Redlands!
Warning, this post is WAY too long. It's cool though, since no one reads this blog anymore, and I know at least my mom will enjoy it. And, you can pace yourself, since chances are good I won't blog again for another year.
xoxo,
Karla
When Laurel asked if I wanted to do Redlands, my first thought was, "sure why not?" Then I talked to some people, and the overwhelmingly common sentiment was, "Wow, that's a hard, hilly race." So I thought again. But finally, common sense was suppressed fully, and I told Laurel that I'd be up for it.
She kept me up to date as she pulled together a flock of 7 other composite team riders from all over. Mary Ellen, my teammate in the Bay Area; Elis, another Oakland resident and pillar of the NCNCA; Denise, a Canadian junior sensation; Devon, a Chicago grad student and fellow Dartmouth grad; Kristin, an experienced midwest racer on her comeback kick; Madelline, a rad racer training in Georgia; me; and Laurel, cycling's amazing jumble of knowledge and experience all in one sensitive and considerate lady.
On Tuesday, Mary Ellen, Elis and I left our respective workplaces and met in Oakland to load up the Golden Rod. (My gold Toyota Echo). We packed eveything in, and were on the road by 7pm. Yes, which meant that I got straight down to driving for 7 hours, and we finally reached our host housing at 2am.
The next morning, unfortunately, I managed to break the coffee maker at the host house, and then we somehow found our way to registration in Redlands before seeing a coffee shop. At this point, it became clear that my tendency to drink coffee every day is not a habit but an addiction. There were some crabby moments there, until I finally got some coffee upon arrival to the second host house. We then pre-rode the time trial course without any major issues, other than noticing that the hill was freaking steep. In the evening we all started to gel as a team, settled into our two HUGE host houses, and made sure we were fed (people) and lubed (bikes) and in good working order (both).
Day 1 of the Redlands Cycling Classic was the individual time trial. We all met in the designated parking a couple hours before the start, and I was just a touch overwhelmed. It was similar to my very first bike race experience, as a 17-year-old. At that time of my life, the bike was strictly transportation - I showed up to the race in volleyball shorts and a cotton T-shirt on my fully-rigid, flat-pedal mountain bike. Everyone else had their spandex, jerseys, clipless pedals, full-suspension bikes, sports drinks, etc. So the feeling was one of, "Crap, I'm a bit out of my league. But I'm here, and there's no turning back now..." And, it was about 10 times better because I had the reassuring presence of our most awesome team.
We borrowed some trainers from Team Type 1, and promised them some treats the following day... before I knew it, it was time to report to the start and get in line. They weighed our bikes at the start to make sure the were UCI legal (not less than 15 lbs, I think?). Ha ha. The official grunted as he heaved my bike up onto the scale.
"So, uh, is it the heaviest one of the day?" I asked. "Well, uh, yeah, 8.6 kilos." he said. Which would be almost 19 lbs.
Awesome. Just what I wanted to hear before my uphill time trial. In the end, I didn't think about it, I just rode. And it hurt. But 13 minutes and 40 seconds later, it was over. I felt like I did my best, and in the end it put me in 67th out of 99, and that was just fine with me, considering the caliber of teams in the race (High Road, Webcor, Aarons, Cheerwine, Colavita, Tibco, etc).
Day 2 was the "Circuit Race" - 4 laps of a 17-mile circuit. It had some good flat sections, false flats, and then a solid climb, nice technical descent, climb again, technical descent, and then long straight slight descent. I really enjoyed the course. I sat in the pack comfortably for the first half of the circuit, until about halfway up the climb. With the KOM at the top, there were some attacks and the field started splitting apart. I grouped together with a good group on the descent, and we all caught back on to the main pack. Same exact thing happened on the second lap, and each time, there were more people being shed off the back of the pack that weren't able to catch back on. Going into the false flat section on the third lap, the stronger teams started to DRILL it at the front to reel in a break that had gotten away, creating some carnage in the pack - gaps opening up all over and me getting popped off the back. Ouch. So I started up the climb by myself, feeling just DONE, and probably looking it too. My glasses were covered in sweat, water, and dust, and I was weaving a bit as the caravan cars slowly passed me. Soon I noticed a neutral medical car passing, and I flagged them down. "This may sound really gross, so I'm sorry, but would you mind wiping off my glasses?" I asked them. And they did! So thank you to the lovely young man in the white polo shirt in the passenger seat of that medical car.
So I kept climbing, and pretty soon, grouped together with some other girls that were off the back of the main pack. We worked together for the remaining 1.5 laps, quite smoothly, really. Pros know how to ride at an even pace in a tight paceline and make it work! So that was good. Finished out the race about 14 minutes down on the leaders, which was well within the time cut (if you take longer than 115% of the leaders' time, you don't get to continue in the race), so we were all good to go the next day. Overall, I placed somewhere in the 50s, and 15 girls dropped out of the race that day. A couple gals on our team realized that it just wasn't their race, and dropped out before the end after helping out where they could to pull Mary Ellen back into the race after she flatted. She and Elis worked together for the whole race, but unfortunately they finished just outside the time cut, and the officials just weren't willing to bend the rules. Kristin finished with another group, inside the time cut, and so she lined up at the crit the next day, along with me, Devon, and Denise.
Day 3 was the downtown Redlands criterium. The course was phenomenal - a "figure eight" type course, with several tricky corners that were more than 90 degrees. Pretty technical, and almost flat, just a slight rise along the finishing straight. As I warmed up, my legs felt OK, but weren't exactly itching with energy. We lined up, and the officials told us that in order to make the time cut, we had to finish 40 of the 60 minutes before being lapped by the pack. So I kept that in mind. We started out fast, and I felt comfortable in the pack, sitting pretty far forward, but after about 15 minutes I started to fade a bit as the race got even faster. 20 minutes into the race, I wasn't at all sure I was going to make it. I was just thinking... "I'm halfway done, halfway to 40 minutes." At 30 minutes, I was still hanging in, moving forward in quite a few of the corners, slipping back in other places. Then I was thinking, "OK, 10 more minutes, I can do anything for 10 minutes, it doesn't hurt that bad." Then I started to feel a bit more comfortable. I'm not sure if the pace eased off, or if I just settled into the pain, but I made it to 40 minutes without a problem. Then it was, "alright, I'm not going to get time-cut, now just 20 more minutes, and I'll finish the race." So I kept hanging on, until finally, I heard 3 laps to go. Amazing. I can do three laps. The pace definitely ramped up again at that point, and I stayed on the pack until the last lap when there was a crash in the first corner. Such a bummer, but everyone was ultimately OK. I got gapped a little bit off the pack at that point, and didn't catch back on, rolling across the line about 20 seconds down.
All in all, I was really pleased to have hung on. Devon also hung on until the end, and Denise managed to stay in the race for 40 minutes, so the three of us were good to line up for day 4. The crit turned out to be another decisive stage though - only 66 people finished within the time cut.
Day 4 was the last day of Redlands, and as I started warming up, my legs most definitely did NOT feel good. Heart rate wasn't going up either. After driving the course the day before, I could tell it probably wasn't exactly my type of race. Very little flats, it was basically: "neutral" uphill rollout, then onto the circuit - a bit of good downhill, a long climb, a bit more downhill. Climb, descend, corner, climb, descend, corner, etc. For 9 laps. In order to "finish" the race and get a final GC placing, you had to finish 3 laps of the course before getting lapped. And being completely honest with myself, that was my only goal - to get a GC placing. The race started downtown and started climbing soon after. Our neutral rollout was actually a brisk 20 mph on an upward slope, at about 320 watts. Crazy. Some people were off the back before we hit the course. I stayed with the pack about halfway up the climb, but then joined the ranks of riders straggling off the back. Usually riders off the back tend to group together, but it didn't happen as easily in this race, because you don't get much of a draft going uphill, and the skill levels varied quite a bit on the descent.
At one point I caught up to one woman who will remain unnamed on the descent, and came around her. She got on my wheel, and then rode up on my left for a quick chat. Unfortunately, she didn't know the course very well and it wasn't entirely clearly marked, so she attempted to make a right turn where the course went straight. Yep, she was on my left still at that point, and turned into me and crashed me out before I even realized what was happening. I went down, picking up some nice road rash, and losing a couple pieces off my bike. I sat there for a while with a stream of bad words running out of my mouth, until I surmised that nothing was broken, and I may as well continue on. We both did so, and she was quite apologetic and sweet, so I couldn’t hold it against her. We separated on the next descent though, and I worked hard to catch a couple of the women that had passed me as I sat on the asphalt. The three of us worked together after that, until a moto-ref came up to us on lap 7 and said that we would be done after that lap. I was not at all sad to hear it. We pulled out at the firehouse, and were placed in the GC at that point. Success!
From that moment things went on a slightly downhill trajectory for me. I realized that my hip was throbbing, and it would be a good idea to get it bandaged and iced. So, I approached the friendly firemen, and they took care of me. However, the ice and cooling sweat kind of chilled me, and I knew that it was still about a 3-mile downhill ride back to the start/finish, and I didn’t want to do it without getting more clothes on (it IS California, but the day was chilly!). So I decided to wait for Laurel and the team car to come down from the feed zone with my clothes, not realizing that they would be redirected on a different route. I sat there for about half an hour, thinking to myself, “hmmm, I only ate one gel that entire race. Seems like I should be hungry now.” Totally ignoring the fact that I should have been eating and drinking right away.
The team car didn’t come, so finally I decided to just shiver my way down the hill in my sugar-depleted state. When I finally found the team down at the start/finish I started bawling like a baby and they wrapped me up in some warm clothes and put some food down my throat. Everything got better from then on. What a great team to race with! Each one of the eight of us brought something different to the team, and everyone's personalities gelled so well together. It was just an amazing privilege to have raced with those women.
Somehow we got the Golden Rod packed with me, Mary Ellen, Elis, our gear, and our bikes, and started the drive back to the Bay Area, since we all had to work on Monday morning. On our way down the Grapevine, Laurel called to report that I had finished 56th in the Road Race and 57th in the GC. Considering the caliber of the field, I am completely happy with that – it was truly an honor to race with all the pro women, and with the amazing ladies on my composite team. And that's it. If you made it this far in reading, congratulations!
xoxo,
Karla
When Laurel asked if I wanted to do Redlands, my first thought was, "sure why not?" Then I talked to some people, and the overwhelmingly common sentiment was, "Wow, that's a hard, hilly race." So I thought again. But finally, common sense was suppressed fully, and I told Laurel that I'd be up for it.
She kept me up to date as she pulled together a flock of 7 other composite team riders from all over. Mary Ellen, my teammate in the Bay Area; Elis, another Oakland resident and pillar of the NCNCA; Denise, a Canadian junior sensation; Devon, a Chicago grad student and fellow Dartmouth grad; Kristin, an experienced midwest racer on her comeback kick; Madelline, a rad racer training in Georgia; me; and Laurel, cycling's amazing jumble of knowledge and experience all in one sensitive and considerate lady.
On Tuesday, Mary Ellen, Elis and I left our respective workplaces and met in Oakland to load up the Golden Rod. (My gold Toyota Echo). We packed eveything in, and were on the road by 7pm. Yes, which meant that I got straight down to driving for 7 hours, and we finally reached our host housing at 2am.
The next morning, unfortunately, I managed to break the coffee maker at the host house, and then we somehow found our way to registration in Redlands before seeing a coffee shop. At this point, it became clear that my tendency to drink coffee every day is not a habit but an addiction. There were some crabby moments there, until I finally got some coffee upon arrival to the second host house. We then pre-rode the time trial course without any major issues, other than noticing that the hill was freaking steep. In the evening we all started to gel as a team, settled into our two HUGE host houses, and made sure we were fed (people) and lubed (bikes) and in good working order (both).
Day 1 of the Redlands Cycling Classic was the individual time trial. We all met in the designated parking a couple hours before the start, and I was just a touch overwhelmed. It was similar to my very first bike race experience, as a 17-year-old. At that time of my life, the bike was strictly transportation - I showed up to the race in volleyball shorts and a cotton T-shirt on my fully-rigid, flat-pedal mountain bike. Everyone else had their spandex, jerseys, clipless pedals, full-suspension bikes, sports drinks, etc. So the feeling was one of, "Crap, I'm a bit out of my league. But I'm here, and there's no turning back now..." And, it was about 10 times better because I had the reassuring presence of our most awesome team.
We borrowed some trainers from Team Type 1, and promised them some treats the following day... before I knew it, it was time to report to the start and get in line. They weighed our bikes at the start to make sure the were UCI legal (not less than 15 lbs, I think?). Ha ha. The official grunted as he heaved my bike up onto the scale.
"So, uh, is it the heaviest one of the day?" I asked. "Well, uh, yeah, 8.6 kilos." he said. Which would be almost 19 lbs.
Awesome. Just what I wanted to hear before my uphill time trial. In the end, I didn't think about it, I just rode. And it hurt. But 13 minutes and 40 seconds later, it was over. I felt like I did my best, and in the end it put me in 67th out of 99, and that was just fine with me, considering the caliber of teams in the race (High Road, Webcor, Aarons, Cheerwine, Colavita, Tibco, etc).
Day 2 was the "Circuit Race" - 4 laps of a 17-mile circuit. It had some good flat sections, false flats, and then a solid climb, nice technical descent, climb again, technical descent, and then long straight slight descent. I really enjoyed the course. I sat in the pack comfortably for the first half of the circuit, until about halfway up the climb. With the KOM at the top, there were some attacks and the field started splitting apart. I grouped together with a good group on the descent, and we all caught back on to the main pack. Same exact thing happened on the second lap, and each time, there were more people being shed off the back of the pack that weren't able to catch back on. Going into the false flat section on the third lap, the stronger teams started to DRILL it at the front to reel in a break that had gotten away, creating some carnage in the pack - gaps opening up all over and me getting popped off the back. Ouch. So I started up the climb by myself, feeling just DONE, and probably looking it too. My glasses were covered in sweat, water, and dust, and I was weaving a bit as the caravan cars slowly passed me. Soon I noticed a neutral medical car passing, and I flagged them down. "This may sound really gross, so I'm sorry, but would you mind wiping off my glasses?" I asked them. And they did! So thank you to the lovely young man in the white polo shirt in the passenger seat of that medical car.
So I kept climbing, and pretty soon, grouped together with some other girls that were off the back of the main pack. We worked together for the remaining 1.5 laps, quite smoothly, really. Pros know how to ride at an even pace in a tight paceline and make it work! So that was good. Finished out the race about 14 minutes down on the leaders, which was well within the time cut (if you take longer than 115% of the leaders' time, you don't get to continue in the race), so we were all good to go the next day. Overall, I placed somewhere in the 50s, and 15 girls dropped out of the race that day. A couple gals on our team realized that it just wasn't their race, and dropped out before the end after helping out where they could to pull Mary Ellen back into the race after she flatted. She and Elis worked together for the whole race, but unfortunately they finished just outside the time cut, and the officials just weren't willing to bend the rules. Kristin finished with another group, inside the time cut, and so she lined up at the crit the next day, along with me, Devon, and Denise.
Day 3 was the downtown Redlands criterium. The course was phenomenal - a "figure eight" type course, with several tricky corners that were more than 90 degrees. Pretty technical, and almost flat, just a slight rise along the finishing straight. As I warmed up, my legs felt OK, but weren't exactly itching with energy. We lined up, and the officials told us that in order to make the time cut, we had to finish 40 of the 60 minutes before being lapped by the pack. So I kept that in mind. We started out fast, and I felt comfortable in the pack, sitting pretty far forward, but after about 15 minutes I started to fade a bit as the race got even faster. 20 minutes into the race, I wasn't at all sure I was going to make it. I was just thinking... "I'm halfway done, halfway to 40 minutes." At 30 minutes, I was still hanging in, moving forward in quite a few of the corners, slipping back in other places. Then I was thinking, "OK, 10 more minutes, I can do anything for 10 minutes, it doesn't hurt that bad." Then I started to feel a bit more comfortable. I'm not sure if the pace eased off, or if I just settled into the pain, but I made it to 40 minutes without a problem. Then it was, "alright, I'm not going to get time-cut, now just 20 more minutes, and I'll finish the race." So I kept hanging on, until finally, I heard 3 laps to go. Amazing. I can do three laps. The pace definitely ramped up again at that point, and I stayed on the pack until the last lap when there was a crash in the first corner. Such a bummer, but everyone was ultimately OK. I got gapped a little bit off the pack at that point, and didn't catch back on, rolling across the line about 20 seconds down.
All in all, I was really pleased to have hung on. Devon also hung on until the end, and Denise managed to stay in the race for 40 minutes, so the three of us were good to line up for day 4. The crit turned out to be another decisive stage though - only 66 people finished within the time cut.
Day 4 was the last day of Redlands, and as I started warming up, my legs most definitely did NOT feel good. Heart rate wasn't going up either. After driving the course the day before, I could tell it probably wasn't exactly my type of race. Very little flats, it was basically: "neutral" uphill rollout, then onto the circuit - a bit of good downhill, a long climb, a bit more downhill. Climb, descend, corner, climb, descend, corner, etc. For 9 laps. In order to "finish" the race and get a final GC placing, you had to finish 3 laps of the course before getting lapped. And being completely honest with myself, that was my only goal - to get a GC placing. The race started downtown and started climbing soon after. Our neutral rollout was actually a brisk 20 mph on an upward slope, at about 320 watts. Crazy. Some people were off the back before we hit the course. I stayed with the pack about halfway up the climb, but then joined the ranks of riders straggling off the back. Usually riders off the back tend to group together, but it didn't happen as easily in this race, because you don't get much of a draft going uphill, and the skill levels varied quite a bit on the descent.
At one point I caught up to one woman who will remain unnamed on the descent, and came around her. She got on my wheel, and then rode up on my left for a quick chat. Unfortunately, she didn't know the course very well and it wasn't entirely clearly marked, so she attempted to make a right turn where the course went straight. Yep, she was on my left still at that point, and turned into me and crashed me out before I even realized what was happening. I went down, picking up some nice road rash, and losing a couple pieces off my bike. I sat there for a while with a stream of bad words running out of my mouth, until I surmised that nothing was broken, and I may as well continue on. We both did so, and she was quite apologetic and sweet, so I couldn’t hold it against her. We separated on the next descent though, and I worked hard to catch a couple of the women that had passed me as I sat on the asphalt. The three of us worked together after that, until a moto-ref came up to us on lap 7 and said that we would be done after that lap. I was not at all sad to hear it. We pulled out at the firehouse, and were placed in the GC at that point. Success!
From that moment things went on a slightly downhill trajectory for me. I realized that my hip was throbbing, and it would be a good idea to get it bandaged and iced. So, I approached the friendly firemen, and they took care of me. However, the ice and cooling sweat kind of chilled me, and I knew that it was still about a 3-mile downhill ride back to the start/finish, and I didn’t want to do it without getting more clothes on (it IS California, but the day was chilly!). So I decided to wait for Laurel and the team car to come down from the feed zone with my clothes, not realizing that they would be redirected on a different route. I sat there for about half an hour, thinking to myself, “hmmm, I only ate one gel that entire race. Seems like I should be hungry now.” Totally ignoring the fact that I should have been eating and drinking right away.
The team car didn’t come, so finally I decided to just shiver my way down the hill in my sugar-depleted state. When I finally found the team down at the start/finish I started bawling like a baby and they wrapped me up in some warm clothes and put some food down my throat. Everything got better from then on. What a great team to race with! Each one of the eight of us brought something different to the team, and everyone's personalities gelled so well together. It was just an amazing privilege to have raced with those women.
Somehow we got the Golden Rod packed with me, Mary Ellen, Elis, our gear, and our bikes, and started the drive back to the Bay Area, since we all had to work on Monday morning. On our way down the Grapevine, Laurel called to report that I had finished 56th in the Road Race and 57th in the GC. Considering the caliber of the field, I am completely happy with that – it was truly an honor to race with all the pro women, and with the amazing ladies on my composite team. And that's it. If you made it this far in reading, congratulations!
posted by karla at 12:56 AM
19 Comments:
we have been waiting for this update!
great work Karla!
Karla,
Pure athlete. Loved working with you.
Great post Karla!
Hope that road rash is healing up - good you found the firemen to get you patched.
Great report! I was watching your results. Reminds me of doing Superweek last year - intimidating but fun in the end!
I have pics of the 'rod all loaded up that would really complement this entry.
You're a total badass! And ME needs to get a blog...
congratulations, Karla. Redlands is a killer (as you now know). what an amazing race you had.
Lorri
excellent! yay!
rock on total bad ass! thanks for telling your tale.
Good races Karla. Lots of learning. Now ramp it up for the rest of the season with the Scary Sugar Cats.
Thanks everyone! Fingers crossed on being able to show up at the NVGP....
Did you ever give anything to Team Type 1 for using their trainers?
you're a stud, Karla! Congrats!
It's about damn time you posted a blog! ;-0
I admire your mental toughness, your physical strength, and your ability to take all things in stride. You rock, Karla!
first time visitor, yes, we did give team type 1 some compensation. They originally asked for $20 a minute, but settled for a plate of brownies. And we also gave a bunch to the Mavic neutral support guys that kept our bikes working all weekend.
welcome back even if it is for your annual update. I will cheer Dartmouth cheers for you at NV!
ITB,
Julia
Awesome - I was hoping you'd write it up.
Great work out there
My favorite part was the 320W neutral roll-out
what.ever.
Hey!! Are you going to be at Sea Otter? I'm heading there on Thursday. Maybe we will bump into each other. Take care!
i read it! go you! and post more! we miss you on the east coast. =)
mwah!
Awesome report, dude! Madera wasn't nearly as epic, but it sure as hell was a lot of fun!
Made me almost wish I was there with you all. A L M O S T. :o)
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