Race: Wente Criterium
Results: Devon - 1st Court - 4th
The nice part about racing - a new race means a fresh start. Everyone is always an equal on the start line, and there's always opportunity to dig deep and make some magic happen. I was done feeling a little bad about the previous day, after revisiting the pity party on the way to the race with Devon (who totally pulled me out of my slump), and things really turned a corner when we started to talk about winning primes - oh yeah!
Crits are kind of my favorite. They are only an hour long, and usually really exciting with lots of fast paced action, opportunities to win prizes like bottles of Ahava lotion, yummy Riesling wine, t-shirts, and earnings made out of chain-links! Who wouldn't want a pair of those!
Our plan - to win primes and get one of us in a break. We roll up to the race with sunglasses on, stone cold faces oozing intimidation, blasting "I could not ask for more" by Edwin McCain - fail! We ARE a bunch of dorks! We couldn't help but bust up laughing when we parked the car...good times.
We had plenty of time before the race - two hours to meander, register, pin, pump, and warm up. Course was pretty straight forward with some sweeping turns, bot dots, wind, and vacant parking lots. Not really sure why this race has such a bad reputation it has with crashes etc. It was nestled in a nice little business park in Livermore - don't ask me exactly where, I just drive the car like a robot while Devon navigates..it's good teamwork.
The group was on the smaller side, but very strong. Many of the Norcal greats were there including Mary Maroon, Mary-Ellen Ash, and of course....Bike Station Aptos! =)
Out the gate, Mary Maroon launched an attack - whoa that was a wake up call! Howdy lactic acid in the legs! We chased it down pretty quickly, and i'm pretty sure the entire group took a deep breath all at the same time - sigh. It was pretty windy, and the back side of the course lent itself well to drafting. The long finishing straight however was down wind, which made for exciting Prime attacks and of course, and exciting finish.
Round and around we went. On the second prime, I heard a voice from right behind me say "GO", I kind of thought it was God - so I quickly got my act together, pulled out, and sprinted like a bat outta hell! I flew through the start finish only to see the bell man yelling Prime lap. Wait!?, I thought to myself - did I just sprint for nothing!? Oh, man - i'm a real dork... I had a pretty nice gap on the group and knew it was all or nothing. Either I let them pull me back in, or attack again and keep the throttle steady. I was going for it. I had to win at least one Prime! So, i did - and managed to stay away. That was totally awesome, and probably the highlight of my race - other than my teammate taking the big WIN.
After that, Devon and Mary Maroon attacked. I had a job to do and was sticking to the plan - we had Devon in the break!
I just chilled out, and prepared myself for the final sprint. On the bell lap, I tried to figure out where to position myself, and out of the last corner gave it all I could. With about 200 meters to go something happened. All of the sudden I had no resistance - my chain fell off to the outside of my bike and I uncontrollably fell forward - chest to handlebars. Not sure how I didn't crash out. Totally taken off guard by what happened - I tried to remember how to pick up my chain. I shifted to the little ring, began pedaling and sure enough the chain flipped over. In a matter of seconds I had picked my chain up, spun quickly to finish the sprint out and surged to the line for fourth place by a hair. Holy crap! I survived the Wente crit!
After a cool down lap on the course, I caught up with Devon and the crew to get details on how it went down - sure enough Gorry came through with the win for the team. I knew she had it in her all along, and knew it was going to be a great battle between her and Mary Maroon - an amazing Nor Cal racer and great competitor.
We finished the afternoon on the podium with all our cool prizes that included wine from Wente Vinyards, a massage that Devon insisted we split - 10 min each, a lotion and soap package from AHAVA (it smells really good), and gift cards to the Wente Vinyards restaurant - which turns out are only good Mon-Thurs, one at a time - like that will ever happen!
We ended the day with an amazing dinner with fellow racers Mary-Ellen and Holly at a great all you can eat salad joint - Sweet Tomatoes - we ate and ate and ate, as evidenced by our pictures...
Great way to end an awesome weekend of racing our bikes. Can't wait to do it again come Saturday.
Thanks for reading.
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