The Race: Grandview Grand Prix/PA State Championship
The Course: 25 laps, 6 corners in a neighborhood
The Field: 1/2/3 women
The Finish: 3rd
I’m feeling a bit of burnout from all of the racing this season (please, for the love of god, no more race day PB&J), and on the way to Grandview, I found myself thinking of things I could be doing instead of driving to a race and feeling anxious. Things like fishing or lounging around the house or going to the beach or working at a mulch store…okay, so upon passing a mulch store, I realized I wasn’t willing to be doing anything else, but it was close.
So it was hard to get my head in a good place at Grandview, especially because I was just there to chase points for my cat 1 upgrade, which meant any result out of the points was going to be frustrating.
(This is like a contest to see how much negativity I can stuff into one race report. And I’m winning!)
For what I thought initially would be a local race with a small turnout, the field was pretty impressive – Team Kenda, Team Type 1, Kacey Manderfield (crit specialist and sprinter extraordinaire), a bunch of other cat 1/2 women, and the entire CAWES team. Add to that the oppressive heat and I knew it was going to be a tough race.
At the start, things in the field were sketchy and intense as women settled in and rolled through the first few corners. Then a pattern was established: CAWES would attack, Kacey/Jen/me/a few other riders would shut down the gap, CAWES would attack, and so on. A few other attacks kept the pace high and the primes led to a few mid-race sprints (my brilliant tactic: sprint just hard enough to not lose the wheel of the prime winner, thereby doing plenty of tiring work while never trying to actually win a prime…may need to rethink this strategy).
I started getting tired with around eight laps to go and realized I may have burned more matches than ideal by that point. It’s still a challenge to figure out when it’s safe to sit in the pack and trust that the front riders will shut down attacks – it feels like I need to be there in case something good gets away. That results in doing a lot of work and taking a lot of wind, but at least it makes for a good workout.
At the beginning of the last lap, things went chaotic in the pack while everyone tried to set up, but by the time we hit the first corner people seemed to have settled. I sat second or third wheel into the final corner and was debating about the best time to go, when Kacey and another rider jumped hard (not sure who went first). A gap opened immediately, but I started closing it down as we sprinted towards the line. There wasn’t enough time, though, and I finished a few feet back in third.
It was a good race – lively, lots of attacks, a nice course, a few more points earned – but there’s not much that can be done to save a racing experience when you just don’t want to be racing. After this weekend’s Presbyterian Crit in Charlotte, I’m taking a few weeks off to train, avoid PB&J sandwiches, and work on my applications for the mulch store.