Race Report: Fort Cherry Classic, June 3, 2012

Before I begin my race report, I'd like to take a minute and tell you all about this women's bike racing skills clinic coming up on Saturday at the Bud Harris oval, sponsored by Velo Femme and Steel City Endurance.  If any ladies are inspired to learn the first thing about bike racing, this is your opportunity.  I believe the spandex dude count will be pretty low at this thing, and all you need is any bike, a helmet and some enthusiasm.

http://steelcityendurance.com/events/2012-womens-cycling-clinic/

Po Boy: race finisher.

The Fort Classic is only a 45 minute drive away, making this race local compared to the other ABRA road races, so that was exciting in itself.  Further, the route is an 8 mile relatively flat loop that repeats four times for cat 4 women (32 mile race) on pretty well paved roads.  In more detail, the loop starts out with the closest thing to a climb in the entire race, followed by the closest thing to a fast descent, and is then pretty flat and straight with the exception of a sharp right turn onto a small grade uphill, which turns into roughly a 2-3 mile straightaway ending at the finish line.

My goal going into this race was to hang, meaning I wanted to stay with the pack the entire time and experience the opportunity to watch what happens at the finish line.  Velo Femme teammate Kate Wagner was up for it too, so we drank coffee, pinned each other and did donuts around the Fort Cherry high school parking lot together before the race. It is so great having a teammate at these things.

Before the race, Greg Flood gave us coaching tips with proved to be invaluable to me throughout the race.  He told me two things: first, to stay with Greta as she is a strong rider, and secondly, that I was "too strong to hang".  The second tip helped me mentally: just like in Morgantown I kept hearing Suzanne telling me I was strong and powerful, I kept thinking "yeah, I'm strong", which pulled me through when stuff got hard.

End of loop 1

Due to a shortage of volunteers, we were racing with the cat 4/5 men.  We took off with the men too in Greene County, and from my skimpy but accumulating racing experience, I am beginning to work out a theory that when we start with the men, the race starts out faster.   Keeping tip #1 in my mind, I followed Greta.  As stated above, the race started out on the closest thing to a climb, and we got dropped from the dude pack (containing our very nice race winner from the University of Minnesota), so within the first 4 miles a girl paceline started up consisting of me, Greta, the Dynamic Physical therapy girls, a couple girls in red and yellow and this tiny fierce girl.  It took most of the first loop for us to work out a rhythm, and then, on the second loop, near the top of the hill, I crashed.

Yup, you read that right.  I crashed.  It was pretty textbook: I was behind one of the Dynamic girls going up the hill and we were keeping a steady pace.  She slowed down, I saw it, and quickly thought, "Move your wheel to the side!".  So I moved my wheel to the side, but my inexperienced ass forgot right from left and moved my wheel to the wrong side, right into her wheel.  They tell you: when you are behind someone, and this happens, it's you who crashes not the person in front, so don't be an ass.  Well, I was an ass and I went down.  The pack went [insert race car doppler effect sound effect here], and I got up and back on my bike.  Immediately, Tip #1 came to my head, and I started pedaling with all my might.  Slowly, rational thought started to work its way into my head: "If I don't catch up, I'm going to miss an entire race worth of racing experience.  I don't need to come out in front, but I do need to try to stay with the pack to experience the racing dynamics." Well, it took almost the entire loop, but I did it.  My computer was telling me I was holding 20-23 mph for most of this time.  At some point right when the girls got back into my line of vision, I saw it drop to 19 mph and heard tip #2, "I'm too strong to just hang!".  This was then processed into spin! spin! spin! and it was back up to 21 mph.  The low grade uphill at that right turn really helped me, I took that corner into the hill significantly faster than the pack and when they all slowed down on the hill, I was back on Greta's wheel panting like I pushed myself really hard, which I don't usually do.  (And need to learn how to do!  I had not gotten tired in a bike race yet this summer until this point.)  Once the Dynamic girls figured out I was back, they tried to speed up the pace line which was a great strategy except I was mentally in on the riding tired thing, and I was riding strong.

I actually recovered very quickly from this; by the time it was my rotation in the front of the line again, I was feeling fine.  I think I annoyed people on the hill starting loop 3, and I have no idea what I was doing.  I took the hill faster than the pack, so was at the top first, and so led the descent and did all this on the right without getting over to let someone else lead.  I think that's what they were yelling at me about near the bottom of the hill.  I really must have pissed some of these girls off.  I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm the ass who crashes on someone's wheel, and they just couldn't get rid of me.

When we got into loop 4, I set myself up to watch everyone like a hawk.  Again, I took the hill the fastest, slowed down at the top, looked back and wondered, "Is this the strategy?  We take the hill easy together to have more energy later?  Did I just blow it by going up the hill that fast?".  I slowed down to almost a stop waiting for the pack, so when they caught up I was in the front again.  After a little bit I flapped my arms and went over because my turn to lead on this rotation was over.  And... everyone just followed me over.  No one wanted to lead.  I flapped my arms some more, slowed down some more, but no one took initiative.  I finally sat straight up on my bike, took out my water bottle, and started drinking water and barely peddling. This strategy worked great; and finally a line pulled next to me on the right.

The pace line settled in comfortably on the straightaway, and as we were approaching that sharp right, I started thinking, "Okay, if I have tons of energy and I peddled a whole loop alone, these girls are waiting for something.  This right turn is the PERFECT place to make an attack; it's really easy to turn really fast into that hill, but hard if you're following the line near the back, and once you slow down on the uphill, it's really really hard to accelerate".  The more I thought about it, the more perfect sense it made.  So I was near the back at this point, and kind of cut to the side going into the turn so I could get the acceleration, and went into the turn really really fast to the left of the paceline.  No one attacked, and I was looking goofy next to Greta (who was leading then) having zipped up that turn past the entire pack.  I just went, "Oh, I was so sure someone was going to attack right there."  She sort of panted out, "You should have.", and after the race was over I really realized how right she was.  I just got back over into the paceline, but I knew there was only a couple miles left and I did not want to be at the back when everyone started sprinting.

Here we are, coming into the final sprint

It didn't happen until we got to the 200k sign.  I was pointing out some cool looking bird flying in the sky before anyone started sprinting.  As soon as we got to the sign, a few girls took off, and I was so busy thinking, "Finally!" that it didn't occur to me to take off too.  I only had it in my head that I didn't want to be the last in the pack, which I wasn't.  I was fourth out of six in the pack.

I met up with Kate in the parking lot, and we drank some beers in the sunshine, cheered on the podium people, and I want to say we talked about math, but that's a lie.

So I clearly have A LOT to work on. Last Thursday at skills at the oval, we worked on acceleration.  I started quantifying which gears I started at and how fast I'd end up, so I was playing with that a lot.  The lesson I learned is that I can go faster at a lower gear.  After the race, that was the first thing Greg Flood said to me (he was following in the vehicle, so he got front row of our race) was that I needed to work on shifting.  He also said I needed to keep a straight line.  So now I have some things to work on - except I think I need a skills lesson in shifting.  My current shifting knowledge is developed from over 3 years of bicycle commuting and playing around with the high cadence/low gear and low cadence/high gear relationships.  But that's why I'm in Velo Femme: to learn.  Overall, I feel awesome about that race, and I can't wait to work on lessons learned going into my next race.

Post race/pre shower beer and banana.  The grease marks
on my legs were the closest things to injury from
my crash.