NC.Com Crit #13

Lisa (4th), Val (2nd), Shelly (1st), and Anna (3rd)

This was a bonus race, actually a rain-date make-up, but bonus for me because I was out of town during the two weekly races that got rained out and hadn’t expected to be able to race them. So I was thrilled to be able to race today. Because it was a Saturday, there could be more and longer races, and there were. First, the Cat 4 women got to race, and later, the Cat 1/2/3/4 women got to race. I went to the early race to support my teammates, who represented Shelly, Valerie, Anna, and Lisa C. The others were without teammates or unattached, so Team B definitely had numbers in their favor. And those women made it work for them, sweeping the podium (see the picture above) and taking the two primes offered in their race. There was one mishap in their race, when Lisa got a flat tire just before the bell lap. She couldn’t go to the pit, change her tire/wheel, and get back in the race, so she hung out behind the finish line until she got lapped by Shelly, Val, and Anna, and then limped over the line to retain her 4th place finish.

Our race wasn’t quite so dominated by Team B, but we did have numbers. Kat, Cali, Parri, Shelly, and I all raced this, but we had four CT women (Amanda, Marsha, Alli, and Emily) and 2 SVMIC women (Jess and Beth) to contend with. We were pretty aggressive for much of the race but were never really able to break up the field. Instead, it came down to a field sprint that Parri, Cali, and Kat set me up for. Thanks to their help, I was able to take the win. Kat finished 3rd, Cali 4th, Parri 6th, and Shelly 9th (I think). I’m so proud of each of them for working hard. We did lots right during this race and a few things wrong, and hopefully we can take the best of the right and most of the wrong and learn from each aspect so that we can become better riders and racers. Thankfully, we had no incidents in our race.

Stats: 15.32 miles, 40:24, 22.8 mph (31.5 max, but I’d really like to know what my max power number was during the finishing sprint), 186 HR (204 max), 461’ ascent, 490’ descent

We did 25 laps, and each lap was about 0.61 miles.

My HR in this race was super consistent—almost on par with that of a TT race, only longer. I am not sure whether I’m happy with this, because it means I wasn’t attacking much or resting much, just basically working at the same effort level the entire time. I wonder what would have happened if I had attacked hard a few more times, if maybe we would have been able to break up the field some.