Wow - this was hard!
As you all probably know by now I race cat 4 and this is my first year. I've done several stage races to this point and I've been having a lot of fun. This race was in a whole different league. I still had a lot of fun, but it was certainly a different level of racing. It was a NRC (National Race Calendar) race and it attracted a lot of high caliber racers - even at my lowly level. There were several teams that came in from farily far away - Colorado, California and the like - there were quite a few Velo Bella gals there, both in the pro-3 and the 3-4 race - anyone here do it too? From what I understand there were few 4's even racing, our field was reportedly mostly 3's.
The pro men's and pro women's fields had a lot of top level teams and names that I recognized. Health Net, Webcore and Navigators were all there for the men - Colavita, McGuire and Symetrics among others were there with big pro womens teams. I really think our 1-3 women were amazing out there, competing with the pro gals, but on to my race.
We only did 3 of the 6 stages - a 38 mile circuit race, a 10.5 mile TT and a 27 mile road race. We did not have to do the crit, which has a brutal reputation. I heard that there were no less than 6 crashes in the women's pro-3 field this year.
day 1 - 38 miles, 3600 ft circuit race
The race started out with a long descent. I admit I chickened out a bit, as the race started off descending long and fast in the pouring rain - then as I am small and light it is quite difficult to descend as fast as some of the bigger gals once you fall off a bit, but I managed to chase back on. The race then turned right and after one more small straight descent started back up gradually. I stayed on through the gradual ascent, but I was pushing a heart rate that I wouldn't have thought I could maintain if you had told me before. Once the race turned on to the steeper 2.5 mile section I fell off of the back of the group - I can only hold onto a hr of over 190 for so long!! I was chasing a couple of gals ahead of me for a long long time. I was passed by one person on the second descent, but only managed to join her for a short time. The ascent for the second time was windy and lonely, but only one other rider passed me on the way. I finished 31st, tired, wet, but happy.
day 2 - 10.5 miles, 680 ft TT
This was an out and back TT - so it was pretty much all up out and all down back. We were actually started in reverse order from the stage before- just like the pro's! This of course meant you were chasing the people you'd beat the day before and being chased by the person who beat you. The only thing that was exciting about the way out was the ding-a-ling in the car who was coming at me head on over the crest of a hill because they were passing a rider coming back - I'm sure it was a solid double yellow at that point so they shouldn't have been passing at all. AAAAAH! I passed an official soon after that and just about lost it. I actually yelled at him, which I probably shouldn't have, but at least I kept in clean (one of my husbands team mates got a warning for swearing about a car that pulled in front of him an started doing about 15mph - there were a lot of car problems on this course) and he probably didn't understand a word I said.(which was Jesus Christ I almost got hit by someone passing in a car!!!). On the way down I was passed by my 30 sec person, but she couldn't get very far ahead, which was actually annoying, because we kept playing leap frog all of the way down. She was bigger and could get up a little more speed on the steeper spots, but as soon as it leveled a little bit I kept passing her. I wasn't able to take the lines through corners that I really wanted 1. to keep from accidentally drafting her and 2. because she was often coming up on the inside of me in the corners. I did never let her get more than 10 feet or so in front of me and we caught up to one other gal near to the finish. Neither of them sprinted for the finish, but I did. I was still only in 29th place, but I beat the next person down by only one second and the next one by 2, so I'm glad I did that sprint.
day 3 - 26 miles, 2600 feet Road Race
This stage started off with the same descent as the first day, again with wet roads and again I was dropped and had to chase back. I'll tell you this is not an ideal way to start off a race. I had someone to work with and we did get back on, but it was a lot of serious hard work with little recovery time once we were back on. Knowing how strong most of these gals were my goal was basically to make it back to the base of the climb with the group, which I think that I did. I did about 1/2 of the climb with another person, who did eventually drop me, but I kept her in sight for most of the time. She was staying with me until the same gal that passed me on the first stage came by (she must have been a really good TT'er, but worse as the descent than my self, since she TT'd back past a lot of other people both days). I think having someone to chase energized the gal I was was with a little, she went up the road out of my reach, but didn't manage to stay with the one that passed us. I ended up about 1 1/2 min behind her in 30th place and ended up in 30th overall as well.
