Cut to the Chase: Spring Road Race Recap

If you're on Facebook you already know I went to DirtFest last weekend.  I promise to tell that story next post.  But I'm behind, so I have to start where I left off.

        Early-season spring road races:  Bloomfield Spring Classic, Binghamton Circuit Race Race, Hollenbeck's Spring Classic, and Bristol Mountain Road Race-most of the Corning women raced in most of these.
        Except for Binghamton Circuit Race, I spent a great deal of time getting dropped and chasing from behind at the mercy of whatever cat 1s and 2s were driving the race.  Last year I got dropped once every race.   This year I got dropped two or three or maybe even four times in each race this year, instead. Yes, definite improvement.  Here's some short recap for those people looking for race reports.

Bloomfield GVCC Spring Classic
        It was very cold, somewhere between 38 and 43 degrees. The weather forecast mid-week had assured us of moderate temperatures and dryness.  No such luck once the weekend rolled around.
 Ruthless Sherman, Daniela Floss and myself carpooled up together in Ruth's Prius, and we stared out the windows in dismay most of the way there.  We hoped it wouldn't actually rain, but it began promptly as we started the race.
        Full Moon Vista called most of the shots because Christine Schryver is so strong there's not much any of us can do about it.  We knew not to chase Yvette because Christine looked so obviously much stronger that we knew she had the best chance of winning, and the MVP Healthcare girls and the NiceTri ladies would jump on Yvette so Corning didn't need to.  But when Chris attacked we all had to try to go along.   I stayed out of the wind almost completely the first lap, and Ruth stayed in it most of the time, which probably had FMV guessing who was our designated rider (Dany? me?)  I acted like I was strong enough to hold onto everyone (might as well bluff when you can).  Until I got briefly dropped early on in the second lap. Then I got back on.  Ruth and Dany worked their buns off and we were all just mixing it up after FMV started things.  It was so cold.  And wet.  The rain continued and the wind got stronger and it didn't matter because the punchy surges on the climbs continued and I BURIED myself to hold on going over one of the bigger bumps in the road.    I knew I was in trouble then and would definitely get spanked.  On the next bigger sized hill I got dropped for the second time and couldn't get back on, just before we started the third lap.  I glimpsed Ruth looking over her shoulder back at me.  I knew what she was thinking ("Maybe I will drop back and get Vanessa.")  NO, RUTH, I thought to myself.  It's NOT worth it.  Ruth stayed with the pack but admitted later she thought about coming back for me. I told her she was better that way.  I wasn't strong enough for her to help me.
         I continued flogging the living daylights out of myself while riding the last lap of the race alone.  I knew that several other riders had been dropped before I was, and they COULD be working together behind me, and possibly catch me if I slacked off.  But I held onto 6th place and one upgrade point.  I felt pretty happy about that afterwards, especially considering how hard I'd ridden.
My older brother Jason, who lives in Rochester, did his first USAC road race ever.  And did pretty well, too, even though he raced with bare legs (insane).  I'm still surprised he didn't freeze his leg hair off.  In spite of being drenched and freezing, he had a great time.  Crazy.  I think he's slightly addicted already.  After crossing the finish line and getting my timing chip cut off, I rode downhill with the other girls and froze my hands badly.  Big Reynaud's attack.  I had to hold my swollen hands under warm running water until they calmed down.  I couldn't take off my soaked clothes to change until my fingers started functioning.  After the race, Ruth, Dany and I all went out for food with my brother Jason, his friend Bob, and my sister-in-law Kellie who probably thinks we are all insane to race in that kind of weather.  I have to agree with her.  I will never seriously believe a mid-week weather forecast again.

Binghamton Circuit Race
         Binghamton is an exception to the typical hilly road race out here, being a circuit race on a short loop that you ride over and over, with some stiff wind to make things really drag out if you're getting tired or get trapped on your own.
         My teammates decided to help me try to steal an upgrade point or two in this race, since it's one of the only races where I have a chance of hanging with them instead of getting dropped on a hill.  On this course the only hill isn't very big and definitely not a separator unless you're out of shape enough AND the pace is fast enough that eventually one more time over it when you're over your limit will pop you off the back to contend with the wind by yourself. 
         Speaking of my teammates, they WERE most of the race.  We had a group of maybe 11 open riders, with the masters women and some cat 4 women mixed in.  For the Corning team women, we had full strength in numbers.  Everybody came:  Margaret, me, Dany, LiLynn, Tami, Ruth, Sara.
We all rode together the first couple laps at a very moderate pace and got blown around a bit in the wind.  Sara took a flyer off the front on the back side of the loop and got smacked with the wind but the few non-Corning women in the group still had to go catch her.
After maybe three laps they rang the bell for a prime on the next lap.  Three of us sort of rolled a little bit faster down the hill and of course when I looked back there was a little gap and Corning unifoms all over the place but especially on the front of the group and everybody let us go.   I said to the other girls, "Hey, forget the prime, let's just keep going."  Dany and the girl from Rothrock (Evelyn Korbich) both agreed, and we just sort of kept on rolling and nobody did anything to stop us.  Especially not the other Corning girls.  Evelyn took the first prime uncontested, and then I did some on-the-spot teaching for Dany because she didn't know how to paceline.  But she's smart, it's not hard and we made it work.  The wind made life a long, long, repetitive slog, lap after lap.  Dany rode over the line first to take the second prime.  "What is a prime?"  she asked.  I told her it was a prize that she would get after the race. She liked this.
         The umpteenth time through the start/finish Bob yelled something to me about "--sss is coming, wait up?"  What?  I couldn't hear what he was saying in the wind.  How and why would I want to wait up? Eventually we caught up with some of the other girls from behind and said hi.  LiLynn and Tami and a couple of others were riding together.  Margaret must have taken off, I didn't see her just then.  Then Ruth caught up with us!  Apparently she and Sara took off a few laps after Dany, Evelyn and I rolled away, and then when Sara lost interest in chasing, Ruth kept going and after FIVE LAPS ALONE IN THE WIND caught up to us.  I wouldn't have lasted ONE LAP in that wind, alone. Forget about five.  Then without even catching her breath, Ruth jumped into the rotation. 
        So then Ruth and Dany and I all tried to gang up on Evelyn and I guess I should gotten to the finish line before she did, but you have to wait for the sprint or make a decision to do something else meaningful before it comes to a sprint and I haven't had many chances this year to work on endgame strategies because, let's face it, I'm usually just not around when it really counts in a road race, which is at the very end.  Granted not every race we do is a hilly road race.  We all get a chance eventually to turn things in our favor.  A chance, anyway.  So Evelyn got there first.  Kudos Evelyn!  She's only (I think) 16 years old but has been racing a while already from what I hear.  She has a nice kick.
I feel bad that Ruth and Dany did so much work to try and help (and LiLynn and Sara and Margaret and Tami all blew the race to pieces behind us as well!) but I still couldn't figure out how to get to the line first.  But hopefully we'll have more chances to keep working together.  It's not easy in the road races around here, because the hills are big, I'm no climber, and I can't hold on to Ruth or Dany on the hills.
         Dany was tickled with her prime prize-she picked a yellow alien head-shaped blinky light (the eyes light up).  I have a feeling she will collect many more (and larger) primes if she keeps racing.  Probably things more like wheelsets and loads of cash.  We'll see.
Jason and Bob came out to race again, after staying the night at our place to shorten the Sunday drive from Rochester.  Jason did two races, finishing 22nd in his first race and I believe 7th in his second race.  Now he's about a 3rd of the way toward his cat 4 upgrade.  I'm glad he finished safely and he felt pretty happy with his races too-he learned a lot about where to work, how to work smart and where to save energy.

Hollenbeck's Spring Classic Road Race
          Well, finally we had the perfect weather conditions for a race.  Sunny but not too hot, breezy but not too windy, and not a chance of rain forecast.  Hollenbeck's always gives us one of the best races around here.  It's ALWAYS well-run and organized thanks to a massive group effort from the FLCC.  Because of this it seems the fields grow every year, and the women's race only ever gets harder.  This year we had Full Moon Vista there again, plus a Canadian or two, Suzanne Lucash, Anna McLoon, and the girls in "Corning wear" Dany and Ruth, LiLynn, Margaret, Tami, me.
I got dropped.  On the first climb, which is kind of long. The front group slowed down, very much because Ruth and Dany sat on the front waiting for me and also because probably nobody else would work.  Plus they get annoyed when things get too slow!   I caught back on after dangling in the wind for a while, and sat in just long enough to catch my breath before...I got dropped again.  On the second climb.
          I beat myself up and got back on.  Eventually.  Thanks Ruth and Dany for waiting again...
On the third climb, a repeat of our opening climb, I got dropped again. 
I ALMOST got back on, but...no. This time I wasn't coming back, even though I had Canadian rider Julie Marceau with me.  What a great chase partner!   We worked well together.
I finished together with Julie.  She beat me to the line, even though I tried to really get her.  Maybe I could have gotten there first if I had been more convinced it was a possibility and acted on it sooner.  One day I might learn.  I missed having Margaret with me-last year we'd ridden in together.
Tami and LiLynn successfully finished their first races as Cat 3s and enjoyed getting to ride that extra lap and twice the distance (something they both wanted).  Congratulations, ladies!

And Then There Was Bristol
          I expected this race to be no different than Hollenbecks or Bloomfield.  I would kill myself to get back on after getting dropped on some climb, and then everybody else would hammer the hills, and then just sit around and pedal easy for a while until the next climb.  I would ride at my absolute limit on all the climbs, or over it until I couldn't anymore, and then chase chase chase, catch onto a group that would barely creep along at 14mph looking at each other, and sit in being bored until the next chance to tear myself to pieces on another climb, then chase like crazy again.
Well, that's how it happened.   Just add in some extra distance (51 miles total racing), hot sun, wind, only two bottle cages and no room in the jersey pockets for another bottle, plus Full Moon Vista, P-K Express, and MVP Healthcare all having multiple riders show up and it made for a very long, hot, punishing day.  I finished last, and a few other riders decided to call it a day before doing that last lap.           Sara was already changed and just hanging out when we got done.  I felt a bit envious.  Finishing in itself was sort of a dubious victory.  I had gotten to that stage of dehydration where you become a bit nauseated and slightly apathetic.  That final 50mph descent made me pretty lightheaded too.
         Ruth and Dany turned in strong rides-Dany 5th, Ruth 6th-despite their own dehydration and annoyance at the group's total refusal to even try to chase the two riders who broke away-predictably Full Moon Vista's Christine Schryver, and MVP Healthcare's Laura Meadley.  It's possible that if the group had immediately given chase and cooperated with each other in the heat and wind, maybe the race would have played out differently. Ruth and Dany's frustration with the non-reactive, sluggish group resulted in either Dany or Ruth always riding on the front of the group in the wind out of a) sheer boredom and b) desire to just move it along.  I wasn't around a whole lot because of all the chasing I had to do, but every time I caught back up I found the pack creeping along and sitting on Ruth and Dany.  And even if one of the the Corning women had taken off, they would have been chased down immediately and then sat on again.  Nobody else wanted to work.  During one stretch on the last lap after rejoining the group, I rode on the front for a little while and then tried to entertain myself by riding off the front for a bit but let's face it, I wasn't going anywhere.  Mentally I had a hard time chasing like mad and then sitting up completely, and my legs didn't appreciate all that sitting around when it was time to hurt again.  In some ways it would have been better to just go hard the whole time.  We'd have finished the race a lot faster, for one thing.
          Margaret and LiLynn also had a hot tough race in the women's Masters field (which had raced with the cat 4 women?).  LiLynn had been dealing with a problematic and painful nerve in her neck but opted to race anyway, so her race certainly involved a lot more pain than it should have.
I noticed just now, that looking at BikeReg's results page, no women's results are listed AT ALL. According to BikeReg, only men raced at all. You have to go the YellowJacket website to even see evidence of a women's race.
         That doesn't really matter, though.  Because LiLynn, Ruth and I had quite an adventure getting to the race, and then Dany, LiLynn, Ruth and I had some interesting encounters on the way back from the race (Dany had ridden with Sara and Nate, but caught a lift back in LiLynn's car since Sara and Nate had an engagement in Geneva after the race).
Before leaving for Bristol, LiLynn handed me the keys to Silver Bullet (her new used Volvo) and said "Cupcake, you're driving."  Last October I just finally passed my road test, after refusing for some time to get a driver's license because I didn't own a car, and then coming around and realizing that a driver's license could be a good thing to have.  Last year-the very weekend after obtaining my license-I drove Bob, his kids and myself to Ommegang Brewery for a CX race.  During this first road trip behind the wheel as a fully licensed driver I promptly ran over a raccoon and killed it.  Now LiLynn said because the raccoon crossed the road slowly in daylight it was probably diseased anyway and I had done it a favor.  Let's hope so.
          Then just prior to Battenkill I drove home from Glenn's after picking up my newly-tuned road bike, and on Route 13 headed up the hill to Newfield I killed a little wee bunny which I can only assume was suicidal since it ran VERY quickly across the road and threw itself under the car.
So on the day we headed to Bristol, Ruth picked me and took me to LiLynn's, where I warned LiLynn about my newly acquired habit of vehicular wildlife homicide, but her neck was really hurting her and she made me drive the three of us anyway.  So immediately after turning off LiLynn's road I see a large deer trying to conceal itself behind a tree on the right side of the road, poking out only its head and staring with its giant brown eyes. That gave me a start but it stayed put.   Ruth and LiLynn laughed.  Another hour or so down the road a large squirrel darted onto the road and proceeded to zigzag as only squirrels do, down the double yellow lines.  No other traffic in front of or behind me, I slowed down and blasted the horn while yelling.  Meanwhile LiLynn and Ruth screamed with laughter.  The squirrel decided not to die and removed itself to our left.  Not even half a mile down, a large deer sailed over a fence on our right and flew across the road about oh, maybe forty or fifty feet in front of the car.  We weren't in real danger of hitting it but we all screeched again and those two clowns in the car with me just laughed and laughed and I laughed too but I really felt convinced I'd kill something before the day ended.  A few birds almost swerved into the car but veered away at the last second.  So we made it to Bristol without killing anything except my nerves.
After the race, we loaded up the bikes and our tired bodies back into the Silver Bullet, cranked all the windows down because of the heat and cruised down the road with the wind blowing in our hair.
We stopped at a gas station in Ovid for cold drinks and snacks.  My stomach still couldn't handle solid food but I grabbed a drink and a prize snack for later.
        I stepped back outside to find my teammates on the sidewalk talking with two fairly inebriated young men in various stages of undress.  One had no shirt but shorts and flip-flips.  The other stood there in his bare feet wearing only a pair of boxer shorts-NOT the type you wear to the gym-I'm talking underwear-and accessories included neon-framed plastic sunglasses and a necktie.  I stared for a few seconds then said to Ruth, "Hey Ruthless, do you know these punks?"  Underwear Boy loved this and said "Right on sister, she's calling us out, man!" and high-fived me.  Ruth didn't know them.  The stretch Hummer parked at the gas pump had been ferrying them around on a celebratory post-grad school wine tour.  They became fascinated by our story of coming back from a bike race ("Whoa, it's hard to DRIVE 51 miles, man, forget bike it!") and just as we had loaded into the car one of them jumped into the front seat with Ruth (almost on Ruth), took photos of us to document our coolness, then jumped into the back seat with LiLynn and did more of the same.  Meanwhile the Hummer driver tried to herd them back into his vehicle.
           Dany said, "Do you know Vanessa, that when this man in his underwear came out of the car at first he was wearing nothing at all?! He put his underwear on in the parking lot!"  I felt some relief at not having to see yet another guy's junk in public. I had already seen one of the Bristol racers whip it out in the parking lot to relieve himself not even 50 feet from the port-a-johns (with almost no line at all).  You see enough bare bottoms and whatnot in this sport as it is.  Some guys have given me the impression they either didn't care who saw or maybe liked that a girl saw it.  Please put it away, boys. 
          So after our little parking-lot interlude we all headed back down the road to Ithaca.  Thankfully no animals large or small threw themselves at LiLynn's car on the way back.  We returned LiLynn and her car home, and then Ruth dropped me off at home.  After I showered, the house was quiet and cool (Bob was out running errands).  I put my bike away, feet up, and enjoyed my gas-station junk food treat (CHEETOS!) with a clean conscience.  And that ended the first part of road season. 
Thanks for reading.

Out of the Basement, Into the Dirt

It's spring, I think, and time to resurrect some narrative now here.  Either that, or bury the whole blog endeavor entirely.

Over the winter I thought about why I even had to make the decision to continue writing here.  Approximately eight of my non-cyclist friends and aquaintances said I should keep doing it.  Maybe they're the sum total of regular readers.  But they're worth it.  And it gives me a chance to think about something, and think about why I (and many other people) do some of the things we do.

What happened over the winter?  Well, in December, late November, sometime around there I burned out and got tired of my bike(s).   So I temporarily became a swimmer and also did some time in the gym and that wasn't too bad.  Everybody I ride bikes with also likes cross country skiing, but we had no snow this winter so all those great group outings we had last year never really materialized.

Once getting over my burnout, I rode plenty over the winter.  Someone already wrote somewhere that the only thing more boring than riding a bike on a trainer indoors is reading about someone riding a bike on a trainer indoors.  For those of you who don't ride bikes very much, a trainer is just a stationary thing you lock your bike's rear wheel into, and then it becomes a stationary bike.  And no, it's not terribly exciting on its own.  So let's move on from there. 

Last year when I started writing here, cyclocross season had just started.  Road season now has just kicked off.  Ironically my first ROAD race (and the first for a lot of my teammates) involved a lot of DIRT.  The epic-distance, ever-hyped Tour of the Battenkill unfortunately left a few of my teammates battered.  LiLynn and maybe 20 other riders became involved in a large crash in one of the women's Category 4 fields only 3 miles in due to an unexpected downhill attack shortly after the neutral start, followed by panicked overreaction in the field and failures to 'hold a line' (i.e. not ride in a straight line).

LiLynn *probably* should have stopped and had her chain-ring-gashed arm stitched closed and her other wounds cared for but she really wanted to keep going, having paid $100 to enter this race.  So she did, until being intercepted by our teammate Margaret Thompson and Taliet Gerretsen in the feed zone at mile 40-something.  They managed to convince her to call it a day.   

My other Cat 4 teammates Dany (Daniela Floss) and Tami (Tamara Lewis) safely finished their races-Dany in particular felt very perturbed by the deep sand on some of the freshly graded road sections.  She had ridden our team's Connecticut Hill training ride, so had only some limited experience on dirt there.  Normally that ride is more difficult, technical and dangerous than Battenkill.  Not so this year.  The starter told the Cat 3 women  before rolling out that course conditions on the dirt roads were ideal.  This was mostly true, since most of the dirt roads were hard-packed and clear, but certain parts of some roads were frankly ideal only for a cyclocross course.   Rather than telling everybody that course conditions were "ideal," I would have felt obligated to inform people that there were dangerous sand patches and say exactly where those were.  Since Bob had to work half a day on Friday, we didn't have the luxury of time to scout the entire course.   My mistake.

My race in the Cat 3 women's field started out well.  I ate and drank enough to avoid last year's cramping debacle and stayed out of trouble through the early climbs. Mostly this just meant staying in front of the people going backwards until the climbs eventually thinned out our numbers.  As in previous years, the opening few miles of this race remained kind of a white-knuckle situation for reasons I still don't understand.  Everybody fights for position to get through the covered bridge, which seems odd because what happens after the bridge?  Not much. You make two right hand turns and go slightly downhill on a dirt section (where you can move up all you like).  This year, I found a cozy spot mid-pack going through the bridge then moved along on that first dirt bit (which is downhill, by the way).   No need to get run down in the bridge.  In my experience the Cat 3 race has only ever been a race of attrition.  Everybody starts together. You ride a steady tempo and surge on all the climbs, and that shells a few people every climb.

As usual several people figured the yellow-line rule was purely hypothetical and got whistled at by the moto-ref.  He did a very good job enforcing this year, so kudos to him.  After the first couple of climbs we made it safely through the s-curving descent into the village of Shushan, despite our lane narrowing suddenly through the third curve due to an ambulance parked on the right shoulder there.  This prompted speculation later in the pack about the possibility of self-fulfilling prophecy-if you park an ambulance where it could cause a crash, at least there would be an ambulance if when people crashed, but maybe you shouldn't park the ambulance there in the first place.  Maybe someone had already crashed, but I didn't have time to see if that was the case.

Sometime after the halfway point of the race our group contained somewhere around 14-16 riders (down from 54).  So far, so good.  Until we encountered some freshly graded dirt road sections.  These had crowned surfaces like so many country roads, deep dirt all over them, and a single "lane" a few feet wide on the top and center of the roads where occasionally the dirt deepened and became sand pits studded with medium-size rocks here and there, with tire tracks running snaking and swerving through them.   On the last dirt section before the feed zone, we picked up speed and strung ourselves out single file.  I made my first and possibly only real mistake that day, which decided my race: NOT being in first or second wheel going through that section.  Frankly you couldn't see too much of anything in the clouds of dust.   I tried my best to stay light on the handlebars and "float" the front end of the bike despite the building fatigue.

A few shouts came out when the road dirt got deeper and the bikes started shimmying beneath us.  "Keep pedaling!  "GO!" "PEDAL!" And then the patches of deep stuff came and went.  The road  started downhill, we went faster and faster, the dirt got even deeper.  Stayed deep.  More shouting, and I don't know if someone braked or stopped pedaling or what.  But we still rode single file at that point because we only had a very narrow path to ride on.  So you rode at the mercy of the rider in front of you, for the most part.  My friend Gabrielle Fisher, riding behind the someone who braked, swerved right, swerved left, skidded, plowed her front wheel and flipped over sideways.  Behind her, the next rider swerved right.  Next in line, I veered left and down the crown of the road, then stomped hard into my right pedal and hip-steered to try and come back over to the center, just praying I'd stay up.   The rider right in front of me came back over, overcompensated, and down SHE went.  Trying to avoid her, I lost control and in despair I just unclipped a foot and plowed my way to a near stop, got back to center, and had no momentum, got stuck in a big gear, and had to stop and shift while watching the front group move up the hill in front of us., pulling away.  I wasted too much time panicking.  Once I got started again I took off in a desperation-fueled cloud of dust. 

Time to chase, and 14 miles left.  They weren't that far away, just far enough that I alone couldn't catch on.  I came up through the feed zone.  Margaret Thompson gave me a smooth bottle handoff and yelled something encouraging.  I saw Taliet Gerretsen there too.  Hi Taliet!  The last 14 miles of that race rolled by slow as molasses, predictably.  I rode hard as I could but it wasn't fast enough.   I joined up with fellow Cat 3 Karen Mackin and together we played time-trial.  We discussed sprinting, and eventually decided to "drag-race" and ride abreast to the finish line, no silly maneuvering or wheel-sucking, and I knew I'd have no legs to sprint.  I got up in the drops and acted like I would but didn't have the legs or the willpower to try.  Karen ended up 10th, and I came in 11th.  We came in safely, uninjured, and you can't complain about that.  I'd rather start the season out with an unbroken body and bike and an 11th-place finish than the various alternatives.   

Gabby Fisher broke her right hand and ruptured the ligaments in her left thumb, and is currently recovering from surgery.   LiLynn's chain-ring gash will heal into a permanent tattoo.

The Corning women have agreed to consider viable, safer, more affordable and possibly more fun team-building experiences next year, apart from Battenkill.  I agree that there are diminishing returns when you factor in the expense of this race, lodging, and possibly some additional medical expenses.  I will never believe again that "course conditions are ideal."  Not for this race, at least.

Next up are the usual early-season local races:  Bloomfield Spring Classic (GVCC), Binghamton Circuit Race, Hollenbeck's Spring Classic, Bristol Mountain Road Race.  Stay tuned.