Girl at Bike Race Scales Bridge and Throws Bike off the Top

Well, I thought about it, but then I would have been copying this guy, who was wandering around on Nashville’s Gateway Bridge with a bible and a bottle of water during our races Sunday morning.

My race was not so spectacular. After getting 3rd in the Saturday afternoon time trial (behind Kirsten Sass and Debbie Milne), all I could do was hope to place well enough to hold on to 2nd in the omnium. However, sprinting for too many primes would be my downfall. There were 4 offered, and I went all-out for all of them (losing each to Debbie). By the 4th one, Debbie countered her own attack and dropped the rest of the field (including me). We actually had a pretty good chase going, but as soon as the officials gave us the “3 to go” sign, everyone sat up, and Debbie’s 11ty-billionth solo victory was in the books.

How’d I finish? Well, I’d done 4 all-out sprints already, so of course, I didn’t have a whole lot left in the tank and ended up finishing 3rd in the pack and dropping me to 3rd overall in the omnium. I keep telling myself that I can’t expect to be kicking a ton of ass at the end of a couple of pretty tough weeks of training, but it doesn’t make poor racing strategy any easier to swallow. However, a 24oz Fat Tire at Mellow Mushroom does help a little :)

Ryan raced a couple of hours later with several of his teammates. They were all pretty tired from their 60 mile race the previous day, and a 3-man break (not including any of the Memphis Velo guys) stayed away, leaving Ryan in the pack to sprint (though he did make a couple of valiant efforts to get away from the group when it looked as though they were going to quit chasing).

I’ll post some photos soon!