Superweek - Sheboygan!

Yesterday after work, Sarah, Paula and I loaded the javs onto Paula's car and headed to the races! I'll upload some sweet pics of our race car soon, so come back. We're down here at Superweek, racing the women's cat 3/4 races. Barb is here too. Today was our first one, in Sheboygan, Wisconsen.

It was definitely an interesting, challenging, and fantabulous race. Except the finish. I managed a whopping 28th. Not so hot, BUT the rest of the race was GREAT! I'm definitely chaffed that the final finish results don't really tell the rest of the story. So I will. Barb and I lined up at the front of the pack, which was probably about 35-40 women. There were two Bettys, two Gopher Wheelwomen, and four Bellas representing the Twin Cities, nice. The announcers were stretching their vocal cords and were sure to tell us that there would be quite a few primes with socks, money, and...wait for it...a smoothie machine. Whoa boy. They talked it up, held it up, rotated it... dang, you'd think it was the stanley cup or something. Finally the official blew the whistle and Barb and I almost took each other out on the line. But we got over it and Barb started out fast on the front of the field. No one else wanted to pull through, so on our first time through the start/finish, they rang the bell for a prime lap - just to get the field going a bit. SB of the Gopher Wheelwomen attacked, and luckily I saw it happening and jumped on her wheel just in time. We got a decent size gap and I pulled around SB to see if we could get a break. Apparently, though, I went into the next corner super-aggresively and gapped her off my wheel. So I actually managed to solo across the line for the prime, winning... the SMOOTHIE MACHINE!! Believe me, I was psyched. I kept working a bit and stayed pretty far off the front for a few more laps, but there was no way I could hold it alone. A couple girls bridged up to me and we worked together for a bit, but then one of them attacked and took off by herself. By this point I was like, "please please let me sit in the field and rest for a bit now." And the beauty of it was that the field was actually big enough to do just that.

So I sat in for a while, telling myself not to burn anymore matches for a while, but as soon as I caught my breathe I started mixing it up again. Barb was also in there throwing in attacks and chasing people, and I felt like we were working really well together. Paula and Sarah rode closer to the back of the race, but they both drifted up to say "hi" once, which was sweet. The whole race was so amazingly FUN - it was like a men's race almost. There were people attacking all the time, and chasing and bridging and the pace stayed high the whole time. They were also doing quite a few primes, which added to the excitement. At one of the prime laps, I attacked a split second after this other girl, which worked out really well, because then I ended up on her wheel and the two of us had a decent gap. Amazingly, I managed to come around her for the prime - she was probably saving something for the finish (which I didn't do). So, in addition to the smoothie machine, I notched a $20 and two pairs of socks. Towards the end of the race, in the last couple of laps, the pace was still pretty decent, but with one lap to go we slowed down to a crawl, as no one wanted to pull. I hate that! I was imagining a bunch of 30+ women careening around the final corner, everyone busting their seams to try to wind it up for the sprint, and I could just see a gigantic crash with bikes and bodies all over. I decided I really didn't want to be involved in that, and I really was pretty toast anyway, so I attacked with half a lap to go and strung out the field a bit. So, when we got to the final corners, it was a bit safer and I was totally blown. Thus the 28th. BUT! Bella Paula, (a cat 4 in a cat 3/4 race) got 13th! Nice! Unfortunately, it was one place out of the money. But there's always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. I can't wait. I love race vacationing.