Being entirely addicted to road racing now, I was looking forward to another Tour, after having just raced Tour of Page County a week prior. 24 women signed up for my category 4, which is unusually high. The Tour started with a time trial on Saturday morning followed by the criterium in the afternoon and a Road Race on Sunday.
The time trial was 10mi and flat. I raced the time trial with a moderate effort and hoped to place somewhere in the Top 5. That didn’t quite happen when I realized that I almost got passed by the girl behind me and saw the results: 11th place. Not a good start into a Stage race.
I hoped that the crit would work better and it definitely did. After a few laps, the front group including me dropped everyone but six riders. We had a good pace and it all came down to a downhill sprint after a corner. Corner is good but downhill not so much. Approaching the finish line, I stuck to the second wheel and we started sprinting on the downhill. I tried to stand up to sprint but couldn’t get my cadence right so I sat down and got closer to the front person but unfortunately not enough to pass her. In addition, another girl came around and passed both of us so I ended up third.
The road race the next day started in the rain. The streets were wet, which caused a lot of crashes in the races before our race. Our race course was rolling, not a course for me because there were no major hills involved. Our pace was very easy. I felt more like in a group ride than in a race and I zoned out several times. Although I wished we would go faster, I knew it wouldn’t be me who can change the pace. After placing second and third in all prior road races (but never first) I decided to do something different this time. There was a corner before the 200m sprint and I attacked before so I was first going through the corner. (Usually I would wait for other racers to attack). I started sprinting the 200m and I did not see anyone coming around. I kept the pace as high as I could and I saw the another girl approaching but we were too close to the finish line so she was not able to pass me and I finished first.
Despite my awful result in the time trial, I got third overall. I received all needed upgrade points and have submitted my upgrade request for Cat 3.
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