Slug Cycling Criterium 4/24/2010

Category: Open Women
Field Size: 5
Length: 45 minutes
Teammates: Kira
Place: 3rd

The course was a fairly short, only 0.5 mile per lap. It had four left corners, with the start/finish line on an uphill. The second and third corners were really fun because it was a fast downhill going into them, and they were wide enough that you could take them at full speed. Then there was a slight uphill before the last turn into a 6% uphill to the finish line.

My race was very small, but it was still a fun race. We set off at a decent pace, but not too fast since obviously no one wanted to pull the other four around and waste energy. Kira and I worked together with Mary and made a couple of moves, sending Kira off the front for a bit, but other than that we mostly just kept together. There were 6 primes, so those made for a bit of excitement (I even won one), and the pace started to get a little faster about 20 minutes in. Around 30 minutes in, I think, Mary and another girl took off and the three of us left behind didn't have the energy to catch them. Kira got dropped during the chase after having put up a good fight. Shortly before the leaders took off, I nearly got a cramp in my right calf muscle, but it settled for just tightening up enough to warn me that if I wasn't careful I'd get a really bad cramp. After that, I knew that I couldn't even try to climb out of the saddle or even accelerate sharply because it would be too much for it and I'd get a full-on cramp. The other girl who was left (I later introduced myself and found her name was Trish) and I kept the pace up enough that we were both hurting, but we didn't have it in us to catch the leaders. My heartrate was going into the high 180s every time we took that hill, so I was pushing pretty hard, and my heartrate never got a chance to drop down lower than 170. With around 7 laps to go, they called a prime for me and Trish, since we were half the field. I went for it and managed to win it. After that, I think we let up on the pace a bit since we knew we weren't going to catch the leaders and the we were racing for 3rd, so neither of us wanted to waste our energy. I managed to let her take the hill faster with one lap to go so that I forced her to take the lead for the last lap. She tried to attack on the slight uphill, but I just followed her wheel and beat her on the uphill finish.

So I had fun, I won $15, a chocolate bar, and a box of tea (my two primes). Technically, I even got one upgrade point. Anyway, I think it was a good race experience for me. I was really glad to get the practice taking that downhill corner, since cornering is still one of my weakest skills. I messed it up pretty badly once, but the rest of the time I did pretty well and worked on finding the best line through it. It was also a great workout, since it was effectively doing a bunch of 10-15 second efforts on the uphill.