Valley of the Sun Criterium

I woke up feeling like a zombie on Sunday morning. After arriving/setting up, I downed a couple of cups of coffee and got dressed/warmed up. I really like to ride a lap or two of a crit course before the race starts, but that wasn’t an option here. Since the P/1/2 field was combined with the 3 field, everyone was lined up on the sidelines as the preceeding race was finishing in order to get to the prime real estate that was the start line. I’m normally pretty good at this, but today it didn’t happen, and I ended up somewhere in the middle. From the whistle, the accelerator was DOWN.

The first few laps were hell- Ashley and Shannon managed to keep up in the front (Ashley moves like a jackrabbit through a pack!) while the rest of us got strung out down the course as riders in front of us cracked and got gapped. After what seemed like forever, we all managed to catch on. At some point, a rider from another team got away from the pack. Ashley attacked for a lap, but it didn’t stay. Next lap, Shannon attacked (all the while, I’m absolutely dying while trying to move up and feeling like Private “Gomer Pyle” from Full Metal Jacket). This time, Shannon got away, and made the bridge to the other rider off the front!

The other 4 of us got to the front of the pack and made the pace just hard enough to discourage anyone else from trying to bridge. Once I finally made it to the front (thank everything holy/unholy), I went for 3 or 4 laps before finally succumbing to to an attack on the start/finish hill, and hanging on to the back of the pack like a booger for the last 5 laps. It was a heroic effort on everyone’s part, and halfway through the final lap, we heard Nathan on the radio yelling, “HANDS UP, SHANNON, HANDS UP!” I was cheering and celebrating in my head as we rode the last few corners to the finish! Everyone sprinted up the last hill, but I’d been prettymuch redlined for the entire race, so I didn’t really have anything left other than holding my speed out of the corner and up to the finish line.
I actually never even looked to see how I finished- maybe somewhere in the top 30? I’m not too worried about it- I am so happy to end the weekend with a win for the team!

Hopefully some photos will start popping up on the internet soon… I’ll post/link to the as I find them!

4 thoughts on “Valley of the Sun Criterium

  1. that was my friend evie on radical media- she’s NUTS! soudns like it was a fun race! nice blog, i’ll link yours!

    Christophe

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