MN State Road Race

This weekend was my last race of the season. I had mixed feelings going into this final race. I was sad to see the season come to an end but on the other hand happy to be done with my first year of racing. I can’t believe I participated in 24 races, got my a$$ kicked in 24 races, and never DNFed.

The MN State Road Race was in Avon by St. Cloud. The morning started overcast, cold, and windy. We faced a challenging course with the finish line at the top of mile long climb. We only had do two laps, but for some reason we had to do that climb three times. It felt like we started the race at the bottom but, I’m not quite sure if we actually started racing until we got to the top of the hill. Uh…it doesn’t matter I never know when we start racing when there are those long rollouts I just try to stick with the front part of the group.

While in the parking lot talking with a team mate I noticed Melissa and Heidi Dahlmann came to race. As soon I saw them I knew this was going to be a hard one! The Dahlmann sisters race at the Velodrome in Blaine and are damn good at track racing. I’ve done a number of group rides with Melissa to know what was in store for the next couple of hours. Don’t get me wrong, they are extremely nice and sweet girls, but to try to beat them in a race is another story!

So we had the Dahlmann sisters and then the women’s categories got changed at the last minute. There wasn’t enough 1/2/3 women so a number of the ladies moved to the 40+ categories which means—they race with the cat 4’s. I’m all for them making the change for these ladies to race, but in the last couple of months on the MCF message board the men have been complaining about mixing categories. Come on, they have 500 different categories and us women are lucky to have a cat 4 only category. Try being a first year racer and have someone who has been racing for a number of years race in your group? On top of that, they are two categories higher then yourself. Yeah, yeah—I know they score us separately, but when it’s a mass start you don’t know who you are racing against.

Ok, now that I’ve got my bitching out of the way…

We started off. I got up the hill within the middle of the pack, stayed on the wheels during the downhill and headwind section. Melissa, as predicted, was off the front so someone would chase her down and she would be pulled back into the group, then she attacked again and again someone would chase her down. I give her credit—she’s a really good racer.

We got about ½ way through the first lap and everyone started to feel the pain and the group started to break into several pieces. There was no time to rest, every uphill was a struggle to stick on and every downhill was a chase.

At the top of a long steady climb on the backside I lost the group so I jumped on a wheel of Sue Swift, her and I worked together to bridge the gap to Dano (Jr. rider who has been the girl I tend to work with when we lose the group at races and crits). Us three worked together and grabbed our fourth rider, Gina from GP. We tried everything to get around Gina, but she was not letting us go. I have to thank Sue Swift for watching out for me on the 2nd ½ of the first loop. I was having a hard time recovering from the long steady climb, but she made sure that I was always on her wheel.

I got up the hill the second time right behind Sue, Gina was behind me and Dano was behind her. My breathing was horrible—I wanted to cry so badly due to the pain in my lungs but I was in a race and you deal with the pain. We came down the backside and I was able to recover much quicker then I imagined, by then Sue was ready to stretch her legs so she bridge up to another rider ahead. The three of us knew we were not going to win, but we couldn’t let anyone pass us so we worked together to finish the race.

We took one of the last left hand turns—there was a number of them—and the muscle in my right thigh (about an inch above my knee) started to cramp. A number of my leg muscles were cramping already but the one in my thigh was almost paralyzing. I went into the final hill knowing that I was able to out climb the two girls on the previous climbs but I wasn’t going to be able to with my legs cramping for the past 7 miles. I was going to do the best I could but I knew I wasn’t going to chase them down. As I figured, they passed me. I was happy I was able to finish with as much pain as I was in. I got 6th out of 12—ending my first year at my average position.

I now look forward towards riding my bike not to race but for fun and preparing for next season.