The State Road Race

Saturday was the State Road Race down by Plainview. The Cat 4 women's race was 40 miles - three laps of the 13.3 mile course with a huge-ass hill at the start/finish and bunch of rollers on the backside of the course. Pete and I brought my brother-in-law Chris along to provide hand-ups in the feed zone. This was Chris's first bike race and feed zone experience...he was nervous about his duties, but we gave him a little training about how to hold the water bottles and he did great!

Speaking of holding water bottles, I'm still embarrassed by the total rookie move I pulled during the neutral rollout for our race. It was warm on Saturday, and since we haven't done any long road races yet this year, I was nervous about keeping hydrated. So during our nice, slow, rollout, I decided I should drink some water. I was near the front of the group, and when I went to put my water bottle back in the cage, it slipped out of my hand and almost caused a few riders behind me to go down. I think my teammate Kate, who was right behind me, ran over it and someone else had to swerve to go around it. Wow, did I feel bad. Luckily, everyone kept it upright. I was even more lucky that some race volunteers who were following in a car stopped and picked up my water bottle and brought it back up to me (thank you!).

So the race started when we hit the start/finish line which was part way up the big hill. I was breathing pretty hard by the time we finally crested the hill, but felt pretty good and I think the group was mainly intact (although Chris said he thought 2-3 riders fell off the back the first time up the hill). The Bettys, who constituted more than 50% of the total field, started attacking a bit. Paula, Kate and I (the only Bellas in the race) chased down the first few attacks, but then Betty-C attacked and got way off the front. I was feeling pretty good on the little rollers on the backside of the course, so I tried to take off a few times to start a chase, but the Bettys weren't having that. We were very outnumbered, and we really needed every non-Betty to get organized and help chase, but it wasn't happening. I made one last effort to chase on the downhill on the backside of the course, but to no avail. SPBRC-M and I discussed that we needed to get organized and start chasing down Betty-C once we got up the hill again. But for me, that plan quickly changed. As we headed up the hill for the second time, I grabbed a water bottle from Chris, and then I quite suddenly started to hurt just over the halfway point. That's the craziest thing about bike racing...one second you can feel great, and the next you feel like total shit. The field started to splinter at this point, and I watched as the main field slowly pulled away from me. By the time I crested the hill, the main field had a huge gap on me, and three other riders were riding by themselves between the main field and me. I started hauling ass trying to catch up to the first rider in front of me, and I wasn't gaining much ground. I won't lie...I wanted to quit. I did NOT want to do a 26-mile TT on this course...that is just not any fun. I looked behind me and saw GW-J. GW-J caught up to me and said "think we can catch them?" (referring to the 3 riders who were now working together just up the road). I was skeptical, but said "only if we ride really fast" (I know, very profound stuff). So we took turns pulling but it just didn't feel like we were making any ground. We hit the downhill and hammered hard, and after we made the turn at the bottom of the hill, they 3 riders were in sight. I decided it was now or never, so I started going harder and noticed I was finally closing the gap. I looked behind me, and noticed I had dropped GW-J, but she was still relatively close behind...I knew I couldn't slow up at this point, so I tried to give her a little "come on!" hand gesture with the hopes that it would somehow be motivating (in reality, she probably just wondered what the hell I was gesturing at her). I finally reached the 3 riders (my teammate Kate, Betty-J, and SPBRC-L) right at the base of the hill, and a look behind me confirmed that GW-J had made it too...so now there were five. I figured I was in trouble on the hill since I had just used up most of my energy to catch the group. I grabbed another water bottle from Chris on the way up, started hurting again, thought about quitting again, but was glad to finally be with a teammate who was right there next to me, so I kept going. At the top of the hill, I was surprised to find that we had dropped GW-J and SPBRC-L. I think the main field was out of sight at this point, but Kate, Betty-J and I started rotating and working hard. I was once again feeling pretty good...I was actually surprised at how good I felt. The 3 of us kept rotating all the way to the final stretch of the race. Kate and I kind of gave each other the little head nod, and at the 500-m marker, I decided to go...I opened up a big gap, which was a very good thing, because I had gone WAY too early. But I crossed the line in 8th place. Not quite what I had hoped for, but not bad for me either. Big props to GW-J, Kate, and Betty-J for doing their fair-share of the work during the race...I really wanted to quit, but you ladies totally made it fun and worth finishing. And congrats to my teammate Paula for getting 2nd - pretty impressive for the lone Bella in a sea of Bettys. And thanks to Chris for being an awesome water boy! As always, the Birchwood Bike team put on a great race.

Apparently I need to do some hill training.

SS