The return of Opus

There were so many Bellas at Opus last night, it was so impressive!
Those who raced included Karla, Margot, Shirley, Manda, Lieselot,
Sheryl, Paula, Maria (for the U of M) and myself.  And there were a
bunch of Bellas there cheering us on -  Sara(n) and baby fella Leo,
Angie, Laurel, Marjie, Dana, and Jodi.  And Stacia was there
officiating (thanks for the ride home!). Thanks to everyone who
cheered us on!

It was seriously a sketchy race, and I hope I didn't add to the
sketchiness! There were a LOT of women there...22 I believe.
That's about 10 more than normal. My goal, as usual, was to
avoid getting dropped.  For the first fewreally sketchy laps,
I hung in there.  But since there are sprints every 3 laps,
things really sped up on lap 3...I started to fall behind, but on
the downhill, I saw the people in front of me sitting up a bit,
so I hauled some ass and caught back up.  And then, much to
my surprise, I was able to stay with the pack for the rest of the
race. (It was so exciting...it was a little personal victory for me.)
Lieselot, Betty PP (Birchwood) and Gopher AH (U of M) had
gotten off the front early in the race, so they sprinted for 1st,
2nd, and 3rd (Lieselot was 2nd to Ann).

Since I know it's hard for some of you to believe that I actually
was able to stay with the main field for once...this photo
(from www.skinnyski.com) is proof...see the lap counter...
two laps to go, and that's me just to the right of the "2".















The rest of the pack had to sprint for 4th.  Coming into the final
sprint, there were still a lot of women in the main field (10 to 15
maybe?).  I was just so happy to have been able to keep up (and not
crash) that I decided to not even test my luck during the sprint...I
just sat up.  In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have done that...I'll chalk
that one up to lack of experience. I know my teammates Sheryl, Margot,
Maria, and Paula were all in that pack though, so they were somewhere
between 4th and 12th probably?  Karla had a dropped chain which led
to her missing a lap, but otherwise she was in there mixing it up too.

Super big props to Bellas Shirley and Manda for doing their first crit!!

Unfortunately the men's Opus races were cancelled due to some
complaints about illegal behavior of some sort. Plus, it started storming.
Hopefully Opus will be back next week, but we'll see. 

There are a bunch of photos at www.skinnyski.com

Next up...Durand this weekend.