Iowa State Criterium Championship - Cedar Rapids

The state criterium championship race was held Sunday July 5th in downtown Cedar Rapids. myself (Ben Acree), Eric Knox and Travis Jass made the trip over for the race. The weather was perfect, sunny and a little over 80 degrees. The course was a flat rectangle with wide corners that allowed for maintaining speed. The course also traversed four bridges over the river, which made it quite scenic. The race was 25 laps of a .7 mile loop. The category 4 race had a payout of $1600, paid out as much as the pro 1-2 category race. A total of 39 racers showed up for their chance at taking the title of Iowa Criterium Champion Title.

The race started out pretty quick. Soon as we were sent off, a prime of a case of beer was announced for the first lap. That got former MOBster Thaddeus Neil motivated to go for it. He was successful with his attempt and carried the case home. Well, enough words, here are some pictures.

Next few pictures are of Travis taking a flier with another rider. As you can see, he got a nice gap on the field.

If you look at the front of the pack in the background in the picture below, you can see Eric and myself trying to block the group a little to give Travis a better chance of staying away. He did not need to much help getting the inital gap, got there all on his own.

Final sprintCool down lap

Results
(Ended up completing 14.2 miles; average speed was 25.8 mph)