Golden State Criterium

Looking back, this was one of the most bizarre races ever. Technically (sort of) it was my first win as a cat 3. But I'm not going to count it. In the abscence of photos from the race, and in order to add something worthwhile to the post, I bring you this gem:

















Luckily, I've acquired a new helmet since that day. And now onto my "race" report.
There was a pretty slim showing at the Golden State Crit, probably thanks to the Salinas crit at the same time, and the fact that it was Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, mom! I came so close to bailing out myself - I almost turned my car around halfway to the race cause I was just so sleeeeeeeepy. But I didn't.

So when I got to the start line after a quick warm-up and a lot of caffeine, there were only 4 other women there for the P1/2/3 race. Wow. I haven't seen a field that small since the Marty road race in Minnesota last year. So we all looked at each other, blinked, looked at the official, blinked some more, and then concluded that an hour-long crit would be super-boring for everyone. So it was shortened to 40 minutes. Then, one of the women, Linda, suggested that we do a "handicap" race, just to spice it up, based on our categories. She was a 2, along with two of the others, and Rita and I were cat 3s.

No one raised any serious objections, so they sent Rita and I off ahead of the three cat 2s, who were then supposed to chase us. So.... blah blah boring blah. She and I worked together, which was fun - we got into quite a comfortable rotation. She rocked! With 4 to go, Rita told me I may as well just head off on my own, so I drilled it as hard as I could for the last few minutes, alone, and "won" the race. Rita snagged a second place. Turns out the 2s weren't able to work very well together, and never caught us. Very interesting race structure. But fun!