Race reports here they come….
Maple Ridge was a local race held by Local Ride, which had three races in two days. First was the road race, and in my humble opinion one on the tougher Canada races in the West. There was a good size field of women ready to tear it up. The road course was a lap course of 10km. We have to do seven laps in total. Oh how I hate lap courses, ‘cause you get to do the same hard stuff over and over and over again. It doesn’t just hurt once on a killer climb it hurts seven times. By the time that the five laps rolled around, I was in some major pain and was pretty close to cracking on the hills. The race wasn’t that exciting and finished in a group up hill sprint. Now that’s really never a good thing for me because my sprint is average and my hilling climbing is below average and put those two things together you don’t get above average that’s for sure.
The time trail was about 3 hours after the road race which doesn’t give a person much time to recover. But everyone is in the same boat so suck it up princess. The TT went, bad, terrible, it was one of the worst TT that I have done. I was anything but unhappy about it; it was like I was doing intervals and decide that I wasn’t going to work hard. I was pretty mad at my self but while riding there wasn’t much that I could do about it besides finish the race.
The Crit the next was tough; I wasn’t able to get in a break off the front so I tried to settle into the three spot in the main group. My legs weren’t feeling it so I really couldn’t get any good attacks in off the front. I tried on but I went wide on a corner and jumped the sidewalk… people went scrambling.
Wenatchee!!!
Wenatchee was so hot and warm for the whole time we were there, got a good sun tan. The TT was the first event and it was one of the best time trials that I have done this year. I this the reason why this one was a lot better then the others was that a) it was warm and b) I got a very good warm up in. The last few TT have been in cold wet weather and I think my legs just really cramp up in that weather. This TT was about 14km long and it was a fast course. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t get great places nor was I in the points but I was pleased with the feel of how I rode it.
Wenatchee is a neat little town which has a big river running through it. After the TT we were still really hot so we found a place on the river that had a dock and jumped in. The water was so cold that your hands went numb very fast but it was so nice. I really want to go to the beach now.
The crit was later the night and it was still muggy and hot. I knew that I had to do something in the crit because I wasn’t in the points and it was going to move up in placing I only had 30 minutes to do it. I made an attack early into the race and I was able to get away and was out front on my own for a couple minutes till one girl bridged up to be. We worked together for about 10 minutes or so till the group caught us. I was pretty cracked when the pack ate us back up and almost fell off the back of the group. I was able to hang in till the final sprint and I got 8th place which I was happy about but I would have like to have stayed away in the break.
Ah the road race… it was tough. Being a non hill climber when I see that there is an 8km climb in a course I shutter. With these types of climbs I have try to stay with the pack for as long as possible. I got dropped from the lead group on the first time on the climb about 6km into it. I was able to work very hard on the down hill and flat part and I caught the group of 10 rider. The only problem was that I caught them at the base of the climb… and the climb started and about 2km into it popped off the back again when a girl attacked. I never lost sight of the group on the climb, they were only about 50m in front of me but there was nothing that I could to catch them at this point. After the climb I time trialed after them for about 10km and I caught them with only about 7 km from the finish line. By this time there group have split into parts and there was a group on 5 girls up the road a ways. I was able to sprint a bit in the end got 9th place.
It was a good weekend I really enjoyed racing in nice weather.
