Harvest Moon Crit

It was a great day for a bike race! It was pretty hot for the end of September but I'll take that over too cold!

My back has still been bothering me, although it seems to get a little better each day. But I decided to take some Tylenol and give the race a try anyway. They combined us with the 123 women and we were off for 45 minutes. I was worried about the longer time but as it turns out I actually started feeling better as the race went on.

Laura P. took off right from the start. The field managed to stay together for the first few laps but the 123's were just too fast for us 4s and the field split into 2. The 4s worked together and maintained our speed and when the 123s slowed we managed to catch them. It wasn't too long though before they were launching attacks and dropping us again. For the rest of the race we had our own little field. There were a few attempts to bridge but none lasted long. Eventually our entire group was lapped by the faster gals.

My cardio felt great and I was able to stay in my drops pretty comfortably. The only time my back really gave me trouble was when I tried to stand. Pushing down on the handlebars was pretty miserable- so I just sat! But overall I feel pretty good about my performance, even though my results don't show much. I took some good pulls and attempted to break up our group but was never able to stay out too long. On the final lap I should have been more aggressive about staying toward the front since the final sprint after the corner was so short. So between bad positioning and sprinting from my saddle I slid backward and only finished ahead of 2 people. Oh well. It was a good last race. I'm happy that I was in a group and able to give some hard efforts. And of course, crits are always fun!

James was out taking pictures so hopefully I'll have some to post soon.