A crit, a road race, and.... cyclocross?

Wow, I just went and looked in the mirror, and I look like...a lobster with goggles on. I got way too much sun this weekend for this midwest gal. Two races up in the Sacramento area on super sunny days will do that I guess.


Saturday was the Land Park Criterium. The women's 1/2/3 race started at the perfect time of 2:30pm, with probably over 40 racers. The course was, again, flat as a pancake (fine with me!), and it had one sweeeeeeet sharp left corner. I decided to race a bit more conservatively this weekend, since the fields were 1/2/3, instead of just 3 like last weekend. The first couple of laps felt a little squirrelly to me, but I think people were just settling in and getting used to the course. After that, it was a really fun race! I pretty much just sat tight near the front of the field for most of the race, trying to stay in a position where I could (theoretically!) make any splits that might have happened. In the last lap, Velo Bella started to wind things up and the pace got pretty high. Of course, things got a little dicey as people jockeyed for position and coming around the last corner, I got bumped pretty hard. I thought I was going to crash, but we both managed to keep the rubber side down. So then I jumped on a wheel coming into the final straight. It was the wrong wheel though, and when it started to slow, I just went ahead and launched the sprint. I was out in front for a little bit, but, alas, I had gone too early and couldn't hold it. A couple people came around me and I crossed the line in 4th. Again. Here's a nice shot of the finish.

I was actually really happy with the finish - this race was a lot faster than last weekend, so I was psyched to be up there. In retrospect I wish I had raced a bit more actively, put in some attacks, gone for some primes, but to be honest, it's still a bit intimidating to race in large 1/2/3 fields.

Today was the Bariani Road Race, 4 ten-mile laps. It was a nice course, fairly flat with one climb about 2 miles before the finish, and again a pretty big field of 1/2/3 ladies. It's been a long time since I've done a road race with that many people - not since collegiate nats in 2005. So again, I wasn't feeling uber-confident, so I decided to be conservative and just watch how things played out. It was crazy to me how hard it was to move up - our field totally filled out the road, and when you're in the middle of the pack, you're not going anywhere until someone else does. The climb was nice because it strung things out a little bit every lap, but no one ever managed to stay off the front. For the most part, I felt fine, and I made it up the hill in the top 10 on the last lap. My positioning was pretty good coming into the final stretch, but (surprise!) I went way too early. I was toast before I got to the line, and enough people surged around me to solidly knock me out of the top 10.

The most exciting part of the race, though, was my dilly-dally into cyclocross. At one point, I was riding on the far right side of the road, when it started to narrow, and then turned to deep, loose gravel just as the person to my left moved over towards me slightly. All forces combined were enough to send me careening through the gravel into the grassy field next to the road. So it was like 'cross again! I was SO lucky though, because a wonderful Velo Bella happened to be riding behind me, and yelled at me to jump back onto the road, she'd let me in. Saved my ass. Thanks! I think that was probably my max heartrate of the day.

Anyway, weekend's over, time to fall into bed and dream about next weekend!