Category: W1/2
Field Size: 5
Length: 67 miles
Place: 4th
This course was torturous, really, especially with our microscopic field. We started out an easy enough pace, knowing that it was a long road ahead and it would be easier if we stuck together for a while. We bumped into the W3 field for a bit (all 4 of them), but we sped up a bit to stay ahead of them. Once the climbing started, Jane Despas took off, and although for a while we could see her way up the road, we never got close to catching her again. The other four of us stuck together and worked together for a long time, especially on the five mile crosswind stretch (and again on the way back for another 5 miles). We did an approximation of an echelon, and it worked fairly well, but we still couldn't really gain any ground on Jane up the road. I worked pretty hard, possibly more than my share, trying to catch Jane, but it wasn't meant to be. When the climbing began again to get back, I got dropped, and I realized that I hadn't been eating or drinking enough - whoops! I ate a gel and felt a bit better, but by that time it was too late for me to catch to two ahead of me. I went hard for a bit hoping to catch back up to them after it leveled off, but to no avail. I let up and eventually Beverly caught me and we rode in together, which was nice because not only was a lot of the way back uphill, there was also a wicked headwind.
It was the longest road race I'd ever finished and I'd worked pretty hard most of the way. Unfortunately, I paid for it afterwords. My back had been hurting from all of the climbing, the way it tends to when I got hard for a long time and do some climbing too. When I finally got off my bike at the car, I realized just how bad it was, since I'd been kind of blocking it out for a while. It felt fine when I stood straight up (in fact, it felt kind of good to stretch it out), but when I went to take off my shoes or bend forward for any reason, it just locked up and kind of spasm-ed and was extremely painful. Ouch! My back muscles were so tight, I'd never felt it nearly so bad before. Luckily it did ease up relatively quickly, after I'd stood for a bit then laid down and rested for a while. By the time we were driving home it wasn't spasmodic anymore, just achy. I definitely wasn't used to the longer distance road races like that, especially with so little shelter from the wind in our little pack, so I'll just have to do some more and build up my stamina.
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