The weather forecast for the weekend looked great and I was super excited to race in race-weather!  The weekend started Friday for me as I prepared my bike, legs, and everything I would need for the trips for the next two days.  Was very much looking forward to the road race on Saturday as although still not recovered to my full strength, have been feeling pretty good and that I am back into descent race shape.  I also usually do pretty well on longer efforts, although not a climber, was looking to get a solid placement in the B’s.

I had an ok warm up, lined up exactly where I wanted to be, especially on the descent.  Everyone was very careful as we all knew we were going to hit the hairpin turn on the end.  As soon as I went around the turn, even though I downshifted, did not do so enough and there were some clinking noises from changes gears.  Everyone else had the exact same experience, even the A riders, so I didn’t feel too bad but made a mental note to make sure I am downshifted enough as I knew the field may pick up speed on the next lap.  One girl (Hayley from Pittsburgh) apparently did not downshift enough like the rest of us, and fell of her bike.  We all waited for her for probably a good five minutes.  Still not sure if she rejoined the field, we finally started picking up speed a little bit.  I placed myself exactly where I wanted to be, in the top 10 in the peloton to make sure if there was an attack, I could make it as far as possible but also not to be in a position that I would be pulling the field.  Somewhere a couple miles down, we found ourselves descending again, and I started using my breaks just a little bit.  All I was concentrating on was making sure I keep my top 10-15 as some girls started advancing around me but very soon after, apparently my back breaks started making some very not good sounds and a bunch of girls told me I should check the breaks.  I had no idea what was wrong (umm….I did notice my breaks were making sounds a week or two earlier but just did not check what was wrong) but once I had some time (or a lot of time) to examine the situation, looked like all my break pads were gone.  I then got on my bike and continued riding trying to decide whether to catch up (as I knew they weren’t going to fast and giving my breaks the benefit of the doubt) or dropping out.  I decided to do the latter – its one thing taking myself out and something else, taking a bunch of other people out because my bike wasn’t properly maintained.  The end.

After better preparing my bike for this day, had a mix of positive attitude and not so the day started a bit lousy.  The race schedule featured a hill time trial and a criterium.  The hill climb went pretty not good for me.  I decided to give it a good try but messed up the start time so had to get restarted.  My goal was to catch the girl in front of me (someone from Dartmouth) which I did but I was also passed by someone from University of Vermont.  Pretty much 0.4 miles to go, there was a fork in the course with barriers.  I knew the marshalls told me to go straight but I had trouble figuring out which way was straight so, made a mistake and went to the “right”  … once I made it to the top, was really confused for a few seconds and realized my mistake so went down, saw the Dartmouth girl pass in the distance and got back on the course.  At this point, even though my ITT was over and would have given me awful results, I decided to persevere and finish strong no matter what.  Finished 8th in the B’s.

Criterium!  This is my favorite crit course of all the other ones i’ve done – partly because of the scenery but also because its super smooth, I love the mini climb (I am learning that I am more of a power climber so this small incline was to my advantage), and there are no pedestrians, dogs, etc stuff on the course which makes it much safer.  Last year (with two healthy legs), I was spit out from the race on the third lap and ended up TTT’ing with a bunch of other girls until I got pulled.  This year, I made sure I was in the front as much as possible in the beginning which served to my luck and I stayed there for a good few laps.  Here I relaxed and then found myself more towards the back – not good! The rest of the race, I did my best to stay on the inside to conserve energy but was also forced to bridge a lot of gaps in the back if they opened up to stay in the peloton.  So far this season – this has been the hardest 40-50 minute effort I’ve put out – my hr didn’t drop below 175 and stayed consistently in the mid 180’s but I loved every minute of it!  Didn’t get the good placement I wanted (going for top 3 in the B’s) – partly because I didn’t expect for the field to be so fast so thought I could easily move up in the last lap but was not so and didn’t give a full out effort then = good learning experience:).

Overall: great weekend and wishing the eccc wasn’t coming to the end so soon!