Race Report: Greene County April 21, 2012

Greene County is the second race in the Abra road racing series.  The course is shorter (36 miles) than Morgantown with less elevation (2500 feet of climbing).  Velo Femme teammates Mary and Kim signed up to do this one with me, so I came with a team.  Holla!

Everything was all hunky dory until Saturday.   Come Saturday, the temperatures were in the 40's, the wind was blowing hard, and it was raining.  YES!!!  The three of us carpooled, which was pretty awesome, and we got there nice and early before there was any line at the Port-o-let.

Barb had sent a positive email the day prior telling us to remember: "No whining, no quitting, and have fun!".  This would be the mantra of the day, particularly the "no whining" part.  When I started riding down the street to warm up in the cold rain, all I wanted to do was whine.  When immediately after the race started and my shoes flooded, all I wanted to do was whine.

"No whining, no quitting, and have fun!"

At this race, they had the Cat 4 women racing with the Cat 5 dudes.  We lined up, shivering, and the race started.  Immediately I started noticing the fountains of muddy spray coming off of everyone's bikes.  But Mary's bike had the best spray; a beautiful plume.  Of mud that would later be a face wash whenever I pace lined behind her.  We turned onto a main road, which went up a hill, and Kim and Mary fell back.  I held back with them, hoping to catch their wheels and pull them back to the pack.  Well, I caught their wheels, but as soon as I started catching up, I had lost them.  Mary later explained that at this point, they had no idea what was going on.  Well, I can relate to that!  At this point, I made a team decision.  I stayed back, got their wheels and we started riding.   A minute later this huge semi, a lowboy actually, of whose driver had not received a memo about the 4 foot passing law drove by us.  Pretty darn scary!  Fortunately we pretty quickly hairpin-turned off this road, and got ready for the first climb.  When we were waiting for the race to start, I had made a joke about how we could start singing to make ourselves feel better.  Well, this joke turned into reality as during the first climb, in the rain, I started singing Avril Lavigne Complicated while I climbed and I felt so much better.

And here is something I am curious about in bike racing: climb speed control.  In swimming, to be able to control your speed is a sign of strength; it's really not that hard to swim a stroke at one speed, but to be able to control your splits to the second, even going slow, easy or hard, well that means you are strong at that stroke.   One of my inside my head jokes about one reason why I know my breast stroke is so awful is that it's "one speed".  I believe that I am a pretty strong climber, but it is really hard for me to slow down climbing to pace with slower climbers - I'd rather wait at the top.  And writing this now just answered my question: since it's harder to slow down, controlling your speed on the climb IS a sign of strength.  Do people work on climbs at different tempos?

So I can't control my climbing speed and just slowed down and waited near the top, still singing Avril.  When Kim and Mary caught up, we were both warmed up riding and warm from the climb.  This began the fun part of the ride.  We shortened the time interval of the pace line rotation, the rain let up a little and we enjoyed how green everything was, we went into West Virginia where the roads were paved nicely (oh Pen-Dot), and had group gel time.  I was singing "Singin' in the Rain", Kim started singing about her squishy shoes: this was totally the honeymoon period of the race.  The last handful of miles on this route consisted of two big climbs, and we eventually got to the first.  At this point in the race, when I got to the race marshal at the top looking miserable standing out there in the cold rain, I just unclipped and started bullshitting.   This helped my attitude: I maintain I'd rather be riding than standing in that weather.  We all rendezvoused at the top and went on, ready for this race to be over.  We got our grand descent, and we're riding happy, when suddenly the last and steepest hill is in front of us.  Mary is leading at this point and just goes "WHAT is that!".  We start climbing, and this hill is so steep that at some point I gear up just to make sure something isn't wrong with my bike, I couldn't believe the resistance.  I made it to the top and once again, unclipped to wait, and started bullshitting with the race marshal who also looked kind of glad to have someone to talk to.  What a miserable day.

We went down that last hill very cautiously - glory was purely in finishing this race.  When we got to the flat I had lost them again, but as we were only a couple miles from the end I just started riding.  The end of that race was beautiful.  I waved at the cameras, put my jacket back on before getting cold again, and waited a couple of minutes for those beautiful Velo Femmers to finish.  When Kim and Mary became little visible dots, I just started screaming.  Then they started screaming  WOO WOO WOO!! I like to believe that this might have been the loudest finish in road race history.  We got the glory, we finished, and we finished strong.  GO US.