Menlo Park Grand Prix

I wasn't originally going to do this race, but Asa bribed me into it so she could have some help in the crit. It didn't really take much. Before I knew it, I was out at the Menlo Park Grand Prix, checking out a bunch of lovely beautiful legs awesome bike racing and enjoying the day.

I'm too young to race any of the championship classes. Ten years too young. Sucks being a puppy, but hey, my parents had not met (and lived in different countries) nor were old enough to even think about having a child.

Asa raced the championship class at 1pm, which was cool to watch. It was an all-category race, so Asa was racing against some tough women, including the freakin' awesome Mary Maroon (have I mentioned she's pretty much my freakin' hero?), who won the race... and then won the P/1/2!

Photo taken by Team Mom, Cab!

After Asa's first race, we hung out for a while. Someone was driving by us and said hi (or probably some dirty comment), so we look up, and it was Cab and Tamara! Awesome surprise! Asa, Tamara, and I warmed up and Cab played team mom and helped us out a bunch. Thanks for being team mom, Cab!

The race was a W4 and a W4 35+ combined crit but we were picked separately. We lined up, had some chit chat (basically looked like a bunch of parakeets at the start line because, as women, we don't stop talking), and we went off.

It was a good race. The course is long for a crit (1.2 miles) and the backside was really windy. There was only one sort of technical chicane, which really wasn't that bad. Two long straightaways, long sprint at the end. We had a few hot laps with primes, which I got two (wine and a certificate to a cyclocross clinic). I'm a prime ho.

A Pacific Crush girl did an attack, to which I reacted to, when on my right I hear Breana Hill from UC Davis (whom I know through collegiate racing) say, "C'mon Kasea. I owe you one anyway" (story: I was gassed out at Conference in Reno so I gave her a leadout). I followed her, we caught Pacific Crush, I looked back and told Breana, "Shit go go go! We have a gap!!!" And we booked it. 3 laps to go, we had a gap. 2 laps to go. Gap. Holy shit, maybe we can pull it off, but Breana was gassed and I couldn't pull it off on my own, especially with how windy the back side was. We got caught at about 3/4 of a lap to go. Damn.

It was a risky move. I knew that if the move was to fail, we'd be gassed at the end and we wouldn't have the sprint. We surprised the field, that's for sure, but in the end we got caught, we took the risk of not having enough legs for the sprint. I rolled through the finish line in 7th place.

I can't say I'm super happy, but hey, this is only the second time I tried a ballsy move like this and the longest I've ever been able to stay on a breakaway. We were close to it, Breana and I have worked together in collegiate races before and we were able to organize ourselves enough to pull such a risky move. I'm actually really happy we were able to do that. You don't see many of those moves in the W4s.

After the race, there was a mixup. Asa got put in the wrong category; instead of being put in the 35+ W4s (which she would have won), she got put in the open W4s (in which she got third). She protested because it was a registration error, but the USAC officials decided to keep results as they were originally placed.



We'll see what the future brings. I'm not sure if being able to pull off moves like these are good or not. My next race is either Fast and Furious or Dunnigan Hills. We'll see what the results are in those.