Saturday

9am road race with some hills.

I found out that I was close to capturing 3rd position—but equally close to slipping back to 5th. This was to be known as the quite day. Little to everyone’s knowledge this race was going to be filled with a lot of stupid riders and a crash in every field. Good thing I worked on my chattering skills over the winter—I had to use them many times during our race.

In our field many of the girls were getting angry with the girl that was sitting in 1st position. She would slip in between you and another rider that you were already pretty close to then would change positions for no reason. Her teammate would do the same—almost causing a crash within the first 2 miles. After the third turn I was rolling next to my teammate taking about when the hills were coming up—she said we already did them—not much of a hill if you asked me. We decided that we were bored and needed to spice up the ride and put in an attacks. She attacked and I followed but Alex (from the day before) saw her and went from the middle of the road all the way to white like in a diagonal direction cutting me off and almost caused me to go down due to her poor handling skills. I screamed so loud at her and told her to hold her wheel that anyone who has ridden with me would have been shocked.

After our attack another girl put in a counter attack. Now the race was starting to get fun! The tempo slowed down until 2 miles to the line—KOM (king of the mountain) points were on the line. What I thought was funny was that the KOM points should’ve been sprint points due to the location of the line and the terrain of the course. I chose to conserve my energy and go for the time bonus at the end.

We started the second loop and for some reason I was breathing hard. I was nervous about everything—the lack of riding skills the girls showed during the first lap, with all the girls pretty much together you never know what could happen and the anticipation of someone going to attack started to get to me. I was getting pushed over the centerline more times than I could count which concerned the official behind us to come up and give me a warning.

Part of the course I was talking with one of the girls. She made a comment and said “I hope the person behind me isn’t pissed off because I’m all over the road.” I later ended up behind her and as a joke told her to hold her line. Then moved up next to a teammate. Two minutes later that girl went for the water bottle hitting my teammate’s wheel, that I was next to, over compensated and hit my other teammate, Jen—taking her down. Jen finished the race but had to DNF the rest of the weekend. Of all people, we all wished Jen wouldn’t get hurt. She is new to racing and crashing could really freak out a new racer.

We took the final turn and the speed picked up. I have never been in a race that was so scary. Everyone was jocking for position, speeds were in the mid 30’s, a few attacks took place and was brought back. I was pushed outside the yellow line about 4 times by the same person—I made sure she knew that her handling skills sucked. If you’re going to endanger my ride then you’re going to hear about it from me.

Everything happened so fast and somehow I got out front and was sprinting to the line. Kristy was on my tail yelling at me to go faster. Then at the last second a girl came up on my right side and took the win, Kristy got second, I got third. I was so pissed! I wanted to win a road race—at least once.

I later talked to the official behind us and said if the girl that won was the girl that popped a tire and was brought back to the group drafting behind his car he would owe us a case a beer. I later found out—he owed us a case of beer. It was predetermined that you could get help back to the group if you have a popped tire.