Sunday

This was going to be the hardest day.

We rolled up to the race and the first thing you could see was “the hill”. Holy Crap was that a nasty hill. Good thing we had 4 hours to look at that thing and contemplate our insanity level. Once the course was open I rolled about half way up to check out how steep it truly was—not too bad, but when your racing it was going to be hard.

The first time up was neutral—because they don’t end a race at the bottom of the hill! After the first turn my team started attacking. We attacked about 4-5 times during the first loop. One of the girls said, “this is not going to be a easy race.” Nope!

At the bottom of the hill I told Jackie “ride your own race and have fun.” We both knew that she wouldn’t be able to stay with the group up the hill. About ¾ of the way up I was out of gears and started to fall off the back. Once at the top I jumped back into the big wheel and took off down the decent. I could have picked up a few feet if I didn’t have to slow down on the turn, but I was still confident that I could still catch-up. On the second roller I started to doubt my ability to get back on to the group. They were so close, but I just couldn’t get them. My heart rate was in the 170-180’s since the bottom of the hill. I dropped my head in defeat until the official in the car behind me pulled up next to me and gave me a bit of encouragement letting me know that they are slowing down. I looked up and could see my teammate Kristy looking back and noticing I was struggling to get back onto the group, she moved up to the front and slowed the group down until I could catch on. Once on, the group started a drafting rotation. I sat in the back for a few turns then jumped in and started to help out. I couldn’t believe I was able to recover so quickly and to still be strong.

Kristy was stilling in 2nd position and the leader was in our lead group of 9.

The second time up the hill was a mirror of the first. I fell off the back and struggled to get back on. I got back on in about the same area. Once on the group I was able to catch my breath a little faster then I started to yell “we dropped the leader! She’s off the back! Let’s go!!” It was like putting a match under the group everyone started yelling “Push harder. Don’t slow down. We need to time on her before the hill.” All eight of us were working together like clockwork. One girl fell off the back since she was cramping—we were down to 7 girls.

On one of the stretches I was behind Alex who pulled off to the side a bit to take a drink of water, but wasn’t able to put the bottle back into the cage correctly thus dropping right in my line. There was nothing I could do the water bottle was still in motion. I wanted to go right but that wouldn’t get me anywhere other than a good road rash. I had no choice. I held on tight and rolled over the bottle hopping not to roll over the top part of the bottle. Luckily I had a little experience on rolling over odd shaped objects and was able to keep myself upright while the bottle exploded due to my impact and it still having water in it.

We started to approach the hill and my left thigh and my right calf started to cramp up on me. Kristy pulled back and I told her just to go. I won’t be able to accelerate and that I was just going to finish. Knowing that I would lose 3rd position. The official pulled up to me while I was climbing the hill and gave me some positive feedback on my race performance before he took off. I got 7th place.

When I finished I found Kristy on the side of the road. We were both tired but running on adrenaline. We must have hugged 3 times, almost tears, excited that we had time on the leader. Now we waited.

We were able to take away 2:40 on the leader. Amy came up the hill, everyone was yelling at her like she was the first one up the hill. A few seconds later Jackie came up the hill sprinting like she was going for the win. All the girls did awesome!