Kristin Rides

I was really nervous, going into this race. I haven’t done much road racing, and I know I have a lot to learn. The last road race (and only one) I did was Silverton last year, where I had my ass handed to me within about 10 miles of the race. It was sad. Although I also hadn’t trained at all for it, so I kept telling myself my nervousness was silly. But anyway.

It was a gloriously sunny day, although cold in the morning. I had looked at the weather reports, and it said it would go from 42 degrees at 10am to 46 degrees by 11am, so no one wanted to overdress. Which means we were all shivering during our neutral roll out, anxiously awaiting to race to warm up a little. I was just praying no one would explode out of the start, because my legs were cold and would cramp immediately. Thankfully, I think everyone was in the same boat as me.

We started out pretty darn slow, with the occasional pick up, and I stayed back in the pack. The women who were up front I could tell were all new to racing (no team kits). They kept falling back and sprinting up, wasting a ton of energy. I just sat back and smiled at them, envisioning the final crush at the end of it. I was actually happy there was a strong head wind, because they were draining themselves all the better. At one point 2 riders attempted some sort of break away, but due to the headwind, they were never more then 50 feet ahead of us. But for some reason they stayed out there for a number of miles; I could see one of them continuously looking back and wavering around. I gave a strong pull to bridge the gap at some point, but mostly we just slowly reeled them back in without much fuss.

Once we were on our way back (ie out of the head wind), things really started to pick up. For the most part we stayed in a pack together, but as we crested a rise during the last ~5 miles, we started getting aggressive.  We all got packed in tight, and someone ended up going down; I got with a few other riders out in front as we started barreling downhill, and I was feeling great. Then I noticed my rear tire. It was feeling a bit soft. I kept pedaling, hoping I was imagining things. Then the rim hit, and my race was over.

Thankfully I brought a tube and a co2 cartridge, so I could get back without waiting around for the support vehicle (which I think was held up with the crash). It took me a while to get going, so I came in last, I’m pretty sure. Oh well. That pretty much completely sucked, as I was looking forward to see how far I could push myself. I do know that last hill to the finish line was tough, even going slow, so I need to ramp up my training big time. Lots of more tempo rides, lots more sprinting. I’ll post my week’s workouts soon.