CSC Invitational

As for photography I did a nonexistent job of documenting the weekend, but here is a quick report and a few pictures I was able to find.



CSC Invitational – Arlington, VA, USA, June 1, 2008 – Race Report #2

Saturday I traveled from Kutztown to Philly and meet up with the team at the Philly housing. They have quite the set up there and it is only about a 5minute ride from center city. We loaded into the car and hit the road to Virginia for the CSC Invitational Critirium, a 50km race on a challenging 1km course.

Sunday morning came around and it was time to race! The weather was quite nice, in fact probably a bit nicer than was really preferable. It is quite a change to go from training and racing in dry, slightly chilly weather to humid, hot sunny days. The effects on the body can be fought off a bit by staying hydrated and eating regularly, but try riding your bike at 27mph in the middle of a pack of riders, with a corner every 200-500meters and now reach to your back pocket, grab a gu, rip the top off with your teeth, spit it out and try to get all the gel in your mouth, not on your hands or all over your face. Basically it is not always convenient to be feeding at any point of a race so it takes a special discipline to keep me in line. I managed to drink a bottle and a half of mix today and 2 gu’s so that was decent.

A good start position was fairly important on a course of this nature but it was a fight with all the girls as usual. I started a bit farther back than I prefer but it just meant I would have to burn a few matches at the beginning to get in a good position. I started a bit flat, finally worked my way up and then did some chasing to keep things together. Then my legs started talking back and they weren’t real happy so I let the others know I was hurting and dropped back in the pack a bit to follow wheels and recover. Eventually I started feeling better again and moved back up. Somehow I had neglected to realize a break of 3 girls was up the road. I’m typically very good about keeping track of a race but I had dropped back farther than usual and that results in an inability for me to see everything on the front, as I obviously can’t see over a whole lot of girls. Not that there is any excuse, but I just missed it today. In any case for the rest of the race I was able to chase down a few girls who launched off the front of the pack to keep things together. As it came down to the final laps Kele, Theresa and I were all up in the mix of the pack. Unfortunately Kele got forced over to the barriers with 2 laps to go and Theresa and I were just able to get by without loosing much momentum. I attempted to get up and block the wind from Theresa and even thought “oh yeah I’ll just lead her out”, however I ended up next to her for about 5seconds and then I realized that my legs were disagreeing with what my mind wanted to do. So as I drifted back a bit I dropped in on a wheel and just tried to hang on for what I could. Theresa came in 7th, I managed to hang on for 14th and Kele came in about 25th, although that was debatable. The officials had decided to allow lapped riders to remain in the race, which caused numerous problems with placing in the end. Kele had been so lucky as to flat and things got confusing with the free lap rule and such but from what we could gather 25th was about right.

Overall it was a pretty good day for us. All considered it was our first crit together as a team and we learned a lot. Now it is time to take our lessons and race even better this week through the triple crown series! All the hot shots should be there and some super strong riders will be in from out of country as well so it should be quite the show!

Super sweet shot!


And I even found one of me


Philly week starts tomorrow!