Grayslake Race Report: By Dan Pollard

This past Saturday was the Grayslake Cycling Classic located in the Prairie Crossing subdivision in Northern Illinois. The course is approximately 1K long and is in the shape of the letter U with three wide, sweeping turns and two tighter 90 degree right handers. This course layout allows the pace to get and stay high, as we would find out soon enough.

Andrew, Drew and I would make the trip north together, meeting up with Brandon at the race. Drew has been on excellent form lately and had some great results during Superweek, including his first win at Geneva. And Andrew was coming off a podium finish last week so we agreed the team would do what it could do to put me in a position for a result.

The race started off with call ups for the top 10 in the Illinois Cup standings since this was the final Cup race of the year. After staging well the last few races, I got stuck towards the back and knew I would spend the first part of the race working my way to the front. When the whistle blew I set to work getting up to the front. The pace immediately was high and the field was strung out single file working its way around the course. On the first three laps gaps already started to form as the pace was slowly spitting people out the back. I could see Drew and Brandon sitting in great position in the top 10 for most of the first half of the race, but I didn't see Andrew. I didn't think anything of it until the pack came around through the start finish and I saw Andrew in the SRAM neutral support pit. I would find out after the race that he clipped his pedal and went down on one of the first laps, luckily, outside of some more road rash, he was ok.

Before the midpoint of the race I had finally made my way up to the front and comfortably settled in the top 10. A few small breaks would try to go up the road but would never get more than a few seconds on the field and the crosswinds on the backside of the course made it extremely difficult to maintain a breakaway. The race was pretty uneventful from there until 3 laps to go when the pace visibly slowed as everyone seemed to be saving themselves for the final sprint. Drew went to the front a couple times to keep the pace high and the field strung out. The main field was still together as we crossed the start/finish line for the final time. Drew, Brandon and I were all sitting top 20 at this point and we started to move up the field to try to position me for the final sprint.

On the final straight-away Drew took a strong pull and went to the front and gapped the field, with me right on his wheel, according to our pre-race plan. Turns out Brandon was the victim of someone taking a bad line through the final right turn and he was pushed off the course into the grass, so the Monkey lead out train was now just Drew. He pulled into the cross wind and put me in great position to start my wind up for the final sprint into the inside of the U. I wasn't sure how big my gap was when I pulled around Drew, but I may have taken off a little early as the finish would prove to be about 50m too far for me. I came around the second to last bend in first place with John from Rhythm Racing on my wheel. John took a quick pull on the front and then I rotated to the front and saw Quentin from Project 5 go flying by. I tried to spin up to catch his wheel but couldn't catch on, and a gap slowly was opening up between him and I. Coming into the finishing straight I was in second place. I didn't look back because I was hoping I would have enough to hold on. Turns out, I didnt as I got swarmed just before the line and rolled across for a 9th place finish.

Even though I didn't end up with the result the team and I wanted, I'll take Saturday as a learning experience and put the lessons learned to use in my next race. Thanks to Drew, Andrew and Brandon for the team effort, next time hopefully I can get the result. Thanks also to the residents and volunteers of Prairie Crossing and all those involved for running a well organized and on time event.