Capitol Crit "race" report

This will be short. I lined up with 31 other women for the Capitol Crit on Sunday...what an awesome turnout!! There were a ton of Bellas...for once I think we outnumbered the Bettys. My legs were tired from my 3.5 hr ride with Special K the day before, but generally speaking, I felt pretty good. This was a 30-minute Women's Open race (instead of having separate races for the separate categories), so I'm fairly certain most of the Cat 4's paid their $25 with the assumption that lapped riders would not be pulled from the race (as is normally the case for Open races). When Teresa attacked from the gun, no one really chased after her, but it still started out fast. I can't really even remember which lap I got dropped on, but it was early...maybe lap 3? It was disappointing, and once again, you'll have to read Special K's blog to find out what happened in the main field. About 10-15 minutes into the race, I was crossing the start/finish line with about 3 other riders and I saw the official making a strange hand gesture at us. Usually when they're pulling you, it's quite obvious. At the same time, I noticed the pace car (with Teresa in tow) was about to pass me, so I assumed the official was just warning me that the pace car was coming. I figured if he was actually trying to pull us, he'd do it again on the next lap. As the laps passed, I started to notice a lot of the riders who had been in front of me were now on the sidelines. But the official never pulled me and the other riders with me, so we just kept going. In the end, it was an uneventful race for me, but at least I got to ride some fast laps for 30 minutes. Unfortunately for about half of the racers, they paid $25 to race for 10 minutes before they got pulled. It's a little unclear why riders were pulled...usually it's only necessary to pull riders when the race is dangerous or the field is large (and lapped riders make the race hard to keep track of), but I don't think either of those situations existed. Bummer. However, Margot got 3rd, and Barb, Karla, and Sheryl all finished with the main field, so that was totally cool. And Special K upgraded...which is cool for her, but a bummer for me and the other Cat 4's on our team.

Check out some cool photos from the race at Moses-Images.

And check out this crazy photo from the Rock Island crit.

Oh, and remember that documentary film that Bob, Elena, Julie and I took part in at the velodrome? There's now a trailer for the film...and if you look really close, you'll see a few 0.5 second clips of me (I'm dressed in all black): http://www.fastwomenproductions.com/

SS