Race 13: Citizens race: A.V.R.E. Race for Sight

It felt good to take a few weeks off the race scene, and I had a wonderful week with the Rognlie family. We went birding at Finger Lakes Land Trust Preserves that are new since I last lived in Ithaca, we visited some parks (Robert H. Treman, and Taughannock Falls State Parks) that I have no been to since i was in grade school. Miriam took her binocs everywhere and Allison a camera. It was a lot of fun watching Miriam count off the new to her birds and Allison go nuts with her camera and my 100-400 zoom lens. She and I traded the lens back and forth. They now understand the "Ithaca is Gorges" slogan. :-) We managed to have a lot of fun despite the high 90's and humid weather.

The little race hiatus came to an end this weekend with a citizen's race I learned about fairly last minute. There have been several fairly close to Ithaca, but this is the first one I decided to do. They had two fields: the B group for those who do not have a USAC license and an A field for those who do. The course was very gently rolling with a hill top finish - the A's did 2 laps around the loop for 40 miles.

I figured the A group would be mostly Cat 4 and 5 men and was a little nervous about riding in a 55 person field of beginners. I need not have worried. It became fairly clear early on that there were some (a lot of) strong riders in the group. We pulled out of the little town of Windsor at the start at a pace that ranged between 25 and 28 mph. That never really dropped much.

As is typical for me (and bad), I drifted towards the back of the pack. The group spent the first 10 miles or so finding its rhythm. We had a bit of surging and slowing and a few near wrecks while waiting for things to settle in. Things strung out and bunched up and slowly I started moving forward on all the "hills" as small gaps formed between the tail of the peloton and the main pack. As could be expected we accelerated out of every corner, and up most of the slight inclines and it felt like there were surges on some of the slight down hills too. Despite the attempts of those driving the peloton to thin the ranks by stepping up the pace anytime we settled in too much, things at the back smoothed out relatively quickly. At that point I began to relax and really started to have fun. The pace was high compared to the typical women's race, yet I was not working all that hard. At several points it really felt like some of the legs only shots of TV coverage of Le Tour look - that is everyone riding in sync with high cadence and a smooth stroke. It was almost surreal.

By the time we were part way through the second lap the riders at the front had managed to shell close to 20 riders with their high pace. Despite their best efforts though, the short race and the lack of significant climbs led to a 37 person group making the narrow turn to up the finish hill together. That made for a bit of a bottle neck. I ended up having to brake near the bottom, losing all my momentum. I still made it past several folks on the climb. Overall I did a terrible job positioning myself in the field, I should have tried to place myself/stay in the front third of the pack for the whole race, or at the very least followed the guy who actually won the race when he moved forward with under 2km to go. He spent most of the race near me. I saw him move forward and if I had hopped on his wheel he would have opened the holes for me.

My results were good for 3rd woman, and 31st overall, 24 seconds back from the winner. We had chip timing by Yellow Jacket racing and they had the results posted before I got home from the race. After the race I hung out with some Tioga Valley folks before heading home to take care of the bugs and mow my parent's lawn (yes Laura the house is fine, the lawn mowed, your plants thriving). There is an official A.V.R.E. Race for Sight YouTube video posted. You can watch it here.

Up next is Empire State Games up in Buffalo. The opening ceremonies are Wednesday evening and competition starts with the individual time trial on Thursday, the road race Friday, a crit Saturday, and a team time trial on Sunday the 25th. Then back for a few days and then Thursday the 29th or very early Friday the 30th it is off to Hunter/Windham NY for Tour of the Catskills stage race... an uphill time trial prolog (average % grade = 4%, maximum grade = 11%) on Friday, the Catskill Epic Rd Race on Saturday (51.6 miles), and the Mountaintop Classic on Sunday, a 56 mile race "featuring the assault on Devils Kitchen" (with a max % grade of 22%).

After that the schedule thins out tremendously - maybe I will switch some focus to the 'Dale. I have been sorely neglecting my second "child" and do miss riding in the woods - and hey, there's no poison oak for me to fall into here. :-) I'm not sure I can picture a summer mountain biking without the ever present super nasty poison oak rash weeping all over the place.