the summer season of racing before nationals, they’re typically a pretty hard set of races. The road race is a rolling rectangle around some more corn fields of Indiana (as if we don’t have enough) that’s usually plagued by stiff crosswinds and echelons.

We went into the race thinking we would have 6 guys and some serious firepower in the field. However, plans changed and it ended being just Greg, Ryan, and Me. In addition to this, the field that turned out being really really good, Texas Roadhouse Showed up with a good squad, along with the Bissell cycling team, Nuvo, Chad from the Kenda Pro
team, and finally the Verizon U25 cycling team. Going in, our plan was to not let the race come down to a field sprint as there were a couple pretty quick guys including Ben Renkema who used to be a teammate with Greg and I.

After a cameraman/biker collision at the start (apparently the camera man forgot to get out of the road in hi picture taking enthusiasm), the race got out to a really fast start. And by fast I mean real fast, there was no joking around in this race. Attack after attack went away but never got more than a few seconds until about halfway through the
race. It started with Greg and a few other guys pretty much rolling off the front. Soon the front group ballooned to seven or so, then a second group with Ryan formed about five riders. So I was sitting in the pack watching some moves until Dave Williams of the Bissell Pro squad attacked, I followed his move and we both bridged up to the breakaway, bringing together the 15 some riders up the road. As soon as we all got together, the breakaway sat right up. So Panther went to the front and did some attacking.

After one of Greg’s attacks Will Nowak attacked and got a gap, I countered bringing Eric Hamilton from Nuvo with me. We grouped up together and were working pretty well together, well me and Eric did, Will didn’t pull through because he was saving it for the finish because I had “gotten to fast for my own good.”

So after a few attacks I ended up leading out the two up sprint with Will, and took it by the smallest margin of a bike throw.

Our team strategy paid off, as the pure sprinters of the bunch took the field sprint. However Greg wasn’t far behind finishing 6th, Ryan also finished in the pack after getting the door shut on him in the last corner and having to sprint the last 300 meters from a about 5 mph.

-Chris Uberti