Saturday, May 7, 2011

Springbank crit in London


Well it was like any other morning before a race except I was nervous as hell like before the Georgia road race.  I was sitting waiting for my ride to come cause my race wasn’t until 1pm and my husband’s race was at 8:30am that morning and I just didn’t want to get up that early for a 1pm race.  I was lucky enough to have another racer in town that had room for me to travel with them to this race.  Of course just like last year it was raining on my husband's race and I was worried as hell, which wrecked havoc on my body oh my.  So at this point I had to stop looking at the radar that was just showing me rain and more rain and get ready to go and get ready to be picked up.  Thanks to Sarah and her family for picking me up and transporting me to this race.

We made a stop at the local cycling café Domestique before we were on our way to London.  Another coffee into the body was quite helpful for the road. 

We arrived in London almost an hour and half later to find my husband waiting for me and posed and ready to help me get ready for my race.  I went on to get my numbers for my race and when I came back the trainer and my drink was all set up for me to do my warm up.  I was able to get in a good 45mins of warm before this including a somewhat hardish blowout.  Felt ready for the race.

On the race start line feeling ready for my race and knowing my race plan well heck having a race plan at that point was good.  The elite women went off before us and we had 2 minutes to prepare for our race and one of the ladies I know had a flat right on the start line.  So with that it kind of distracted us all about when we were starting and then the whistle went off and oh man I was not ready but got ready in a hurry because I wanted to be first going into the first corner.  My thought was if I am first going into the first corner I can take the corner however I want.  It’s one of those corners that last year took me most of the race to figure out where I wanted to be and inside of the corner was the best place because it’s a hard left and off camber and sets you up for the second corner which has a lot of bumps in it.  The back straight away was very quick as usual and the little rise was fun as usual. 

The first lap I noticed I was doing a lot of work which I knew was bad on my part because I didn’t want to work for everybody else again as what I did last year but after the second lap I figured out that we created a break in the field me and 2 other girls.  A junior and a senior 3 and then after the third lap it was just the junior and me.  So we settled into and shared the work of the rest of the race.  I was always thinking are we going to get caught are we going to get caught cause you never know right?  After 2 laps of the race we, a junior and I, were out in front and on our way for a break away for 14 of the 16 laps of the race.   

In the bell lap my husband told me “You know what to do now” so I picked it up and let it rip out of the first corner and then along the back straight away.  With that little extra push at the end I was able to get about 15 seconds into my partner in crime for the break away of the race.

Even with the rain it was a great race.

Til next time

Shell  :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment