Long Weekend in Iowa

I have been in Iowa since thursday afternoon as a guest racer with Priority Health. I drove out with Sven Howard and we met up later with Scott Stewart. The race schedule is an 80mile RR on Friday, Snake Alley Crit on Saturday, Melon City Crit on Sunday and Quad Cities on Monday. The road race course was pretty simple and nothing too dificult except the wind and heat. It is been so hot and humid it has been dificult to adjust to it. In the road race all of us missed our feeds and were in trouble. I gave Sven my third bottle i caried with me but it just wasn't enough. I was out of water with about 30miles to go, and Sven and Scott were out with about 20miles to go. Chris Wherry and another Toyota rider drilled it over a steep little climb with a good cross wind. I was tagged right on the back of it when it went and thought Sven was a few riders in front of me. As i started to close the gap to the break i was finally able to see who was up the road and i realized Sven was not in the group. I looked behind me and Sven was just off the front of the group trying to close the gap to me. I sat up to wait for him to try and sling him accross to the field. Unfortunalty the field swollowed us up and the break was gone. Scott then started to be really active to try and get in a chase group, i stayed out of trouble with Sven to try and lead him out in the finish. As we came into the finish it was really hectic, i had scott and sven on my wheel but i was so dehydrated i was cramping everywhere, i finally was able to punch it through a gap and get Scott and Sven up to the front onto ABD's leadout train. I blew up and Sven and was off. Unfortunalty he was also dehydrated and didn't have much kick left in his legs. We ended up being shut out of the race. We raced well and were extremely attentive and took care of each other. More to come from Snake Alley...