Back to Racing

Last weekend was NHCC's Concord Crit and our team's Central New Hampshire Road Race. Brooke and her beautiful new baby, Claire, were there to help direct us. We kept the race hard, sending attack after attack, but nothing stuck much longer than a lap. I think I attacked 6 or 7 times in the 20-lap (20-mile) course, and launched a counter after one of my teammates was caught just before 2 laps to go. I wanted to keep everything strung out into the finish, to avoid the typical group cluster sprint. It worked, and Susanne did a nice job finishing 4th. I had a pretty good workout, and it is always fun to race with the team! Check out the red-white-and-blue NEBC train with Amy on front stringing out the field!

Sunday was HARD. The course was changed due to construction on a good part of the old loop. Now the course included a tough climb right from the start, the hardest climb of the course, then a short decent allowing hardly any recovery before beginning the long grind into the nasty QOM hill. The course was 4 laps of just over 10 miles a lap. There was no flat, it went either up or down, offering little time for rest. In a nutshell, I ended up riding 30 miles alone, often within sight of Mary from IBC, the woman in 1st place. The climber-extraordinaire was about 30 seconds ahead of me the whole race! I left my chase group in the dust, thinking I could catch her, then road a long, nasty, TT. At least the weather was beautiful and the course was good training. My teammates will no longer accept my "but I'm not a climber" excuse, even though I'm still not convinced. :) Tami threw down an awesome finish sprint to hold off the field for 4th! I wish I had a video of it!

I hit Wompi on Tuesday, but drove there. I was tired, and in retrospect, probably should have skipped it. I wanted to just sit in and focus on practicing the finish, but when a break went from the gun... how could I not jump on it? I sat up after 30 minutes over threshold with hardly any warm-up, burning from the blistering pace of the break. I decided to wait for the field and sit in for awhile, but the hard charging field was going even faster than the break at this point and my tired body quickly got gapped off and dropped from the strung out wheels. Not the most successful Wompi for me, but good training again, if it didn't wear me out.
All in the name of CYCLOCROSS!!!!