Superweek Race #1: She-be-gone

Yesterday Pdiddily, SpecialK, and I packed up the team car and headed East. Destination...Sheboygan, WI (via Appleton). Today was race #1 (of four) at Superweek. We accidently took the scenic route from Appleton to Sheboygan but still arrived with plenty of time to register, chamois-up, and warm-up along the shores of Lake Michigan. The course was a 0.8-mile loop with 4 corners, a very slight uphill, and an S-curve. We lined up for the 25 mile race with about 35-40 other Cat 3/4 women including teammate BHar, Bettys MB and CS, GW-NoH and GW-Muhsr...I was excited to finally be part of a larger race and it was nice to have some familiar faces in the pack (translates to: it's nice to have a few wheels you can trust). As expected, the race started pretty fast. And then to make matters worse, they rang the bell for a prime on about the 2nd or 3rd lap. I have never been in a race with so many primes...it felt like the bell was ringing every other lap. The nice part is that SpecialK got a few of those primes, including a Smoothie Maker. So with all of the primes, the race pace stayed pretty high. One of my goals for the race was to try to stay in a good position. I was only semi-successful - I kept finding myself towards the back of the pack, then I'd move up on the little hill, then I'd fall back. But it was good practice for moving around a bit. Then about halfway through the race, I decided to move towards the front. So I slowly made my way up until I was next to SpecialK - when she saw me, she said hello, and I replied with a winded "sup"...and she thought I said "I suck". I didn't suck at the time, but about two minutes later it was much more debateable. For no apparent reason (okay, there may have been an increase in pace), I quickly started falling back through the pack. I quite suddenly felt like I wasn't moving, and everyone else was going 25 mph. The next thing I knew I was at the back of the pack and I was hurting. GW-NoH gave me some words of encouragement, but I had nothing...I sat up, and that was it. She-be-gone.

In hindsight, I always curse myself for not trying harder at that critical moment. But when it's happening, it's such a split second decision - give it some more or give up. I'm not sure why I chose to give up this time because I generally felt okay (aside from not being able to make my bike go fast enough), but that was the decision I made, so done deal. No worries though, I learned a lot today and I'm excited about tomorrow.

Even though it wasn't a great race for me, my teammates had a great race. BHar and SpecialK were mixing it up at the front of the race early on, and SpecialK even took a little flyer off the front for a while. In the end, SpecialK led out the last lap to string the field out, and blew herself up doing so, but she had a great race - I give her the most aggressive rider award. And Pdiddily finished 13th. So a pretty good day for the Bellas.

We're staying with some relatives of SpecialK's for a few nights, and we are getting the full treatment! Beautiful, huge, house in a beautiful area, HUGE dinner and ice cream, 3 awesome daughters who were very excited for us to come visit, and they even went out and bought one of their favorite movies so we could all watch it...Spinal Tap. Dang, I could get use to the life of a "real" bike racer...and I've only been one for one day.

Strats out

p.s. Wishing you a speedy, drug-induced/pain-free, recovery mom!