Superweek Race #4: Whitefish Bay

Our last race of Superweek was finally upon us. I had actually gotten over 7 hrs of sleep for the first time in 4 nights, but I was definitely a little dehydrated from my sleeping aids. Luckily, our race wasn't until 1 pm, so we had plenty of time to sit by the pool at our hotel and drink coffee and surf the Internet. We even had time for a sit down breakfast with a few of the GP boys.

It was a beautiful day for racing and the Whitefish Bay crit course was significantly nicer than the previous day's race in Cudahy. We made sure to get there early to do a few laps of the course before the men's 4/5 race so that we could line up for our race without having to do a lap. We'd been told that it was important to have a good position at the start of this race, and we did just that.

The race started out fast (again) and I concentrated on staying towards the front. There was a bit of jockeying for position going on for the first few laps and I felt like people were riding a little unsafe. Suddenly the rider in front of me decided she wanted to jump out of the pack for some reason, and she almost took me out doing it. For the first time during a crit, I yelled something - I wish I could report that it was something bad-ass, but the only thing that came to mind in that split second was "HEY!!!" And most of you know how intimidating my yelling (aka bar) voice is. I told her. So I swerved to avoid going down as I was "yelling" my displeasure to the rider in front of me, then everyone behind me yelled their displeasure at me for swerving. Shortly thereafter, my legs really started to hurt. Not in a "lactic acid burn" sort of way...it was more like a "how the hell did you expect to do 4 superweek races in a row" sort of way.

So to make a long story short, I got dropped really early in this race. And after riding around for a few laps and getting in groups with other dropped riders, then going for a prime, I decided I was done with Superweek. And my legs thanked me. I was perfectly happy to watch the rest of the race from the sidelines and cheer on my teammates.

After the race, the Bellas got together for their post-race pow-wow, and then discussed the usual cool down ride. But I decided I was done. I no longer wanted to be on my bike. I wanted out of my chamois ASAP. SpecialK agreed - "we don't have anything to recover for anyway, so why bother". So we peer-pressured Pdiddily into packing up the bikes and the car without a ride.

We had decided that we would stick around to watch the men's Pro/1/2 race which didn't even start until 6 pm. It was a fun race, and the GP boys had a great race again, so it was worth staying. The downside was that I didn't get to bed until 3 a.m.

Needless to say, I was happy to take a half of day off of work the next day to sleep in, and was ecstatic to not have to ride my bike that night. The best part was that Pete and I were invited to an excellent dinner gathering with a kick-ass meal, yummy gnt's and wine, and great company.

When I came home from work tonight, I saw that my bike had been de-bugged and was all sparkly clean (thanks Patty Cakes!!) and was just waiting to be ridden again. But I was still exhausted and just couldn't do it. I think I'll be ready tomorrow. And I'll definitely be ready by track racing time on Thursday! It's time to get my groove on.

SS

p.s. speaking of track racing...we had the opportunity to see the Kenosha velodrome while at Superweek, and I think it's safe to say we were a bit disappointed. But it certainly helps us appreciate our awesome track facility here!