Friday

I loaded up my jeep with more crap then I ever thought I needed for a weekend of racing and met two of my teammates. We were taking an RV to Duluth—also known as the fun bus—with a 2.5 month old and Grandma. As always Points was running late (1.5 hours). When you call her and the first thing she says is “Girl” you know it’s not good. Thankfully we waited for her, because really…she’s too much fun, and traffic wasn’t as bad as we expected it on a holiday weekend. The first race was going to be a 16.2 mile time trial. There were 17 women in my categories, we were all going off every thirty seconds in alphabetical order based on your last name. I was the last one from my team to go off. Right after the first turn I passed the two girls in front of me. Alex—one of the girls stayed with me (remember her name), which was fine because I wanted a carrot and she was keeping at a pace I wanted to stay. On the third and final turn we hit a section of road that was horrible. The road dipped down and up every few feet making a sound like “cha-kunk, cha-kunk”. Not only is your seat hurting from the position you were in now you are on this horrible road grimacing every time you hit the bump. I could have done without.

Once I saw the town I kicked it up and whizzed past Alex finishing with a time of 43:59 putting me in 4th place. My teammate Kristi got 2nd place (43:17), but what seemed odd was the girl that got 1st place (38:14).

Long story short, she started 60 seconds behind Jackie and ended about 60 seconds in front of Jackie but was able to beat Jackie by 6 minutes. We discussed this for hours and hours about this issue, but since there was no chip timing and the officials are standing by the results we can’t prove that they are wrong. Doesn’t it seem odd that a Junior girl put in a TT time that would beat the Men’s Cat 1/2 time from last year? And don’t you think that if a girl can put in that time she wouldn’t have lost 15 seconds on a flat road race?

All races were based on overall time.