Eagle Creek Park Crit.

Grumble grumble 3:30 early moon still out dark.. ahhh

At 8:00 the women (about 20 of us?) lined up at the start behind the Citizens category, and the official asked us if we preferred to go off at the same time or 20 seconds after or if we wanted to race with them at all. I wasn't shy about saying that I thought the women should get their own race, but some other girl butted in and said "but then we can work with them!" I shut up because I thought that other girls actually wanted to race with the Citizens... whatever...I wasn't going to be the bitchy one.  

B.Chan and I took the lead and soft pedaled around for a lap (2?).  I thought I felt great despite the short warm-up...but it was hard to tell that early on.  I was a lot more in tune with what was going on than I was at Hillsboro.  I was listening for the sound of a wheel or for someone to shift; I was trying to anticipate an attack.  The first girl went and I got on her wheel and caught her and the field followed.  I think there were a couple other attacks--nothing amazing--and I followed those every time and no one got away.

Seriously I am horrible at race reports because I can't actually remember what happened..

So somewhere early on, when a couple other girls and I were at the front a girl attacked and got away.  I started to chase, and hesitated, and then stayed with the pack.  Maybe if I hadn't hesitated I would have caught her, but I doubt it because she was really strong.  I decided to let her go rather than waste all of my energy.  As we were coming around the end of the lap I found myself with two girls at the front and I said "hey--let's catch her!" and they laughed at me and said "Um, she's our teammate!"   ^_^  Ohh.... "I'm in a bad place right now" I said... 

(Tip:  Know who is working together.  Look at the kits and remember how many girls are on one team, etc..)

Soon we caught the Citizens category.  It wasn't so bad at first, and I got on one guy's wheel and recovered for a few minutes.  When the whole pack of dudes were going up the hill I attacked around them.  I thought this would be confusing and break up the women, and I really just wanted to get away from those guys.  It worked, but the women followed and then the men caught on them and soon we were all together again.  

The next few laps were sketchy as hell.  I felt like I was playing defense, trying to stay out of the way of other racers.  I'm not super confident about cornering yet or about riding in big packs.  When I can trust other riders it's not bad at all, but how am I supposed to confidently keep my line when I see that you CAN'T keep yours?  At this point I had plenty of energy and was just waiting for the last lap.  I thought that attacking and getting away from this group would be to my advantage, but every time I thought about doing it something sketchy happened.  As we were crossing the finish with 3 laps to go a girl next to me crashed and some guy flipped over her.. ayyyyyy  I wanted this to be over!

At the last hill on the last lap, I sprinted as much as I could to the finish and got fourth.  I had a lot of energy left, but the whole thing was such a clusterf*ck that I felt that an inevitable crash was not worth 2nd place.  

Overall I felt super strong and I felt that I could have gone harder.  I didn't make stupid mistakes:  i stayed off the front, sucked a lot of wheel, chased down attacks, and was alert and ready.  I also didn't get that nervous or frustrated!  I need some work on my handling, but that comes with experience, and I think I did well not to crash in this race.  The 1,2,3 place women were Cat. 2 so that's a big confidence booster.  However, I have no idea what kind of Cat. 4 girls didn't show up at this race!  ABR is really shitty though... more later....must go to work..