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bunny
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Posted: Fri Jul 4th, 2008 09:10 pm |
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I spent the last 2 days in the feed zone for the road races and trying to recover from the time trial. While they have done very well with the races here, better than any other Natz I've come to with Jeff, they didn't have a neutral feed. The road course was beautiful--a 5 mile circuit inside Cherokee Park with 100% road closure. Course was very uppy-downy twisty-turny. We had contemplated doing the tandem rr, but are happy we didn't since the only rr's that it rained for were the tandems. I'm a pretty brave stoker but I wouldn't have wanted to make some of those tight fast turns in the rain on a tandem!
So, on to the crit. It was in the infield of Churchill Downs. They were getting ready for races--horses and jockeys running around on the track in the mud, warming up, I suppose. It was raining pretty good when I got up, but doppler suggested it might stop before our race. It did, but the ground was still puddly in places. Mostly where there were dips including the apices of 2 turns. Also, very nicely closed venue. But no dogs allowed! Poo to that. And even though it was cloudy, it was 80 and humid so it was a white jersey day!
The 35-39 race finished poorly just before us. The winner kinda put the gal she was sprinting against into the barricades a little and after the line the gal who got shutout in the sprint kinda nudged back and they both went down in a giant cartwheel of carbon rims just after the line. Ambulance and all. They looked ok but one of them needed neck xrays, I'm sure. And I think she's going to miss her podium picture. I hate that kind of stupid shit.
Being the analyst that I am, I read the results on usacycling of the other 13 registered women in the 40-44 age group(only 10 showed and no same day entrants given the exorbitant $120 fee to do so). And I figured out before I even saw the size of everyone's thighs that it was going to be a race of 10 sprinters from 10 different teams, and me. So I planned to try to be a little aggressive, get in a break if possible, and if not, attack and go at 500 meters and see if I can catch a podium spot.....
Well, that is pretty much what happened (except the podium spot part). No one wanted to do too much work so we spent a lot of time going 15 mph and then accelerating to 25 when someone would attack. I didn't like that. I think I'da done better going 20 and accelerating to 25..... So the accelerations were hurting me worse than I'm used to. Probably a combination of things. My training has been focusing on the tandem tt. And I'm not recovered from the effort of the 39k tandem tt 4 days ago. Doing other tandem tts of similar length this year has shown me it takes me 6-7 days after that huge of an effort to be at full form again. And I have had some bothersome family stress this week. And I had a mini-case of cheese-calzone-revenge while I was trying to warm up this morning. And that's enough excuses for why I didn't quite have it.
So I got dropped after about 15 laps out of 40 on this 0.45 mile course. It was like riding on the track without banked corners. I chased for a lap and got back on. Like I said, it kept slowing down. But still, ouch! And then I threw in a couple attacks when it just got so painfully slow. And tried to bridge to a couple attacks. And then I got dropped again. And this time when I had almost caught after a lap, someone attacked and I had to chase for another whole lap. It was very hard to make myself continue, but I knew they'd slow down eventually. But that was a big effort. I got lots of cheers from Jeff and Bob Parker and just cool fans in general!
Then there was about 15 laps to go and no one would do anything. I saw Sonia Ross had sat in for the whole race--not a hair in the wind ever--and thought that maybe she was playing it right. But not right for me. We went so slow those last 10-15 laps. Really slow. Like I spent way too much time at the front cuz I didn't want to be behind everyone else going so slow. I mean, they were OK bike handlers, but there were a couple wobblers.
I heard a couple people telling their racers to go with one lap. So I decided I had to go before that. So I went with about a kilo. I was the first to jump, but I was too near the front and everyone responded. I kept it strung out pretty good until about 300 meters to go when my legs were fading and then started getting passed and shut it down. I needed to be less polite about my positioning before that sprint. But I'm not disappointed. I wasn't sure when I signed up if I 'belonged' at a national caliber crit like this, but I think I proved that I did.
According to witnesses, I got my name mentioned more by Dave Toule, the announcer extraordinaire, than anyone else. And I awarded myself the "most uninhibited rider" award that they seemed to be missing here. But I think I'm going to have a mai tai instead of wine as my prize.
I tell you--2 other bellas, and I guarantee we win that race......just planting the seed for next year in the 45-49 category.....
http://www.usacycling.org/results/index.php?year=2008&id=1887&info_id=13678Attachment: natscritstart.jpg (Downloaded 56 times) Last edited on Fri Jul 4th, 2008 09:13 pm by bunny
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bunny
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Posted: Fri Jul 4th, 2008 09:11 pm |
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| yes, i'm smiling at the cute picture-taker cuz we were going pretty slow here Attachment: natscritsmile.jpg (Downloaded 56 times)
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sacwheelgirl
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Posted: Fri Jul 4th, 2008 11:59 pm |
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Good Job Soni and nice ride report. It sounds like you handled a frustrating race with style (your usual way). Happy 4th!
Katie
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LLLocke55
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Posted: Sat Jul 5th, 2008 12:46 am |
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| Good going, sounds like you made it a race...yay for mai tais...
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bunny
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Posted: Sat Jul 5th, 2008 02:11 am |
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since we ended up going to an italian restaurant, i decided to go with an 'italian margarita' instead
i'd describe it as sweeter and smoother than the average margarita
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Miss Mary
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Posted: Sat Jul 5th, 2008 04:00 am |
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| yay bunny!!!!
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ehirsch83
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Posted: Sun Jul 6th, 2008 02:05 pm |
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| good job!! Ahh green kit herbalife girl is one of my local competition. Sounds like you raced a great race!!
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