Quad Cities Criterium

After Weed Park, we headed east to Rock Island, one of the Quad Cities. Paula and I met Laurel and Ridge and just about everyone else that was connected to the race in the local pizza/pasta joint and we waited an hour to eat some food. Then Paula and I headed out to find the “Hillside Inn,” the only place we could find with space when we booked at a somewhat late date. We asked a friendly policeman for directions, and he kind of raised his eyebrows, like, “are you sure you want to go there?” We were definitely headed into a rougher part of town. We drove past a church that also served as a bar, a Shell station offering a 3 piece chicken dinner, and quite a few empty dilapidated bowling alleys. We got to the Hillside, and it was… interesting. A bit run-down, seedy yellow lighting, some toothless characters lurking ourside the office. We remained optimistic. We checked in and started to pull over to park in front of our room, when there was an awful grinding noise. “F%#$, f$&*, f@#%,” said Paula. I opened the door, and the toothless man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth was chortling, clearly amused, pointing out that our bikes (which were on roof racks), didn’t quite make it under the 7’6” clearance of the overhang next to the hotel office. We were pretty furious that he would rather watch and laugh instead of warning us, but also too scared to make any remarks to that effect. We hastily drove over to our room where we took our Javs (bikes) off the rack to check out the damage. Not bad! All we could find were a few scratches on our brake levers – fortunately, the rack had popped off the top of the car before anything broke. So we locked up everything we could and tucked ourselves into the room. After a somewhat restful night, we saw on the morning news that there had been a shooting the night before about 10 blocks away. One local was interviewed saying, “what can I do? It happens all the time, it’s like a war zone in the middle of Iraq around here.” Awesome. We packed up quick and got the hell outta there.

The Cat 4 race: We got there early and registered for the women’s 4 field. The course was ideal for me – totally flat, hourglass shape, with 8 corners. We lined up, about 20ish women. What was with that? It was a great race, huge payout, dry weather, and only 20 women? Up in Minnesota, we get 35 cat 4s on rainy cold days! Anyway, the ISCorp Super Junior was there, along with a couple teammates, some Kenda ladies, some unattached, Ridge, Paula, and probably a bunch of others. The officials started us off on our 20 minute plus two lap race. Things were going slow. I sat at the front for a bit, then some other ladies came around me but no one did much for the first lap. Just getting a feel for the course I guess. On the second lap, an unattached rider went to the front and started to stretch things out a bit, which was nice. I hung in second of third wheel for a lap and as I looked back I saw that the field was pretty strung out. Super Junior was not in sight, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to cover an attack at that moment, so I decided to go for it. Here I am deciding. (photos used with permission)


It worked well, because I actually committed to attacking and really hammered for a few seconds. When I looked back, there was quite a gap, so I clicked up a few gears and started to time trial. It was pretty much the perfect course for me, and I could take the best line and pedal through all the corners without really having to think about anything else. Derek, Laurel, and Will were all yelling out my time gap as I went by – 18 seconds, then 20, then 20+, then 30, and then I started to wonder when the field was going to start working to reel me in. I knew Paula was back there doing everything she could to keep the pace low, but a couple other teams had 3 or 4 girls, and I was pretty sure they were going to let me hang out in front for most of the race and then pull me in and spit me out the back. But then, I heard someone yelling that I was 40 seconds away from lapping the field. My ears perked up and then even the announcer started to speculate over whether I would lap the field. So did I. Here I am speculating.

Soon I had 2 to go, and I caught sight of the field in front of me. Only then was I finally confident that I had the win under my belt. Somewhere in the last 2 laps the pace car pulled around the field. I made up a couple more seconds in the last couple laps and finally crossed the start finish a couple seconds after the field. It was a pretty anti-climactic win, but I wasn't going to complain! And I got to watch the field sprint too -- Super junior took it for 2nd place, and Ridge and Paula grabbed places in the ton 10 as well. I was pretty psyched. After the finish, the announcer guy interviewed me briefly, which was a trip, and then he even suggested that I do the open race that afternoon. Sooooo... I did.

The Open Race: Paula and I made a quick trip back to the motel, where we showered, checked out, and had to refuse a man with a wicked nicotine craving who wanted to bum a cigarette. Back at the crit course, I started to get real nervous. There were some fast ladies there! But I did a bit of a warm-up and then lined up with almost 50 other ladies. There's really not too much to say about the race itself. As the only Bella in the field, and the only cat 4, I decided to sit in. Some gals were attacking a bit at the front, but no one managed to get away. The most exciting point was about halfway through the race when we were going around a corner, 3 girls in front of me decided they all wanted to take exactly the same line (or one of them just wanted to go straight?) and they went down. I tried to avoid them, but couldn't quite edge around, so I crashed into them, along with about half the field. It was pretty chaotic, and there were a lot of girls on the ground. I'm not sure if anyone was hurt badly, but I jumped up, along with most of the others, and headed to the pit to take a free lap. I checked the Jav, things looked good, so the official sent me in when the field came by, along with a few others. We did one lap, and then another huge wave of girls rejoined the field from the pit. After that, we kind of poked along for a while until we had about 5 to go. People started getting antsy and pushed the pace and the field strung out a bit. I sat in around 6th wheel for most of the final laps until the end when people started really gunning for the sprint. I'm definitely not a sprinter, but I did my best and managed a 15th. Not so bad. Actually I was pretty psyched. All in all, it was totally my kind of course, and a great day of racing. I'm signing off for now, but I'll also just say that Opus last night was awesome! Hopefully I'll post about it later. Annie and I decided we need to start trash talking again.