Here's a little more of a break down from the race last Friday. The wind was blowing hard and the 1/2/3 women shot off the starting line and went out HARD. Needless to say I think I was the first person dropped (my whole 'no interval' training plan is not paying off!). I rode with one or two other stragglers for the first ten miles, but they were hard to organize into any sort of pace line because they were all like "well we're off the back anyways - so it doesn't matter". very frustrating. Once we got to the hill on the back side of the course I spotted a pack of about 10 women midway up the hill and decided I would rather be riding with them than on my own. Now - those of you who have seen me on my bike riding uphill know that I'm no hill-climbing rockstar - so it is a testamount to my desperation NOT to ride the remaining 40 miles in the hurricane head wind by myself that I actually caught this group of women while riding uphill! I've never been so happy to see Annie & Abby in my life -- and as I came gasping onto the back of the pack Annie announces to me that she & Abby are just about to "make their move". blargh. a big thank you to Abby for making me go with them - i didn't think I'd make it, but she pretty firmly ordered me to get on her wheel, so I did, and ended up having a great time racing with them for the remainder of the course......until 1K to go...We saw that the pro1/2 men were going to catch up with us so we dutifully pulled over to the far right edge of the road to let them go by. As the lead car went by I decided to glance over my shoulder to see how far back the men were -- expecting a couple car lengths at least becaue the lead car always seems to be way out ahead. But, um, no. Instead I glance over my shoulder and the entire men's peleton of about 50 riders is about 3 feet behind me! I totally didn't expect them to be so close and it gave me vertigo and in my dizzy state I dropped my front wheel off the side of the road into some nice, soft gravel. ack! I had a split second where I considered trying to bunny hop my front tire back up onto the road and then I was like "wait a second - if I f$&% this up I'm going to take out the entire Pro men's peleton and no one will ever talk to me again!!!" so instead I bailed off the road into the barb-wire ditch (unfortunately the shoulder was not flat here -- more like a 3 foot drop), cyclocross dismounted and started running my bike. At this point Im' thinking maybe no one has seen this happen and I will never have to speak about the incident -- but instead I hear Jake (my teammate) go "Sarah!??!?" as he whizzes by. shit. so i wait for the guys to go by, and their follow car, and their wheel car, and their second follow car and then I hop back up onto the road, get back on my bike and ride the remaining 1/2 K to the finish line to finish almost a full minute behind Abby & Annie. Super.
Aside from that little adventure though I had a great time racing on Friday. It was a big treat for me to be able to ride with Abby & Annie -- the weather was beautiful (if you ignored the wind) -- and it was nice that it was warm enough not to have to ride in 9 wool base layers!
Annie, Abby & I riding in a rotating paceline during the 1st stage.
The rest of the weekend was fun too -- a really nice TT course -- a fun crit downtown that a lot of locals came to watch -- and an absolutely breathtaking last stage (due to both the hill climb and the amazing views of the gorge). I would highly, highly, highly recommend this race for any out of town bike racing family members who might want to come visit us next spring (HINT HINT Erica, John & Kirkham!!)
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