Greetings!
In the spirit of Chicken Ranch race reports...I offer this peek at the action from our day at the races. A few of us girls ventured south forthe L.A. circuit race.
There were actually 7 SB area women in the women's3/4 race today--a great showing by the locals!I was feeling quite organized--I even left the house on time (ok, 1minute later than planned) this morning.
However, due to a little time loss picking up Marian (new cat 3 in the area) I was late getting to Olivia's. I knew I was in trouble when Olivia called me on our way there, and there was no salutation to be had, only a terse "where are you." Oops...we weren't THAT late! Anyway, we did finally leave the SB area, after our much needed Starbucks stop.
In Starbucks, I asked Olivia if she was nervous, and got "no....(small pause here), well, only about not getting there in time!" Oops again.
On a good note, we managed to fit 3 people, 3 bikes, 3 trainers, 3 duffel bags o' random stuff all in one small VW Golf! We were probably the only ones who actually followed the directions on the race flyer which said "please prevent global warming and consider carpooling to the race in cars of 3 or more!"Anyway, we did get there, and got out of the car only to be nearly blown over by the wind! Hmmm. It was going to be a chilly day at the races.
Turned out that the riding direction was exactly perpendicular to the wind...pure crosswind the WHOLE course. As I was getting readyW3/4 ,Olivia was following me around like the paparazzi--I felt so famous. Ok..so I could have done without the photo journalism when it comes to changing clothes and applying chamois butter!
On to the race....the race was about as interesting as one could expect from a flat road with a U-turn at each end! There were about 30 womenin the 3/4 race. Susan Farber was also racing for Chicken Ranch, and I had "stealth teammates" Olivia and Marian. As Olivia said...(based on her inability to fit into the new kits), "she is just too big for the chicken ranch britches," but can still be a "stealth chicken rancher." (note--Olivia is a lot smaller than I am...so I'm not sure that this is quite accurate)
And stealth teammate she was! She attacked on lap 2because "the race was too slow" and I got to see who was strong when they chased her down. I was happy to block for her, even if she was wearing the frog colors of Echelon :).
The race really came down to the final sprint. Marian attacked on the final corner, which was too early, but managed to string it out a tad. I had a pretty good wheel going into the sprint, managed to time it better than I have all season,but I still have some work to do.
The wheel I picked didn't quite get me where I needed to be so I had to do some dancing and managed to get 3rd, still accelerating at the line. The rest of the Ranchers...Susan Farber 8th (stealth racer) Olivia Walling 14th (stealth racer) Marian Hunting 18th.
We stuck around just long enough to hear the race results and pick up the cycle computer that I managed to win, and then it was back home,with a nice stop in Malibu for lunch. Good times...next up, San Dimas! Have fun, and enjoy the photos...
How'd everyone else do this weekend?
Kimberly
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2 comments:
The wind was a bit different later in the day. By the time the 3s and 4s went at 3:00, it was a pure tailwind on the start/finish side and of course a pure headwind on the other side. I'm not good at determining things like wind speed, but I was told it was about 20-30mph.
Of course that meant that nobody wanted to work into the wind and the pack (full field of 100 riders) was bunched up about 10 across.
I was not aggressive enough to get good position on the final lap, got around the final corner maybe mid-field and did the best I could to accelerate up on the left side. The front was moving way to fast but I was able to gain a lot of ground on the middle. Finished off the results sheet (>23), probably around 30 somewhere. The 53x11 helped me get a lot of speed at the finish, and even though I never "sprinted" my computer showed over 40mph. Unfortunately when I uploaded the data it said 39.8. Oh well.
Stellar report Kimberly! I liked all the beyond-race vignettes.
While it is all about the racing.... Great job out there to get third in the wind with all the stealthies.
Kim (sans the berly).
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