Carlos getting Father's Day texts on the start line.
The four horsemen on the line and starting (always line up at the front!!)
Me on the line. Audrey Scott Race Report; 6/19/11 Housatonic Hills, Southbury CT, Women's Cat 1-4 47 starters, place: 12th
This is the fourth time I've done this race. Usually, I like it and am happy with the results. It's a tough course, with a lot of climbing, screaming downhills and relatively decent road conditions. Due to the difficulty of the course, by the time we've finished two laps and 50+ miles, there aren't too many racers left to battle for the finish line. This year, however, the women's race ended in a bunch sprint of 18. It says a lot for the state of women's racing - the women out there this year are the fastest, strongest and best competitors I've seen in my four years of racing, and it's good to see. But it's left me feeling like pack fill.
The pre-reg list contained a lot of strong names, so I knew the race would be tough going into it. Andrea Myers of Bethel Cycle, who obviously knew the course and set out to win, set a strong pace right from the start, and I knew it would be a tough day in the saddle. Right with us were perennial competitors Silke Wunderwald of Kenda, who can climb like crazy and is the best descender in the northeast, Clara Kelly of NEBC who just loves to be on the front and go fast, Jenny Ives of Farm Team who won everything last week and obviously has some good form going on, Alejandra Madrinan of Cyclecraft who sprinted past me to win last year, three women from Wheelworks, two of whom I have been racing with since 2008 in the 3/4 at Fitchburg and I know would be racing hard, and a few others. The first time through the steep step climbs, and then the KOM climb though, the group was down to about 8 or 10 or so already. On the back side, however, those who shall remain nameless did little to help and we never got any effective pace line going, and as we came through the feed zone and up the big climb past the school called Constitution Hill, many women had caught back on and we were a big group again. I grabbed a fresh bottle from Rob in the feed zone and steeled myself for round two. Although we lost a few again through those same climbs, again, some caught back on as we neared the last few downhill miles. Should have hit it harder through those climbs to see who we could really get rid of, but judging by the failure to stay away the first time, why expend the energy? This is the conundrum of bike racing.
I was at the back, using the draft from the big group on the downhill and contemplating a late attack to see if I could get a gap coming into the finish when I realized I had timed it all wrong. The race, billed as 54 miles, is not. And my bike computer, which may be a little off, told me I still had almost 4 miles to go when suddenly, the right side of the road opened up and the school and finish line came into view. Crap. I had no way or time to get up to the front as the sharp right turn and uphill finish came up. I was in the wrong position, wrong gear, wrong everything. Never a good sprinter, I got going the best I could, had to swerve around this girl from MIT who chose to just about stop pedaling when she saw she wasn't going to win it (this same girl had yelled at me on a downhill mistakenly thinking I was going to come over into her, and then proceeded to cut me off about 10 times during the race, grrr) and finished 12th. Jenny held off Alejandra for another great win. Afterwards, I was not happy about all that work only to screw it up in the end. But that's racing. Take it and learn from it.
Along with me in the women's race, Carlos Fonseca raced the 40+ Cat 4 men's race, and we had four guys in the Cat 5: Mike Tanzi, Tony Tanzi, Nick Siska and Alex Semkow.
Carlos's race was huge, with 97 starters, and he finished 75th.
In the Cat 5, they had 42 starters, and Nick won the KOM jersey and finished 7th with the front break, Tony and Mike were 12th and 13th and Alex was 25th. Before the race, I tried as best I could to relay some important things to know about and pay attention to on the course to the guys, and on Saturday, Justin passed on some insight on racing strategy as well.
Yesterday, Justin got an e-mail from a guy from Team Cycle Fitness, passing on a congrats to our guys on the Cat 5 race, saying they did a great job staying near the front the whole race, that they were climbing well and will have great years of riding in front of them, that they controlled the race well and he was impressed with their race strategy. While Justin and I would like to think we deserve some credit, in the end these guys went out there and made a race of it all on their own. It's really good to see.
Team Bikeway.com is definitely making an impression everywhere we go! Congrats everyone, keep it up.
-A
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