Speed Week: Beaufort Crit

Posted on by lindsay
The Race: Beaufort Criterium The Course: 50 laps, 4 left turns The Field: Pro 1/2/3 women The Finish: 26th and smiling Beaufort was gorgeous - Spanish moss hanging from the trees, beautiful weather, a course in the downtown area next to the water. The course itself was rough; lots of blemishes on the pavement and a short lap with only moderately long stretches through the back and the start/finish. I was worried about crashes going into the race, but the field strung out and it felt like everyone was on their game, taking smooth lines through the corners and riding safely. Nothing exciting happened in my race, but I don't see that as a bad thing. I started feeling a lot more comfortable in the corners and was happy with my lines for the most part. My legs felt good, I was able to sprint whenever the field took off, ...continue reading.

Speed Week: Roswell Crit

Posted on by lindsay
The Race: Roswell Criterium The Course: 60 minutes, 5 left turns The Field: Pro 1/2/3 women The Finish: Far too early Despite the hard racing the night before and the stress of traveling, my legs felt decent going into this race. It was another sprint from staging to the starting line to fight for position, but I was more prepared this time and got a decent spot about halfway back. The race started hard, but not as fast as Athens and the pace slowed significantly at the first turn. Left turn, left turn, left turn, then up the slight hill at the back of the course, left turn, left turn, down the home stretch, repeat. The field barely strung out in the first ten minutes, so we took the corners slowly and then sprinted out of them in the longer stretches. After a handful of laps, I wanted to see ...continue reading.

Speed Week: Athens Twilight Crit

Posted on by lindsay
The Race: Terrapin Twilight Criterium The Course: 40 laps (40K) The Field: Pro 1/2/3 women The Finish: 13th Holy shit, this race was fast. The women lined up a few rows deep, and I started in the back row because I wasn't prepared for how aggressively the field would charge to the start line to fight for position. In the first corner, a rider beside me went down on the inside but just missed my wheel. Then it was an all-out hammer fest. Like nothing I've ever done before. The voice in my head was being an asshole, talking nonstop about quitting because everything hurt. It's easy now to sit here and think that DNFing ten laps in would have been really pathetic, but when I was actually out there looking at doing another thirty laps as fast as I could, it didn't seem like a bad idea to throw ...continue reading.

Enough Already

Posted on by lindsay
Once again, a post I've written is generating controversy. Commenters have said that I come across as arrogant and that I'm 'predictable' because I said that I was sick, my brake was rubbing, and 'nobody could come with [my] move' (something I didn't even say). I'm not thin-skinned and I know that posting anything online opens one to a world of criticism, but come on. Cut me some slack. After the Sleepy Hole crash, I was pretty shaken and embarrassed by my very public mistake. When I talked about it here, that generated conflict and criticism, so I defended myself where I thought there were valid points but also accepted the good advice I was given. After a few good weekends of racing, I thought that had died down, but then my coach sent an email letting me know that somebody was still very upset about the incident and had ...continue reading.

Race Report: A Binary Race

Posted on by lindsay
The Race: Farmersville Road Race The Course: 3 laps of rolling hills The Field: Cat 3/4 women The Finish: 1st There were only two possible outcomes for this race: win or not. To win would mean getting my cat 2 upgrade, to not win would mean not getting my upgrade, not being able to start at some of the planned upcoming races, and also spending six hours alone in the car when I could have gone with friends to the Meadows Farm race. No pressure, right? To make matters worse, I came down with a head/chest thing late last week that left me feeling drained and shitty by Saturday morning, in addition to coughing up hairballs of horror. I felt completely flat in my warm-up lap of the course and anytime I tried to work hard during the race, it felt like I was sucking wind through a tiny straw. ...continue reading.

Carl Dolan: In which I (hopefully) end my ’emo’ cycling phase.

Posted on by lindsay
The Race: Carl Dolan The Course: An office park, one corner, 10 laps (initially) The Field: Cat 1/2/3 women The Finish: Upright The field at Dolan was primarily the same women from Chantilly and thus started very similarly. No moves stuck, the field reeled in anyone who tried to escape, and we kept a pretty regular schedule of sprint, sit up, sprint, sit up, repeat. I bridged to one attack early on to gauge the responsiveness of the pack, but quickly sat up when I saw the field shutting down the gap. As we crossed the backside of the course on our fifth lap, we came upon a nasty crash from the cat 4 women's race and our race was neutralized. We rode to the start/finish and stopped to wait for the ambulance to help the injured riders. Because it took about twenty minutes to clear the course, the officials ...continue reading.