We just got off the bus from this weekends races and here is the rundown...
First on a side note this is my living room and do you see that big blue tote? Yes, I can fit inside it!...infact for the past week Ally(on the couch) and I have been inviting people over and playing tricks on them...it involves Ally getting them to come over and look at something funny on the computer and then once the signal is given i pot out of the box and scare the life out of people! Then we laugh hystarically while the person is catching their breath and we appologize for scaring them so badly but mock their reaction! It really is quite entertaining and it has been helping keep us sane while we get down to the end of the semester.
The team left for conference finals in Nashville on Friday and we had a road race saturday morning, a team time trial saturday afternoon and a criterium sunday morning.
Saturday road race and TTT set up...we are spoiled rotten
The road race went well for the womens team. There was a pretty significant climb on the 21 mile course and in the first of three laps it was a mater of natural selection...a break of six girls was formed and we kept it for the entire race. My team mate Mo and I were able to make it up the climb with the front squad, which consisted of us (obviously), 2 georgia girls, 1 florida girl and 1 furman girl. All very strong riders. I was hurting pretty bad after the first climb and questioning my ability to hang with them in the laps that followed...you would think all my time in BE would have make we fly up hills by now, but it dosn't always work that way as I am finding out. I road very conservative and basically annoyed the patients out of all the other girls. A few got frustrated and would try to attack, so i would just sit on their wheel and look at them when they turned around to see if i was still there! There was no reason for Mo or I to worry about the break getting caught sense we had more strong girls in the main pack than anyone else and both of us can usual hold a pretty good spot in the sprint. They still weren't too pleased saying things like "common kacey, i know you can go faster than that". I did finally start pulling through so it would be a bit smoother but I spent 90% of the race in my small chain ring working on spinning and i could feel things slow down when it was my turn to come around and pull off, which i did quickly. In anycase I focused more on form in the climb in the 2nd and 3rd lap. It all stayed together in the 2nd lap although the furman girl (Ashley - she is a very strong rider) and Mo were keeping the pace up and pushing my limits. In the 3rd lap one of the georgia girls (Ann - much better at climbing than myslef) decided to turn on the extra burner and take the lead. I wasn't too worried considering she was alone and I figured we could catch back on. We dropped the other georgia girl on the climb and the remaining 4 of us were left to chase Ann, which we did for longer than I would have liked, but we did catch her with plenty of time to recover before the finish. Mo and I worked pretty darm well together in the end...o, I forgot to mention in the first lap of the race not too long after starting Mo got a rear flat and Clara and I stayed back, so the three of us had done a little time trialing back to the pack to start the race out (good thing, cause Mo ended up in the break!). So back to the finish...there were now 5 of us and we where the only team with 2 riders! We were staling out like usual and everyone was just looking at each other. Mo finally decided to lauch a bit of an attack from a ways out and string things out, which worked beautifully. At that point the furman rider dropped off a bit and I got on floridas wheel, watching for Ann to try and jump me. Mo settled back in on the side of the florida girl for a little bit as we slowed the pace a touch and then she launched a little again, forcing the florida rider to punch it and giving me a perfect lead out to pop out around and finish first. I was a bit overgeared...again..but i got it, and Mo came in 4th after getting pushed off to the side and boxed in by the florida rider. I'm not sure of the exact placings of the rest of the team but we did well and everyone finished!
On our way to Sunday's crit...it was in a big parking lot just outside of the stadium in this picture...thank Heaven finally something flat!!! Yahoo!!!
Our huge rig set up in the parking lot
Some of my entertaining and as you can imagine at times obnoxious team mates! They are great!
Chilling in the shade after sunday's crit...beautiful weather!!!
I'm not even going to try and pretend...i'm pretty tired right now and that road race write up was a bit longer than anticipated so i'm going to have to leave you in suspense on the crit until a later time...don't worry it won't be long, I'll be looking for any way possible to procrastinate (thanks for that gene dad!) on my school work (don't think about it mom, and don't even thing about calling to mention it!..I love you). I also have a rather entertaining story and picture to tell the tale of saturday night, but that will also have to wait. At the moment the shower and bed are calling my name and i'm going to give in...
No comments:
Post a Comment