I'll start off by saying that in the preceding 2 weeks before this race, I had been on the bike for 2 hours. Why? My body was pissed. I'm not really sure what happened, but I wasn't feeling well at all. Coach said overtraining and stress. Probably. That week was academically (plus more) stressful. So, after experiencing much dissonance and externally justifying why I should go, I went, even though I knew it was stupid, hence the dissonance I felt. Two teammates and I left Sacramento on Friday evening.
Stanford Road Race, March 3rd
The road race didn't start until late morning because Stanford schedules the TTT first. Awesome. We got to sleep a little more! We all got ready and headed to Hollister, where the race was basically an out and back... because it was a climb. Eh, we all know how well I climb, so I knew I'd probably get dropped wherever the grade got steep. As we kept racing, I stayed with the group (17 girls). I actually stayed with the group for most of the race, until we reached the climb and I got dropped with a couple of other girls. We kept riding, got to the turn around, and the group was maybe 30 seconds ahead. Basically, I didn't climb as poorly as I thought. I saw a few of my teammates coming down as I was riding to the turn around point and everyone looked great! One of the Men's D was ahead of the field on a break, so it was great to see.
The way down, there were a few sketchy areas, but nothing too horrible. I was working with a Cal Poly girl who was all over the place. She's nearly caused several crashes and is constantly being told off in the field since the girls get pissed off. She then stopped working and just sucked on my wheel. I eventually got annoyed and said, "Hey, Cal Poly, if you're going to suck on some wheel, at least do some of the work."
I finished 8th out of 17 girls. Surprised me, because I suck on climby races and, oh right, I had only ridden 2 hours, on a trainer, the 2 weeks prior. Whatever. I'll take it. I didn't have a sprint at all, but I was able to finish in a decent spot.
We all got together and chatted. Brandon, our Men's D, won the race... by 20 minutes! The guys in the B, C, and D categories had strong finishes as well. We went to get lunch and came back for the men's A race. We waited, chatted, goofed off, pretended we cared about school work, sort of napped, chatted more, and then we went to the finish line to see the end. We saw the women's A finish, and then a solo rider a few minutes after them. We realized he was wearing a CSUS kit! Chuck, crossing the finish line all suave-like won the A's race by 40 seconds. The other 2 A's finished strong as well! It was great! 2 wins for CSUS!
We went to a different hotel in Morgan Hill, ate, chatted, and went to bed for the crit the next day.
Stanford Crit, March 4
We woke up way early to go to the crit, which was held at the Specialized business park. It was pretty awesome! Specialized opened for the event. The D's went first, then the WC, then the men's C, which was pure carnage. A 35 minute race turned into over an hour. Two guys got taken away in an ambulance, one of the crashes happened right in front of me. Psyched me out. After all of that drama was over, the Women's B started. We all made a point of not being douche bags and race intelligently.
The course was fun. It was flat and fast. I was stupid and stayed at the front too much. Oh well. We had a good race. Nothing out of the ordinary happened except a few attacks, but those were just fun and made the race interesting. I got 8th again. No sprint at all. If I at least had a sprint in me, I would have been able to get a better placing. No idea what's wrong with my legs, but it's just not there. Oh well. Hopefully things get better after this. Still not bad considering I wasn't on the bike very much.
We hung out for a bit, chatted, did whatever road racers do before a crit. One of our A's said, "The secret to winning is to have no one in front of you when you cross the finish line." Oh... noted! I'll keep that in mind next time my legs say, "gtfo."
We stayed for the rest of the races. Men's B was fun and we had 4 racers in the Men's A. Solid finishes for all of them and it was a lot of fun seeing them get organized. I'm pretty sure one of them got top 5.
After the A's race was over, 2 of my teammates and I left. A few teammates stayed to do a second USAC crit. The rest of us went home to sleep.
It was a fun race. I'm glad I went through with it. I was able to ride the Monday after the race and felt pretty good. Hopefully my body's mojo is back and I'll be able to train better for the Berkeley race next weekend!
This picture is compliments of one of my teammates, who came up with new lyrics to the song Low by Flo Rida. "Apple bottom bibs, boots with the fur, she had the whole bike race looking at her. Baggy sweatshirt with the Grammo in all black, on the first climb she threw down an attack. Next thing you know, 1k to go, shawty unleashed a sprint and got low low low." Thanks, Matt.
