Spam Jam

2 hour drive for a 25 mile road race. I know—crazy. It’s no Headwaters, but it’s a race that my team, Silver Cycling, does as an entire team. Kristy, Jackie, and I represented the Hellions while we were accompanied by 15 of our fellow male teammates. Last year’s race had us battling against 25 mile an hour winds, at least this year it was manageable.

My goal was to stick with the lead group as long as I could and to stay on one of my teammates wheels. For the most part that goal was accomplished.

Heading North we had a bit of wind to battle. I tried to stay as well protected as I could but with a lot of novas racers within the group. I was more nervous during this race than riding in a early season race with a bunch of Cat 4 women. What is up with all of the moving around? Really, moving to the left or right when you are in the middle is not necessary. I had a heck of a time just finding a good wheel.

Once we got to the most northern part of the course we made a right hand turn. I moved to the front and as far left as I could then leaned my bike as much as I could while peddling to make the corner. The entire time I made a turn I was just praying that I wouldn’t get dropped—with a bunch of guys this was going to be tough. After the race was over Jay came up to me and told me my positioning and cornering was awesome.

Jay got a good laugh when I started yelling at all of the guys to hold their line. I must have yelled it about a hundred times. Every time someone was trying to move-in next to me they cut me off! Jackie got pushed off the road into the dirt at least 3 different times. I don’t understand how the cat 5 men can race with each other. I was told once that I shouldn’t be yelling so much—but if you are going to go into my line and threaten my or my teammates safety you better understand I’ll call you out.

On the final stretch our lead group got broken into two groups. I was about three quarters back and gearing up for the big sprint. Jackie and I were the only two women left in the lead group. There was no way I could out sprint her, but hell I was going to give it a shot for fun. I started to come around when this guy in front of me jerks his bike to the left right into my line of fire. I can be a little hot headed when I’m trying to sprint to the line—so the fireworks started to fly out of my mouth.

I came in second in the women’s division 16 overall, but the worst part was the width of the sprint was so wide—no center rule for this race—that ended in a narrow width area. Unknowingly it was going to be set up like that it became very dangerous. We had 15 people sprinting at once at 40 miles per hour with little orange cones fling all over the place and older ladies jumping out in front of us trying to rip off this number from your back. That was scary!