Northfield

Somehow after RAAM my entries do not seem so exciting. But, I’ll give it a shot.

Saturday was the Northfield crit. A favorite to most—not so much mine. I’m not a fan of the hill right at the beginning much less dragging my butt up it 15 times. A mere fraction of what one of my teammates did (she double dipped—i.e. raced twice) or what the cat 1/2’s did (about 50 laps). Well, I’m not a cat 1 either. I just remember last year blacking out a few times and almost losing my cookies on that hill.

This year turned out to be a bit different. I found my line through all of the corners making this race fun—knowing that I didn’t need to touch my breaks at all during the race unless needed. The hill didn’t seem all that hard. I dropped down a few gears and spun up gaining ground on all of the girls. To our luck we were the only group of racers that got rained on. If you’re a cyclist you know that the roads can get quite slick when it rains especially on a main city street with paint. Much less when you’re trying to be aggressive around the corners. I almost lost it three separate times. One of those times scared the crap out of me—taking out some of my sidewall on my back wheel. I decided that finishing the race without a crash was more important than getting a higher position. One the girls thought differently and found herself on the ground on the final turn—she was ok. I got 5th place.

Thanks to Sean from On Support for fixing my front derailleur. After months of frustration, it turns out that entire front derailleur was not aliened to the chain. Thus not allowing me to sprint when needed.