Racing at the oval progress report: Tonight I got humbled

Tonight at the track, my teammates Jackie and Cynthia raced in their first race!!  Way to go ladies!!!!

Jackie raced her first race tonight!!  

And for me, tonight at the track, I was humbled.  I've been getting better every week, but still have little strategy.  A few weeks ago, I started to think I knew what was going on, and then two weeks ago realized I was at level 2 I have no idea what is going on.  Last week seemed magical, as in, I knew what was going on enough to hang.  Steph told me to focus on holding someone's wheel the whole race, which was a great learning strategy.  I hung!
However, it seemed I was pulling people up the little hill all the time and then at the very end I was so tired I couldn't sprint.  After the race, Michael told me that I don't have to do that, and that I needed to work on drafting up the hill.

Rewind a second for some back story:  last night, at the pool, Tony was telling me about he, Kamden, Laura and some other people were going camping in Buffalo the weekend after the 4th of July, competing in a Saturday triathlon and coming back Sunday or Monday.  Camping for the weekend, competition and beer?!  All my trash talking competing in tris went out the window as I thought of having pleasantly sore legs relaxing in a beach chair next to my tent with some awesome people throwing back cold beers and eating a crap load of food.  Wait - triathlons can be fun! Well, the first thing I knew, at 7 o'clock this morning I'm out jogging.  I haven't gone running since September when I was in Bonne and combating jet lag.  So, I figured an easy 2.3 miles would be a great kick off for triathlon in 2 weeks crash training.

Well, tonight while I was racing at the track, my legs were so weak.  I was miserable!   When it started, I kept thinking, "Oh, this must be a godsend.  Since I'm so tired, I'm not going to do stuff like sprint up the hill every single lap, and work on strategy to get pulled and get lots of rest".  And honestly, it really was.  I need to remember next time to ride the wave more, because I really felt the difference up the hill.  Be patient, feather your breaks when that person in front slows, and you'll actually get rest going up.

For all my grumbling, I did win some chafe cream in a
prime tonight.  

But I just kept getting more miserable and weak.  With something like 7-10 laps left, I got dropped by a breakaway pack.  I was so tired.  Suzanne was screaming for me at the top, and I was so weak and miserable and staring at this big gap in front of me.   I started thinking, "Maybe I do need a coach!  A coach would have told me, 'Don't run the morning of a bike race when you haven't been running in 9 months!'".  I really hate those learning your lesson the hard way moments.

My godsend was that the breakaway started slowing down.  And I was still riding strong enough to catch that.  It took a few miserable laps, but I caught up and rested happy on someone's wheel.  This saved my race here.  By the time we had two laps left, I was mostly recovered at the back of the lead pack, where I rode chilling up until halfway through the last lap.  Then these boys in front of me started trying to use some strategy, and I hopped on their wheels, getting a free ride behind whatever they were doing, which pulled me up from being at the very back of the pack.  Then, at the final hill, from somewhere I remembered that I had just coughed up $35 to join the Allegheny Cycling Association , and I better ride hard if I want some of them points!  I put everything I had in, pressing really hard on the handlebars so my wheel was wobbling (that's bad!  Thanks Carl!), and sprinted.  I have no idea how it turned out, but I passed a couple people in that sprint, and I was exhausted, so that's good.  Really, that's what I think the key to sprinting is: putting your all in for a short period of time so you are really tired.  If you're not tired, you didn't sprint.  (I do recognize there is the element of efficient technique in this formula too, and I will listen to any and all advice on the subject.)

My race finishers of teammates were absolutely dazzling and totally badass, and I was really glad Coach Suzanne was there to talk to at the end of the race.  Suzanne told me: next week, work on staying in the top 5 the whole race.  My inner coach told me: don't go running in the morning on race day.