I loved the first lap. It was hard, it was fast, there were numerous attacks, and it was FUN. Look at me and Borda having fun! :)
I have to say that I loved the results. I had a great sprint, which is a pleasant surprise....
Look at me... sprinting and stuff! :)
And, we nabbed the podium with a 3rd place finish in the state.
But...I was 4th overall in the 1/2/3 race, which leads me to the hate part.
I got a bit snarky during this race. I apologize for that... somewhat. I'm going to get a bit snarky in this post, too. Not sure that I apologize too much for that, but whatevs.
Thankfully, frustrated snark mid-race for me comes off as extreme sarcasm. Unfortunately, frustrated snark mid-race for me comes off as extremely loud sarcasm.
But, it was hard to be anything other than snarky when you're told by another rider in the race to "Let her go, she's from PA" and "Can't we just wait for the sprint?" Ummm.... I'm sorry, but I thought we were racing bikes, here?!?!
Turns out, we were "racing" for 2nd place. It's not how I would want to win a state championship, but I guess for some, that's just a-ok.
I know that each person has his or her own way of racing. Some like to sprint. Some don't. Some enjoy being in the break. Some don't.
But, if you're happy to let and then watch someone ride away from the field for the win and spend the rest of the day group riding at 16-17 mph until you complete a 300 meter sprint, our philosophical ideologies about racing are clearly incapable of ever seeing agreement. This behavior is precisely the reason that folks go on Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, and every other social media outlet possible to talk about how boring women's racing is.
The last two laps of the race were, quite frankly, embarrassing. There's absolutely no excuse for cruising so slowly that I can sing songs (which I did), chat with another rider about her upcoming nuptials (which I also did), and ask a third rider about another race coming up that her team hosts (yep, did that, too). I also continued, for the majority of the race, to launch attacks. As did my teammate and a few other girls. Eventually on the final lap, I simply gave up and figured... "OK, time for me to take all this pent up frustration and throw it into a sprint."
Thankfully, I have the most amazing and selfless teammate alive, and as we are heading to 500 meters to go, Borda comes up along the line on the left. Victoria, Kelley, and I jump on her wheel and she drops us off PERFECTLY for the final sprint. She was amazing. I finished just behind Victoria.
We ALL finished 5 MINUTES behind Kim Zubris, who pulled away from the field at the start of lap 2.
Congrats to Kim on a gutsy race well won.
And, thanks to the lovely ladies in the peloton who made parts of this race hard, launched attacks, picked up the pace, or otherwise left some guts out there on the road to see that our speed and wattage for the day was higher than that of our weekly evening ride!
No comments:
Post a Comment