The Race: Speed Week NCC Historic Roswell Criterium
The Course: 60 minutes on a 1.32 mile loop with a few sharp corners
The Field: 1/2 women
The Finish: Jen brought home 4th place, I’m the Speed Week lap leader

I’m unmotivated to write race reports (and a little busy juggling work and Speed Week), so I’ll let VeloNews.com recap the race.

When they say “all-day deluge”, they aren’t kidding; there was so much water coming down from the sky and up from the ground/wheels that we were often barely able to see. I was anxious about safety going into the race, but once we got started, I stopped worrying and started railing the corners and attacking repeatedly to keep the pace high and the field working. It felt great and a little crazy. While we weren’t able to make it onto the podium, Jen got just that much closer, sprinting into a very solid 4th place.

The course was different than previous years, extending another block down the start/finish stretch.

Borrowed this photo from CyclingNews.com so that you can appreciate the weather as much as I did.

The Race: Speed Week NCC Terrapin Twilight Criterium
The Course: 40 laps of a 4-corner course
The Field: 1/2 women
The Finish: Our sprinters brought home 6th and 7th

This was my third time racing this crit and it’s still exciting to get to the course and see the huge party unfolding on the streets of downtown Athens. After the usual pre-race preparation and nerves (including a much-needed overdose of motivating espresso), we rolled onto the course for staging and call-ups. My favorite moment was when the announcer called out, “From the Colavita/Fine Cooking team, she won this race in 2004 and has multiple national championship titles…” and Tina Pic, 2004 winner of the race and multi-time national champion, looks at me and says, “Is that me??” Tina, you are adorable.

The race started fast and stayed active throughout with attacks from Exergy, Primal, NOW, and my own team. My job was to cover moves and keep the pace up for the second half of the race, and in doing that, I ended up in two short breaks. They didn’t stick, but it felt good to be working hard and staying active at the front. As the race came down to the final laps, I was starting to burn out from the effort but tried to help with the team’s leadout. We were in good position at five, four, three, two laps to go but then came apart and our sprinters (Jen and Tina) were left to make their own moves. They were able to cross the line for 6th and 7th.

Curing the pre-race slump with the mandatory pre-race espresso shooter.

The various moods of Team Colavita during our warm up. The award for best expression definitely goes to Laura, who can be spotted in the distance behind my shoulder.

Over eight blocks of wild, drunken spectator-lined madness.

Jumped out of the car on the road leaving Athens for one final ride.

The Race: Sunny King Criterium
The Course: 60-minutes on a 4-corner course
The Field: 1/2 women
The Finish: Our first team podium

It’s been bumpy start this season for Team Colavita as we settle into working together as a team, but things started to come together this past Saturday night at the Sunny King Criterium in Anniston, Alabama. Our director sent Tina, Jen, Jackie, and me to the crit while the rest of the team was racing Sea Otter. Our race plan was [redacted because this shit is super secret, dude, and I'm not giving out the recipe to the special sauce]. My race plan was to ride like a beast after carb-loading in the days before the race with an all-you-can-eat bakery buffet from Whole Foods. It was organic and Fair Trade and occasionally gluten-free, so clearly that means it was healthy and a good idea.

After the usual call-ups and the not-so-usual string of pre-race commercials broadcast on a projection television, the race started. I didn’t have time to ride the course because there were races running up until our start, so the first lap was a surprise party. Clearly I was not alone in this, as I heard people go down behind me in turn 3. Two other green helmets were still bobbing ahead of me after the crash, but that left Jen unaccounted for and I suspected she’d gone down. She had – when I saw her a few laps later, she was missing some skin, some shorts, and part of her shoe – but when Tina asked if she was okay, she responded by sprinting to win a prime. We took that as a yes.

The majority of the race went by with a consistent pattern: a rider would attack, Colavita would shut it down, the field would circle the course slowly, a rider would attack, repeat. I felt great; whatever Whole Foods puts in their pastries is clearly a recipe for success. Colavita launched a number of attacks and Jackie spent a bit of time off the front, but nothing stuck. Jen, Coryn Rivera, Erica Allar, and LVG got a gap on the field while Jackie and I chatted about our feelings on that break, but when other riders moved to close it down, we sat in for the ride and were all together again shortly.

Meanwhile, Chad Andrews (announcer extraordinare for the uninitiated) spent the entire hour educating the world on race terms and tactics. After a whole season of listening to him, I am going to have this racing stuff on lockdown.

I impulsively attacked at two laps to go to test if the other sprinters were unwilling to chase that late in the race, but discovered they were more than happy to jump on my wheel. That failed attempt turned into setting pace for the final lap, at which point Tina took over guiding Jen through the final stretches, where she sprinted third across the line. Not the win we’d hoped to grab, but a solid race for working together cohesively and a promising sign for the future.

While I felt strong throughout, I learned a few things to improve going forward. My final attack wasn’t executed well – I didn’t establish enough of a gap, I wasn’t aware of how closely I was marked by the sprinters, and in the process of sprinting away, I disrupted the leadout train my team was forming at the front. Learning to think like part of a machine takes time, but I’m starting to understand the dynamics better, especially with the help of mistakes like this one.

Next up: Speed Week! My goal for the week is to avoid Waffle House like the plague. Oh, and help Colavita win. That too.

Jen Purcell rocking the first podium of the season.

It was unseasonably cold down south and I was struggling to make a warm outfit from available post-race apparel. That led to, well, this.