KickSomeAsphalt

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Nationals...Criterium

Today's race is brought to you by the letter B. B is for BORING!! Ugh. There's not much to say about today's race, though I'm sure I'll ramble on about it. 25 miles. 73 minutes. Not exactly race pace. I've been in some slow, defensive races in New England, but this one takes the cake. I'm not sure why I even bothered warming up for 45 minutes. The first time I attacked, it was an 80% effort just to get my heart rate up a bit. We did 25 laps of a 1 mile loop. The first couple of laps were done around a 2:45 pace. Not exactly fast... I tried to tell myself to be patient. I was for a bit, but after 5 laps, I had to something. No one had tried anything at all. So, I took off to get the HR up and hopefully get the pace to pick up. No such luck. The field caught me and then slowed up without a counter attack. I go a couple of more laps at the front with another woman who seems equally frustrated so we plan an attack together. I take off with an 825W acceleration, she follows and comes around when I start to slow. We had a little gap, but the field reeled us in and then, the only counter attack of the day went off. She was reeled in less than half a mile and the field shut down again. I was bored. I spent a lot of time at or on the front. I didn't tire myself out, though i did try to raise the pace a few times and accelerated to see what would happen. There were strong women in the field, but no one had teammates so everyone was looking for someone else to do something. It was awful. It became quite clear that it would come down to a field sprint with everyone still there. I was going to attack again with 2 laps to go, but ended up on the front and I figured that the field would just follow my wheel so I nixed that idea. I had hoped that by staying at the front when we went into the last lap I would be able to keep a decent position going around the last corner but it didn't play out that way. The last corner was frightening. Now, remember, we haven't taken this corner at any real speed yet. So, we hit the corner which is 200m to go and someone in the middle can't hold their line and they swing wide. I find myself off the road riding in gravel. Game over. At least I kept the rubber side down. I was pissed. I sprinted back up to the group so that I could at least get a same time finish. We may as well have just been given an hour to warm up and then lined up for a 200m street sprint. It would have been more exciting. After venting with the woman that I attacked with, I walked back up to look at results and much to my dismay, but not surprise, none of the top 5 ever even went to the front. They sat in the entire time waiting for the field sprint.

As women, we get really pissed when promoters are continually combining our fields or worse, eliminating our fields at regional races. It sucks, but if we race like we did today, then we have no ground to stand on. I think that we've had some good aggressive racing in New England this season, in some races anyway. I felt like maybe we were making some progress. One of the things that appealed to me about Nationals was racing against people I didn't know. A new field. Instead of the aggressive dog eat dog crit that I fantasized about, it was by far the slowest and most boring race of the season. Exeter was exciting in comparison. I got off the bike, loaded it into the car and I just wanted to drive home to Massachusetts. Instead, I sit here outside my hotel room going back and forth with being frustrated with the field and angry with myself. I was definitely one of the few (there were only 3 people who attacked) aggressors in the race, but I should have been more so. I couldn't have done any worse. Ah yes, the beauty of hindsight. I go into the road race with some fire in the ole belly. That can only be a good thing. :)

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