Julie with a B

Tuesday, January 04, 2005
 
Cycle tales
Bicycle tales that is. I've been a distance cycler for awhile. When I first started riding though I also decided to try some road racing. I duly registered and received a "Cat 4" rating. That's the bottom. My friends and I picked out a race early in the season, 1st weekend in February. We loaded up the car and took off early. The race was in California's central valley, which translates to alot of flat very empty miles. My kinda terrain. The directions said "Take I-5 north to road 19, then left at first dirt road." There was a big stand of eucalyptus next to a flat dirt area. We checked in and got the start times and looked at the route. Son of a ....the start line was at the base of the only hill for 100 miles around. I said bad words, my friends were snickering. 17 of us lined up and took off. I hung onto the pack most of the way up the hill and then got dropped off. If you can draft off of the person in front of you, you only do 2/3 the work they are, so if you have no one to draft off of, you have to work harder and even harder than that to catch up . These riders blasted up and over the hill and on down the road. I reached the top and then started the winding decent. I love to go downhill. I came around the last curve and had a view of a real mess. If you ride close together and someone makes a mistake you all go down. There was just a heap of riders in the road. The course-workers were there helping people up, some of the riders were up and moving down the road. I carefully rode past and carried on. I began to catch and pass the riders that were on the road. I trudged on-ward - still no one to draft off of because they now straggled out behind me. When I reached mile 20, my friend Janet caught up with me. She said, "can I draft off of you for a bit and catch my breath". Oh yeah, sure. So we rode together for another 7 miles. I asked how she was doing and would she take a turn on the front? She said, no, she was just trying to get back in. Oh, OK. The only thing between me and the finish line was a freeway overpass and then another 1/2 mile. As we approached the overpass, Janet pulled out from behind me and started powering up the hill! Hey! What about dragging you for the last 7 miles? She said, "I can't hear you" and went over the top and to the finish a good 35 seconds before me! That weasel! There are no friends in racing. Give no quarter take no prisoners. It's OK. She won a cantelope. Yeah, a cantelope.

- posted by JulieB @ 6:23 PM
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