Holy Hill was formed by sediments deposited into a hole inside a glacier. At more than 1000 feet above sea level it is one of the highest points in Wisconsin. It is in Hollister (pop 12k) and carries the abbreviated name of the catholic shrine on top of the hill, Holy Hill National Shrine Of Mary, Help Of Christians.

Our race was supposedly a tour of this hill, though we saw neither the actual hill nor the shrine at the top. The course was an 8 mile loop of rolling hills, with the worst of the climbs (and the mile and a half of subsequent downhill) being on loose gravel.

The makeup of the 4s race has changed since last week. A few people have upgraded to cat 3 and some others have gone back to work. In their stead is one U-boats -worth of angry sounding Germans. I'm not really sure if they speak English, but having them around gives the race a certain euro-credibility, and they're outstanding bike handlers besides.

Our race started at 9 but it was still dry and hot. I kind of started vomiting half-way through, but it was only because I had some air in my stomach and I was trying to burp too hard. Otherwise I was fine. We came into the finish all together and I lost ground in the pack sprint, finishing 18th. I was still in the money, but not nearly as deep as I had hoped.

This was the last road race of the series, it's nothing but criteriums for the rest of the week. Seeing how malnourished my current criterium technique is I'm looking forward to trying some wild new things. I've got nothing to lose, and there's no better place to learn.

Evanston is a Chicagoland suburb, the first one north of The Loop. This is the first year that it has hosted a Superweek race. The course has a couple of nasty turns, but a superacute corner that narrows 3 lanes down to 1 gets the gold star for treachery.

I decided to sit this one out. The risk-to-reward ratio of these weekend crits is not favorable. I'm sitting down right now watching the races of the day. It was nice to get an outside perspective on the 4s race. True to form, the 4s race was a barely contained catstrophe, constantly exchanging the hard currency of kinetic energy into broken machines and screaming wreckage. I feel very very good about not racing today and I've spent most of the day wandering around collecting free stuff.

This afternoon I'm making my final exit from Illinois for the last road race of the series. I'm staying with a friendly Wisconsinite I met on the flight out here, who says she is only a few minutes from tomorrows course at Holy Hill.

The city of Waukesha (pop. 65k) is in the Wisconsin south east. In 2006 it was included in Money Magazine's list of the 100 best places to live in the US. Plans are currently in place to make Waukesha the second city in Wisconsin with city-wide wifi.

The Carl Zach Cycling Classic is a 7-corner criterium course in downtown Waukesha. It is advertised as having an acute turn into a moderate climb and a couple of turns before a descent on the back side. Despite the topography, If this race were West of basin & range country it would have been billed as flat and fast. The race is known for having excellent community support, and even at 9am the course was lined with cheering spectators for our little amateur 4s race. Memories of this morning are a little foggy, but we did 30 miles at an average of 26mph.

I don't have much to say about this race other than that I'm glad I finished with my skin intact. There were 2-3 person pileups every 10 minutes, with at least 3 bonus wrecks on the bell lap alone. After seeing a friend riding rough-shod over a fallen soldier like an 18th century french Marquis, I thought it would be best to trade some speed for prudence. I guess that's a fancy way of saying that I had neither the position nor legs to contest the finish and rolled across the line somewhere in the 20s.

Given how safe the last week of racing has been, the amount of blood spilled today was a worrying return to the Blue Island-style racing seen on day 1. I think a lot of it is local riders who work during the week jump into a weekend crit with fresh legs and visions of Superweek glory. But there were also a whole lot of lapped riders that never got pulled out, with some of them jumping into the final sprint just for kicks. That was pretty lame, not to mention totally preventable.

I high-tailed it out of Waukesha after the results from the 4s race had been made final. I went on a very interesting afternoon tour "The Architecture of Culture and Commerce" in Chicago, where I'll be spending the night before the criterium in Evanston tomorrow morning.

Green Lake (pop. 1100) is a small resort town in the Wisconson hinterland. Its claim to fame is having the deepest lake that is farthest inland from Lake Michigan. There is one school, K-12 with 300 students and bathroom sinks that are mounted to the wall at about two and a half feet off the ground. I spotted an Amish family walking through town, though I don't know if they were there for the bike race.

The course was a .7 mile circuit, 7 corners with one very very sharp turn going downhill. There was a short power climb 300 meters before the finish. Our race was 25 miles and took about an hour.

I've had some bad crit experiences before, but this one may have been the most frustrating. I've taken excellent care of my legs over the last week but they're starting to feel heavy and It took about 10 minutes for my weapons systems to come online after the start. I rode the race like I owned it, macked on all the corners, and was the perfect gentleman to everyone around me. I was around 5th when we charged up the hill for the last time, but was on the wrong side of the pack and I watched a whole train of jack-booted thugs move past me on the other side. I lost more ground in the finishing stretch and ended up with an anemic 20th place finish. No top-10, no money. The nice thing about Superweek is that there's always tomorrow, but I'm still extremely discouraged by how the finish went today.

Post-race, I learned that one of the wheels I've been following for the last week was in Peace Corps Botswana. We went and got lunch at a local cafe, swapped Peace Corps stories, ran into some other guys that have been sipping from the Superweek firehose over the last week, and generally had a good time.

Superweek returned to skinsuit racing this morning with a criterium in Milwaukee. The course was a .7 mile circuit with an acute turn leading into a moderate climb, descending on the finishing stretch. Very similar to the Albany crit, only with less wreckage in the turns.

I got dessed in the parking lot adjoining the course and was already sweating profusely. The heat index became bearable when moving, but was pretty nasty when just standing around. Our crit was 25 miles, and while I did an ace job holding my ground near the front I didn't have enough power to hang in with the 40 mph (no joke) sprint at the end. I was going as hard as I could, but everyone around me was going 1-2 mph faster and I came in with an unimpressive 19th place finish. I'm still sitting at 13th in the series overall, but if I want to move into the top 10 I'll need to figure out a better crit strategy.

Tomorrow is another race. It took me and some other guys a couple of minutes to figure out what day of the week it was today. We finally settled on Day 6 and decided that that was specific enough. I'll be spending the night at a the house of a new acquaintance, a self-described Superweek Geek who lives in Oconomowoc.

Town names like this make me mildly concerned with the toll that this trip is taking on the predictive text dictionary on my phone, the place where I write race reports and jot down peoples' addresses. I'm looking forward to the time I can stop fumbling and stuttering anytime I need to type in the name of a city in the Midwest.