Down in kentucky...

I drove down to Kentucky this past weekend to help my sister get settled and decided to take in a race since she'd be working and otherwise i'd just be on the trainer...for 3 hours. Lets see, drive 6 hours to kentucky to sit on a trainer or race saturday morning? not a hard decision...

Fallen Heros Circuit - Womens open
I can't say this is my first open race, but i swear, everytime i get up there, its so exciting like its my first one. i checked out my competition the week before online with results and such and i knew there would be at least one cat 1 and a bunch of 2,3,4s. thats definitely a lot of high caliber riders! the course itself was a 3.1 mile loop, in a park (no cars! yes!) with uphills, a false flat, more uphill, a downhill, back up, more false flats...you get the picture. lots of hills. Nothing crazy like Hillsboro, but interesting b/c i don't think there were any true flats. A 45 min race, knocked down to 30mins, but ended up being about 40mins long...

With a motorcycle leading the way (the course, while in a park and away from cars, was still open to pedistrans, who surprisingly got out of the way for an approaching cyclist...you don't see that often in chicago), we headed to the first climb. A curvy uphill, to a less steep section, a bit more up, into a false flat. I was keeping up with the riders and i told myself to stay in the draft. This was really hard to do b/c i wanted to get the hill over with asap, but i managed for the most part. i watched the cat1 rider b/c i knew she had won of the races in this series and i knew that if and when she took off, that would be the winning break. for a majority of the race, the riders stuck together. a few attacks on the uphills, lots of speed on the dowhills broke up the group into 3. With one lap to go, there was 7 of us. I didn't realize i was in the main pack until i made a big mistake. two riders broke away, including the cat1, and i wanted to go with them. i attempted to make the bridge and was only about 2 bike lengths behind when we hit an uphill. instead of falling back to have someone fresh take the pull, i took it. by the time i hit the top, those 2 riders were gone from sight (not necessarily a bad thing b/c it was just loopy and you couldn't see them), but i had fallen from the front to a bike length behind the 2nd group. i worked hard to catch up (yeah, got over my fear of the decents real quick) and bridged up to the 2 riders (with group 2 in tow). when i looked back, i saw we had dropped the other half of the starting riders. i saw an opening to get behind the cat 1 rider and i thgt i wasn't going to let them get away again. up another hill, one i mistakingly took to be the last hill, a cat2 rider attacked and i attempted to stay with her. i should have stayed in line and let someone else go...so, the same 2 riders that previously broke away did it again and this time i couldn't catch up. i had fallen behind again and thats when the last and longest hill showed up. i fell behind the 2nd group again and i didn't have enough road to catch up again.

In the end, i took 7th out of 14, but also first in my cat. it was a fun and different course. i have to stop making those mistakes b/c its not the first time, but then again, how will i know what i can and can't do unless i try? hows that for justification?

I also ran into someone who knew exactly where my club is, which is surprisingly since i was in kentucky. i asked him how he knew it was in Illinois and started looking down at my kit and said outloud "does it say illinois?" and thgt "wow, i really should know what my kit says..." but before i could do the "dog chasing its tail" routine, he replied back with "i used to live in wheaton"...