NC Time Trial Championships

I have to admit to being superstitious at times, especially when it comes to sports. On the way to races I scan the radio frequencies for bad 70’s songs just because one weekend I kept running across “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond and I won the omnium. The weekend I won the NC road race championships I had “Get Down On It” stuck in my head. I did pretty well in Warsaw with that silly Pink song stuck in my head, but that may have been a bit too recent since I ended up out of the money… So when I came across “Workin’ My Way Back To You” on the way to the time trial, I thought for sure I would have a great race. Lucky for me I was wrong, and now I can stop torturing myself with irritating pop songs! Although I got to the race in plenty of time, was pre-registered and got the bike on the trainer an hour before my start time, I still managed to fail to get a decent warm-up. The time trial was a 30K with two turn-arounds. The first turn-around was 2 miles into the race, and on a screaming descent, which meant that you started back up from a near stop to go back up the hill. Ouch. Did I mention that you also got to turn into the wind at that point? Double ouch. Without a proper warmup it was triple ouch! I started ahead of all the category 1 men, so I was passed by my minute man at mile 4. My goal was to break 50 minutes and to hold off my 7 minute man. The strong winds knocked me around a lot, and I just couldn’t get it together – my 6 minute man passed me at the second turnaround. The cross-tail wind turned into a cross-headwind after that turn, and I struggled to find some semblance of a tempo – and then I got passed by my 7 minute man. Finally, with about 3 miles to go, I started to feel human again and found a bit of strength and just barely managed to hold off my 8 minute man at the line to get a 49:40. I was pretty disappointed in that time, having hoped to go under 48 minutes, but I was really excited to see how well my husband did – a 44:51! I got a shiny silver medal – the only other category 1,2,3 woman in the race beat me by over 4 minutes. She’s a monster.

Cary Criterium

I went home after the race and drowned my sorrows in pizza and bad TV shows. I wasn’t too excited about doing the crit on Sunday. I had been having terrible allergies all week long, and combined with a few code red ozone days, my lungs felt like someone had scoured them with sandpaper. I waffled all night and the next morning about whether or not I would race. Finally, I decided to ride over to the race and see how I felt. I went over a few hills, and felt pretty good. When I got to the race, I looked at the registration list and there were all of 9 women signed up – half of which were from my old team. Fortunately, there were a couple strong riders from Team Earthfare that could stop the Tricyclists from controlling the race.

The course was very technical – basically a parking lot criterium. We started on the far side of a four lane divided road, turned right into the parking lot and then made another sharp right turn into a row. This curved through a traffic circle and out into the far end of the parking lot where we made a sharp right bend around two rows and then a left turn back out to the main road. The final turn was about 200m from the uphill finish. In the morning, every single race had a breakaway, and my strategy was to go as hard as I could through each turn and try to play a little chicken. I took off from the start line on the front and immediately pushed the pace. Lauren from Earthfare was ready to play, and we traded pulls at the front for the first two laps. At the start of the third lap I drifted back a few places, and was getting a little worried through the parking lot – girls were locking up the brakes and being generally nervous and twitchy. Coming into the far parking lot I was about 6th wheel when I saw Adrienne from Earthfare jump and my brainstem took over – I just jumped up to her and the two of us motored off the front. I can’t even remember exactly how it happened, but within four laps we had 20 seconds on the pack. By the halfway point we had over 30 seconds. We traded pulls the entire time, taking the corners hard and pushing it through the straightaways. We agreed that it was much better to be off the front, and vowed to keep working together until the last lap. With three to go, we had the pack in our sight in front of us, but I didn’t want to get Adrienne back into the pack with her teammate, so I backed off a little. I screwed up and let Adrienne put me on the front just before the bell, and she wouldn’t come through at all the whole last lap. I slowed down to about 8mph before the last turn to try and force her around, but she waited and jumped hard on the inside and sprinted away up the hill. I tried to respond, but she had the jump on me and crossed the line first by a bike length. I was pretty happy with 2nd place considering I wasn’t really into racing that morning!