Oh man. what was i thinking? Vanderkitten dave calls me out of the blue 2 weeks before and asks if i want to ride at philly. umm, no way. i haven't been in a road race in years, and to go to the biggest one day race in the US and race? yeah funny joke. but after thinking about it, i figured it would be great training (haha) and it is a pretty big deal- i might not ever get the chance to do it again and just to race in it is awesome. so i said yes.
the team consisted of 5 other girls of whom i didn't really know (other than liz): melissa sandborn, flavia oliveira, liz hatch, leigh valletti and jen wilson. i think they were wondering why dave had picked me to be the 6th.. but they were all super nice and welcoming onto the team which was great- i know accepting a new teammate can be hard, especially since i had no experience racing with them- Mike hernadez was also there to keep things rolling with the team/media stuff- he was great and really supportive since i seemed a little out of my element all weekend- Vanderkitten dave and mark were also always there to make sure i was ok- it made the racing go a lot smoother-
ok on to the riding/racing- friday we prerode the course and i loved it- i thought the 'wall' was great, and excited to race it- but it turned out to be more of a sprint each time up it and not so much a 'climb' really... on saturday melissa, jen and i went for a spin around the host house and i felt good- rusty but good. so i was thinking everything would be ready for sunday. the race started at 9am so we were up at 5:30am eating. not hungry at 5:30am. eat anyway. uhh. thats the only part of racing that i don't like- stuffing food in because i have to- but i had bought a delicious crepe filled with egg and cheese the day before and it was mighty tasty...
we rode down to the course around 8am and i haven't had coffee yet- hopped on the trainer and started warming up- do you warm up for a road race? i dunno. so then i got off. hung out, drank coffee and put on my radio- which i had never wore before- don't laugh im a mtber- and it was soo cool! i wanted to talk in it the whole time but i figured the other girls would be pissed. just a few times :)
we rolled up to the start line behind the guys. wow what a crazy scene. sooo different from a mtb race. there were helicopters, news people, huge TV's with us on it, people everywhere! we basically shut down the middle of Philadelphia. this was way bigger than i expected- all i could think was, what the hell am i doing here? and then i laughed since there was no turning back- gotta do it. surprisingly the start wasn't as bad as i thought- even though we were supposed to protect melissa, my main goal was to keep moving up and tag my teammates- go where they go. and that was good. the thing that was hard was that i didn't know most of the girls, so who was protecting who, who were the girls that waste themselves for the team, who was trying to get off the front.. obviously i knew highroad had some major work to do, and aarons wanted to get off the front, and the only place to lay it down and split things up was on the hill. so that was wicked hard. but the thing that surprised me was how bad some of the girls descended- no cornering skillz at all! what the hell lines where they taking? not impressed. i almost got taken out once and skidded across the pavement, somehow i held it up- no idea how. my mad skillz i guess...
third lap, getting very very tired. came around for the hill, 3rd time, 1 more to go after this... umm, not shifting into the small ring- umm, going up in my big ring- not good-not good- going backwards- loosing the field- not good- chase, chase chase. nope. got dropped. i blew my legs out so bad going up that in the big ring- stupid shifter got stuck and couldn't do anything about it- i was really upset- i knew mike wanted us all to finish- and i did too. but the bike was an extra BH that they wanted me to race on and it wasn't adjusted properly- dang. but i am happy i stayed in and got to race with all those girls- yes i was very uncomfortable most of the time, but its a totally different race than what i do- its like in road you race other people's pace and the mtb you do a time trial basically- so that was the hardest part. going full blast, then cruising. full blast hard! then nothing. on off on off on on on off on-
sunday night was time to relax and have some drinks- we met up with a few of the other teams and it was really fun- the road scene isn't that bad i guess... in a roadie kind of way- ha! not sure if i will be doing any more road racing this season, but it is good to mix it up with some of my cross competitors on their turf-
