Hello!

Valley of the Sun.  Oh Boy.  I drove, with Philip from UCI, from the OC to Palm Springs (where TCTTP Dave generously donated some very swanky hotel space) to Buckeye AZ.  Lots of friends were at the race, and I spent too much time being a social butterfly (ha!)  I set up my fanastic new VeloVie TT bike with a disc wheel that I'd borrowed from Lana (who is turning into my cycling fairy godmother). 
Here's how it all went down (litterally).
(I think I use too many parentheticals -- I hope my students don't read this ;) )

TT:
I put together my brand new Velo Vie on Wednesday, had a quick fit on Thursday (thanks to Damon), and raced on Friday. Not the best prep for a TT; however, I ended up pleasantly surprised and didn’t completely blow it. I think I was 16th after the TT. The course was most flat, some sections of maybe 1-3% and very windy.

RR:
This was ridiculous. The course was nothing exceptional: a big triangle with one gentle climb about 2k long. We did 3.5 laps to finish at the top of the climb. It was single lane the whole way and this made moving around pretty difficult, especially through one of the sides. At the bottom of the climb on lap 2 there was a crash and caused tones of havoc. Megan went down hard. I got to the front group and stay up there and near the front for the next lap. At the bottom of the climb there was another huge crash. Loads of people, including Ruth Clemence (race leader), Morgan Kapp (Kahala), and myself, got taken out. It was so infuriating. I couldn’t catch back to the group and lost a ridiculous amount of time.

Crit:


After the very bad handling demonstration of day two, many of us were less than thrilled to do the crit: 6 corners on what in retrospect ended up being a really fun course. I started way to much at the back and was immediately behind someone who couldn’t clip in, thus f?$*%ing up my clip in. Around the second corner I realized the person in front of my way breaking so much that she was going 15km/h. This (mostly my brilliant decision to start at the back) totally screwed my race. I ended up getting pulled with 3 to go (will I ever finish a crit?$#($#(%&$#!!!). Maria, on the other hand, did very well staying in and staying out of trouble. I did, however, win a prime. I was with maybe 10 other girls for about 10 laps. None of them were pulling (I’m not exaggerating even a little here) but that was fine with me since I got some nice riding in. They announced a pity prime for our group. I’m coming to the line and some girl who’d been getting a free ride for ever start to come around me. My fury-meter spiked and I took the prize anyway. I was livid.

Enough race reporting. It’s no fun writing about when you don’t podium anyways. I was angry for most of the weekend. It sucked. Wait, let me think about that. The racing sucked because it was so sketchy. The 3s raced with us and, not to say that there skills are bad – since some of them have probably been racing longer than me, but the volume of people in the peloton (over 85) combined with the enormous range in ability caused a lot of problems. It wasn’t fun since you had to constantly watch out for dodginess. Ugh. I suppose there are lots of plusses though. We had some excellent host housing thanks to Jim and Joan. Philip from UCI gave me lots of help. Lana saved me from a cleat crisis. It was fun racing with Maria and Megan. I got to see lots of friends from Arizona. So all in all it wasn’t that bad.

In other news, Touchstone was amazing at the Tour of California Crit. Read the race report here.

Rest week this week, with some crit practice (hopefully). Then off to the central valley (joy) for Snelling.

A Bientôt!

Another weekend of travel, this time to go race Snelling with Pat, Carol, and Olivia, and Merced with Carol and Olivia.  Central valley aweseomness.  I spent the night in Visalia and drove up to Snelling Saturday morning.

Snelling:  Flat, 5 laps, BAD pavement, 63 miles.
What?  All I'm going to say is I looked awesome in my white knickers.

After Snelling we found a tasty vegan restaurant in Merced (who knew?).  Saturday night I was stressing because Sunday was a crit, with some weird corner through an alley, and it was going to rain.

Merced:  Flat (it's a crit, duh), 0.8 mile loop, raining and windy.
(Official report here)
Since I hate crits (although I'm learning to love them) and the last crit I did in the rain I ended up in the ER with Cellulitis I was apprehensive.  Carol and Olivia dealt admirably with my neurosis and told me to go to the front right away.  I did.  It worked!  They are so smart.  Olivia, Carol, and I took turns attacking and counter-attacking.  Carol suffered a mechanical mishap and got gapped.  Olivia launched a good attack that stuck with a SugarCRM rider.  I stayed at the front of the group and tried to keep the pace high enough to dissuade attacks but low enough to keep the break far away.  This also worked and Olivia won the race.  Fantastic!

Ridiculous drive home. 

It was a fun weekend and I learned much. 

Up next:  Vegas!  with tctmj!!