Sea Otter Race Report
This will be brief since it’s almost a month overdue.
Touchstone has a full report.
I just did the circuit race this year.  It was WAY better than last year.  I had fun on the climb and the descent.  I made the split near the end, but worked a bit too hard before the final time up the climb and popped off.  I came in 16th.   Olivia got 8th.  Yay!

Tour of the Gila

Writing race reports while you’re racing at altitude is not that easy to do.  Here it is after the fact.

I took two days driving to Silver City.  I left Sunday afternoon, after picking up a very generously donated loaner disc.  I spent Sunday night is Tucson and had a great ride Monday morning.   I met up with super-teammate-guestrider Ruth C and we caravanned to NM, where I stayed in an amazing host-house with TCTMJ and Irish Nat Champ Olivia thanks to the Salmon family at High-Lonesome Books.

Our team of Kelly, Ruth, Olivia, Megan, Holly, and myself met up Tuesday morning to ride the TT course.  It was as hilly and windy as I remembered.  Fun fun.  Olivia, being Irish and liking green, told me the secret to racing well at altitude was to take chlorophyll.  I did.  It made my insides turn green.  Hmmmm.  Lots of eating and hydration and I was ready for Wednesday’s Mogollon road race.

Kristin Armstrong and Allison Powers were both present, but with no teammates.  Colavita, Webcor, ValueAct, Lip Smackers, DFT, Specialized, ColoBike Law were present with full teams.   And Touchstone of course, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out. 

Day 1:
So I have a tendency to spend a bit too much time of the front.  Bad for race legs, but great for photo-ops.




Since I’m not going to give away team secrets, I’ll just talk about myself.  I’m getting good at that, no?  I covered quite a few attacks.  It was fun, but my rear tubular slid off the tufo tape.  Remember when I switched from glue to tape?  I’ll never use tape again.  The guys at Gila Hike and Bike saved my sorry butt and did a quick re-glue…but I digress.  Kelly and Ruth went into the climb in great positions and did well dealing with the Armstrong firepower (Yes, lance was there, but I was much more concerned with Kristin A, who was making me hurt everyday.)  I made it up the climb at typical moose pace.

Digression:
Silver city is pretty cool.  They have a great coffee shop and a vegan/raw vegan restaurant.  How awesome is that?!  Not everything was peachy though.  Read on…
Day 1 is a point to point race with a “mountain top” finish.  You need to get a ride back to SC.  You can either ride down the climb and meet your car or drive down in your follow car and then hook up with your other riders.  Two Touchstoners opted to ride down with J in the follow car.  Since the men were finishing just after us, they had to wait.  Then they got boxed in my the Bob’s Bicycles Team.  BBT blocked the exit to the parking area.  Touchstone, and many other teams, asked them to please move.  First they said no, then they took 15 minutes to move.  When Touchstone could finally get around them, they yelled “Good luck tomorrow sluts!”  Hmmmm.  Does that sound like good sportspersonship?  Not really.  Poor Bobs.  Maybe their English isn’t that good and they meant to say “Sorry for blocking you, we had a really bad day and we’re pretty tired and cranky.  We hope you do well tomorrow!”  That’s what I’ll image they meant.

Day 2:
I was excited for Inner Loop since I had a great race there last year.  Not so this year.  BLAH!  I totally messed up and had a bit of mind-body dualism problems between myself and my legs.   Needless to say I came off the pace and was in a groupetto working too hard trying to not loose great big gobs of time.  Olivia, on the other hand, did AWESOME and came in 5th!

Day 3:
Do you know Kristin is the Olympic TT champ?  How fun is it going into a TT know that?  I also made a wager with Ruth, which she won but 10 seconds, so I’m now her slave.  TTing is something I’m slowly getting better at.  I’m about 5-6% faster on all my tts this year.  The same held true at Gila.  In retrospect my TT was my best placing:  31st.  Ruth came 10th!

Day 4:
Crits.  Sigh.  I don’t want to talk about it.  Olivia did awesome.  So did Ruth and Kelly.  I’m on a crit crusade now.  After Redlands I’d thought I figured it out.  Shit.  I got a very stern lecture from TCTC/MJ after.  Oh Boy.  That wasn’t fun.  That’s all.

Day 5:
I was a bit apprehensive since I thought I was going to have a good day on day 4 and obviously didn’t.  Last year I had a bad day on the final stage.  Sigh.  It started out fine and my job was to cover stuff in the second half of the race.  Olivia as doing tones of work, so after a break got away I tried to help.  I managed to bridge up to the group of 4 solo.  Yay.  But then tried to work too soon and fell off.  ARGH!!!  That was the biggest disappointment since that break stuck.  Blah.  The rest of the race was pretty uneventful.  I helped to keep Ruth and Kelly in a good spot going in to the climb and then pulled off on the first switchback.  The climb was fine.  Ruth and Kelly came top 20.

Overall I had some good days and bad days.  Although my result was much better at Redlands I think I learned much more at Gila.  Of course getting dropped sucks.  I’m sick of it.  TCTC/MJ is now on a crusade to punish me with lots of zone 5 work.  That’s making me so not cranky.  HA!   It was great getting to ride with Kelly, Olivia, Ruth, Megan, and Holly.  Many thanks to TCTC/MJ and Steve for their help.

Up next – many many crits. 
Sigh.

Brea Crit
Ok.  So since the Gila Debaucle I’ve decided to do as many crits as possible.  This always sounds so good when I say it on a Monday, but sounds less plausible on Friday.  TCTC/MJ held me to it so off I went to race in the W123 and M35+123 in Brea on Sunday.

Flat, 4 corners, clockwise.  Many 35 people stared.  I went to the front for the first two laps mostly to work my legs out on my own pace.  It was fun.  I don’t really know lots of the crit riders but Bannings, Helens, Kahala, Swamis, and others were there.  My goal was to attack then stay near the front and repeat or counter.  It worked well.  The group got progressibely smaller, I got away several times but nothing stuck.  I was totally in the wrong spot for the sprint and got 7th.  I was fine with that but TCTC/MJ told me “You don’t go to a local crit and be happy with 7th!! What the hell’s the matter with you??!?!?”  The punctuation is accurate. 

I took one lap and lined up with the men.  This was MUCH more fun.  And more like NRC crit-pain.  I never felt desperate or anxious in the W crit but in the M crit I did.  That’s what I need.  I lasted a while, but not to the ½ way point, chased for one lap, then called it a day.  I’m actually excited to do one of those again!  I got lectured after that race though too.  But it made more sense.

Next week is Kern County.  Women only, but you should go.  Do Kern instead of Ventura.  Yes, there’s WAY less $$$ but the courses are epic and Robert from Velopromo is completely awesome.

Super-Fantastique!

Here it is:  A video post!!

Up next:
Walker Basin Road Race AND the Havillah Hill Climb
Super-Fantastique!

Day Two.
Touchstone is doing great.  I'm having lots of fun, even with the insane heat.  ugh
Here's another awesome video.

 Tomorrow:  An INSANE road race.

Yay!
Olivia won, I came in third, Molly van Houweling from Metromint took second for the stage.
Overall Olivia came 1st, I came 2nd, and Molly came 3rd.  Kristina finished in the money, coming in 10th gc. 

Today was HOT.  My feet are still hurting.  Initial highlights were Pat absolutely killing it on the first lap and keeping the pace really high (unfortunately the heat got to her), Kristina attempting an epic solo bridge up to Jane Roberston (only to see both of them brought back) and (although some people will disagree with this) Marina aka "The Russian" launching a million attacks (although none really sticking -- at least it kept it interesting).

On the last lap, Oliva, Molly, and I got away.  My feet were killing me.  We had a good gap.  With about one mile to go Molly attacked, I popped off, but then they let up a bit (thanks Olivia) and I caught back on.  With one km to go I gave a *ahem* lead-out for Olivia.  She heard Molly shift and then jumped, taking the win.  It was a good day.

Although Touchstone didn't have any official support, we got lots of help this weekend.  Cat 3 (prob now Cat 2 after dominating Kern) Touchstoner Heather's parents gave us excellent feeds.  With ICE!  Metromint SOs Rob and Russ were super stars in the car.  And Russian coach Dimitri (sorry for the spelling) and another SO Elmer (again, with the spelling) helped solve a major mechanical 20 minutes before the race this morning. 

Robert put on another great race, only 8 people short of making a profit.  Everyone should go next year -- it's the best stage around (and definitely the hottest, and not just because I'm there ;) ).

Up next:  Socal State TT champs and some local crits.
Supèr-Fantastique!

Hola!
This is possibly the worst video blog ever.  Oh well.
I came in 5th.  Ruth Clemence won (because she's a super star).  Lana Atchley came third, after narrowly escaping a pack of dogs. 

Up next:  Long Beach Crit.  ;)

Are you kidding with the name of this thing?  I'd think Lotz-of-love (I'm not sure if I can use his nickname since I don't know him that well, but since he called me a skirt when he was giving me my payout I feel a bit entitled) could come up with something more creative.  The "Sea-Vu" crit, The Valley of 4 Corners, The Revenge of the Reflectors, whatever.

Needless to say the crit was in LB, in some industrial park, where the 405 meets the 710.  Breathe deeply!  Lots of teams were there Helen's, Kahala, SDBC, Banning's, Swamis, some others, and Anna Lang, formerly of Aaron's.  I had hoped only 10 people would show up so I could practice riding on the front and then getting dropped in the sprint, I think I really need to work on that, but alas there was a decently sized field and with TCTC/MJ present and lecturing I decided I've have to put my over-educated brain to work.  sigh.

My plan was to take the first lap at the front, since I hadn't seen the course, and then just watch what Anna would do.  She was in cahoots with Swamis, so it was pretty easy to figure out that none of the break attempts would stick.  It was active enough, but when you aren't chasing or attacking crits aren't all that exciting.  I say this now but remember Gila, and Redlands, and Valley of the Sun?  I wasn't attacking or chasing there (unless you count chasing when you get dropped) but those were "exciting" in a different way.  Ie:  Will I puke now?  Oho, I can't see any more, I hope the corner isn't here.  I'm really thirsty but too arfraid to take a hand off and drink.  I digress.  I did one attack early and then just followed wheels, mostly staying in the top 10 spots, but sometimes moving to the back (aka - the place you don't want to be because the people there seem to take the corners in a special way.  Don't get me wrong, my cornering is also "special" but I don't like to be around other special cornerers).

Lots of laps, blah blah blah.  Maria like totally escaped the Valley and came to race with me.  OMG! She was awesome, doing several attacks and covering lots of the moves.  I just sat there.  I think I drank a whole bottle.  With two laps to go I started to move up.  This involved some time in the wind.  yuck.  With 1/2 a lap to go I was behind Anna and Jennifer W from Swamis.  I took a "special" corner on the last corner, where's the uphill finish when you actually need one?  Ultimately I came in third.  On the podium!  In a crit!  Holy shit!  I won a sprint finish last weekend and came third in a field sprint this weekend.  Don't worry, it will all come to an end soon.  In two weeks I'm doing the Tour de PEI with the Canadian National Development Team (under the guise of Team Atlantic Canada).  The fifth stage is an 80 minute crit.  Are you serious?  That's why I've been putting in some crit practice.

After my very brief moment of tertiary glory, I had to hustle to the line to start the 30+123 race.  I'm not kidding.  They started two minutes after we finished.  I lasted longer this time.  Great.  It's amazing how much harder that race is.  Of course that race mimics the pain of NRC crits almost exactly.  I wish the men's race was first.  sigh.  I got off my bike, said bye to Maria, and handed my entire check over to TCTC/MJ.

This week is going to be painful.  Lots of hard workouts.  I predict some epic cranky temper tantrums. Then back to the middle of nowhere for the TTT with Lana!

Supèr-Fantastique!