Cal Poly Classic Crit 2/21/2010

Category: W4/3
Field Size: 14
Length: 40 minutes
Place: 3rd

I went searching for a race last weekend and found that I only had to drive 200 miles to San Luis Obispo to get to one! Since Jose and I just bought our first car (a 1999 Subaru Outback) last Thursday specifically so that we could get to races easier, we decided to drive down. The Cal Poly Classic was a very tough crit. It was half uphill, half downhill, and part of that uphill was rather steep. There were two 90 degree right turns right after each other (not quite a u-turn, but maybe 20 meters between them?) on the downhill part, which was insane. There was one Cat 1 woman in our race, since she was the only one preregistered for the 1/2 race, although she raced again when 4 others showed up. A couple of laps in, the Cat 1 and two others managed to make a break, and I ended up chasing them the rest of the time. For a few laps, I had a SoCal girl almost behind me, which I knew only because people would cheer for her as I went by, but I barely saw her, since I wasn't looking back. I dropped her, and at 10 laps to go, I was 21 seconds back on the 3 leaders. For the next 5 laps, I gained on them (Jose was yelling out how far behind I was every lap), up to only 12 seconds back, and I could see them getting closer. Unfortunately, I couldn't sustain the pace, and I lost concentration on the corners, so I slowly lost time back to probably 20 seconds back until the finish. I found that the 5 or so laps that I was gaining, I took very good lines through the downhill corners, but I'm not great at cornering, so on all of the other laps I ended up having to brake more (I always had to brake, since I didn't want to slide out or go over the hay bales). Part of my difficulty on the corners was due what I thought was a nasty bump in the road exactly where I thought the otherwise best line would take me, so I had to experiment with other lines. Along the way, I lapped at least 3 riders, but I didn't really know where the rest of the ladies were. What I didn't know the whole way was that I was 20 seconds behind the leaders and 20 seconds ahead of the rest of the pack. It was a fight the whole way to try to maintain my distance to the leaders, but I think I'm glad that I didn't know where the pack was. Going it alone was totally worth my 3rd place finish (4th technically, but the Cat 1 doesn't count). It was a really good learning experience for me, since I got some great cornering experience.