Wednesday, June 26, 2013

NC.com Crit #5 (Tired Legs!)

Start line from the front

Start line from the back

On the move!

Tonight's race was hard. My legs were quite tired, more so than I was expecting. I'd done a step mill workout in the morning, which is my typical pre-crit workout, and it was only a little rough, so I was expecting an OK race, but it wasn't quite that. The course was slightly different tonight, where instead of turns 2 and 3 being left-hand turns and turns 4 and 5 being a quick left-right turn, turn 2 was a sweeping 180 and turns 3, 4, and 5 were eliminated.


I had a couple good attacks, but I didn't have much after them. This means that I missed the break (AJ, Katie, Cath, Cali, and Jess) and couldn't bridge up to Leah, so I was behind all them in a group with Kristi, Kathy, Shannon, and Jes. We all worked together pretty well, but we couldn't do too much because we all had teammates up the road. However, we should have done much more than we did, because we knew we were going to get lapped and I didn't want to get lapped! The officials couldn't figure out whether (or when) we were going to get lapped, so we saw 5 to go twice and didn't ever see 2 to go (we got caught on AJ's last lap). I had been hoping to A) get away from my group, B) bridge up to Leah, C) not get caught, and D) out-sprint the others in my group.

Early in the race, we were all together

Belladium all together

Kristi and me

Turn 2 -- sweeping 180

When I finally knew getting caught was inevitable, I just attacked. I knew AJ couldn't work with me, but she could go at my speed, so I picked up the pace at the line with 1 to go. AJ also went on the attack, and once I realized that I had enough separation between me and everyone else, I let AJ and Katie sprint it out (while I watched and stayed out of the way) and came across the line shortly behind them. Although I crossed the line 3rd, I actually finished 6th due to having been lapped and because Jess ended up not finishing.

It was still a fast and hard race (everyone agreed with that after!), but I had been hoping for slightly better and less tired legs than what I got. Time to rest up for the state RR on Saturday!

Race #5, 6-26-13: 29:26, 10.92 miles, 22.3 mph, 183 bpm, 6/23 and 4/5 Cat 2sRace #4, 6-19-13: 29:48, 11.89 miles, 23.9 mph, 186 bpm, 5/19 and 3/4 Cat 2s
Race #3, 6-12-13: 28:48, 10.73 miles, 22.3 mph, 189 bpm, 2/18 and 1/3 Cat 2s
Race #2, 5-29-13: 30:39, 11.31 miles, 22.1 mph, 2/18 and 2/4 Cat 2s
Race #1, 5-22-13: 35:36, 12.88 miles, 21.7 mph, 4/14 and 2/3 Cat 2s (incorrect time and mileage)

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