Berkeley Hills Road Race 5/9/2010

Category: W1/2
Field Size: 27
Length: 71 miles
Teammates: Kim and Sam
Place: DNF

I came out to the Berkeley Hills Road Race with Nancy (who did the Cat 4 race and got 5th) hoping to test my strength and see if I could stay with the pack until the finish. Unfortunately, I was out of luck. About 7 miles in, I got a flat going through town. I later found out that it was a rather large sliver of glass that caused a fairly fast flat. Unfortunately, even though the follow car had wheels in it, the car was not with the pack because someone else had flatted shortly before I did. This meant that it took at least a minute for the follow car to reach me, plus another 30 seconds or so to swap the wheel out. Since it was my rear wheel with my PowerTap that got the flat, this meant that I have no telemetry on the rest of my ride. As soon as I got the wheel on, I was off, chasing the pack for all I was worth. Since the pace so far hadn't been particularly fast, I was hoping that I might by some miracle be able to catch them. The pack was in my sight a lot of the time that I was chasing, but mostly on the uphill sections, so even though I could see them, by the time I reached the top of each hill they were long gone. After 30-40 minutes of hard effort chasing, I finally slowed up. Since most of the reason I signed up for the race was to get in a long, hard effort, I figured that it would be good practice pushing myself to time trial for a while. Eventually I caught up with some dropped riders and we rode another full lap of the course (about 19 miles) together. The others kept on, but I was tired from my solo effort and I also was not properly geared for the long climbs on my spare wheel. I didn't check, but I think the wheel I got after my flat had only a 25 or maybe a 26 on it, but with my standard double chainrings I usually need a 28.

Anyway, it was a very disappointing first race as a Cat 2. I really wanted to see how I could do in the 1/2 field and I didn't get a chance to try.