Race Report: Tour of America’s Dairyland Cedar Creek Classic
Race Report: Tour of America’s Dairyland (ToAD) Cedar Creek Classic
Date: June 24, 2025
AVRT racers: Robin Betz
Top Result: Robin 30/48 overall, 22/32 in Cat2/3 omnium
Course: Four corner, 1.1 mile loop with left turns. Slight downhill on the long edge before the final corner.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/14905310174
Race Recap:
I’m in the Milwaukee area this week with the goal of scooping up some upgrade points towards my cat 1 by racing the 2/3 omnium. I have no good reason for this goal other than personal glory so of course the universe is humbling me with my results.
The field is combined with the junior girls’ 15-18 but scored separately. However while these riders were strong, the peloton was extremely unsafe and this was the sketchiest crit I’ve ever raced (which is saying something).
It started pretty hot and I realized I could hang on near the front no problem and corner much faster than the field. However, riders would come around on the straightaways however they could including moving up in the gutter where there wasn’t room, making very sudden lateral moves to get out and move up, or tapping me on the butt (which is a pro move that should be reserved for the pros) while shoving their handlebars into a nonexistent gap and yelling at me about it. I was on the front for a bit so I could corner how I wanted, but couldn’t really do that due to last-minute dive bombs on the inside that I needed to be ready for. The sketchy riders were also quite strong and would move up in front of me and wheel chop to get back in the group.
There’s a sprint jersey in this series and things got pretty fast when the bell rung for that lap. I decided to sit in and focus on the overall. It got strung out around the last corner and I was about halfway in the field contemplating an attack, but heard whistles and referees yelling at us to neutralize due to a rider down. I and the riders around me did, but 8 riders ahead took this as their chance, didn’t slow down at all, and formed a break that lasted the rest of the race. I was pretty disappointed in the officiating here.
I tried to get people to chase, even pulling hard for an entire lap which got me a shoutout on the livestream, but no one would help me and I quickly realized that with how the bunch was cornering we were never going to catch the break. At this point I was mainly trying to survive without crashing as it was truly wild out there. On one corner, I was in the middle line when a rider dive bombed the inside and another changed lines in the corner to accommodate but went right into me, shoving me into a third rider. We leaned on each other and careened almost into the curb but fortunately whoever I was leaning on also had bike handling skills and we both stayed up.
Last lap I was doing well near the front and felt pretty good, and noticed the field was extremely tired, with some people blowing up. Everyone was too cooked to think about line choice and we headed for the last two corners on the absolute inside line and never swung wide? I decided I didn’t want to die and I can’t win a sprint from a standstill so I cruised in last in the group, pretty frustrated.
I’m here for 6 days of racing regardless of how I feel about it, so even though I’m probably not going to win a leaders’ jersey (which I was really hoping to as I am doing this series with a single outfit), there’s opportunities to learn and succeed in my own way. Knowing that I can’t move up on the corners due to the pack bunching and that I can’t drop the sketchiest riders (my hot take is that zwift should be illegal if you’re under 18), I need to do everything I can to stay third-ish wheel and keep it the whole race. If I get dropped because I spent all my energy doing that, I’ll try something else the next day.
Stay tuned for updates on how this goes for me. The only real metric for success is being on the plane home with zero road rash so I may also change to the P12 field where I can also finish midpack but without risking my life to do it.