The Oak Brook State Championship

EDITTED. I felt bad about my blog. It wasn't fair to everyone that showed up and everyone that helped. It was insensitive . My feelings at the time were pretty hot about it though. You know when you come off a race and you are kinda emotional? I dont mind losing but I never felt I had a race. I have had harder training rides, if you know what I mean. But it was a first time event and I hope they try it again.

Safety was first at the Oak Brook event. Hurt memories and deep pain were still in our hearts as we remembered Beth, the cat 4 woman's rider who was fatally hit by a truck last year. Everyone was happy to have a road race today. I felt it a duty to show up and race in her memory and her honor.
We were started on a 3 mile course a minute behind the cat 1/2 men. We had 16 laps. Our race was shortened to 45 miles from 60. (no big surprise there with the small field that showed up). To keep it really safe the pace car neutralized us every time the men lapped us. (which was often) There were even Primes!!! Primes!!

I don't know how to blog this race. I sooo so so don't want to take anything away from the actual venue and event. Many, many volunteers showed up and HAY BALES and lots of kids cheering. Primes out the whazoo! yeah..primes. It was a road race. ha. It was really cool. These are the things that I normally would be so happy about. THe organizers did a great job setting up an amazing venue in such short notice. (6 weeks!) They tried to come up with a way to race the races safely. It is hard to do that on a small course and harder to get a bigger course. Its just getting hard to do 'road' races.
You know....like I said, I came because as a local gal I felt obligated but also that I wanted to show appreciation for the hard work of setting up a race so fast and so WELL done. BTW......I actually trained for this event.
I decided to blog because I do think that people should know what happened in this race in case in the future this happens again . I am not a very flexible person and had just one plan. Get away and stay away. Use attrition to my advantage as long as I could. The course itself made it difficult to get away and the depth of our small woman's field was just enough of a match in strengths that is was clearly going to be difficult.
I started to realize my plan was never going to work due to a long long neutralization of about 10 minutes. :) Getting put into an officially neutralized slow pace for 5-10 minutes every 4-5 laps (for safety reasons) is enough to let anyone recover and get back into the game. NO attrition. No test of strength. In short, It was not a race at all. OH.... we were safe!!! Bubble wrapped and safe as babies in a crib. But we were not REALLY racing. However that being said it could easily be to someone else's advantage and anyone with a brain would love this type of racing and would go with the flow.

I dont want to spend so much time talking about this but...I guess its my 'therapy' to mull it over. Its over. Its done. Actually the neutral parts were kinda fun and we chatted and joked. I had a pretty good time and hey, it wasn't all bad. No teams and a small field of women but not a field without depth and there were enuf good riders to make getting away rather difficult. I thought about the Elgin race which was surprisingly tougher than this and had only 9 women racing in it. I was hoping this would still be a good hard event. The hills were kinda like Haeger's bend hills in Barrington (the triples) on the Harper ride but with a faster downhill leading to the second hill.

At one time about half way into the event we really started to 'race' and were finally forcing a higher pace with some consistancy. It actually got HARD and became a real race!!! FUN! Two were off the front and someone started to bridge. After a hairpin corner I took over and powered past one gal then the other up the first hill. We got two gals shelled off the back and now I was on the front. I was really feeling some delicious pain in my legs. Suddenly on the downhill leading to the next climb, Prinner countered my bridge RIGHT into the hill. Beautiful! Expertly done. ... Meshburg went with her and didn't even have to pedal. When Prinner jumped and attacked us on the hill. She went for it hard and took Meshburg with her. Oooops fer me! right? .... ..they should have gotten away. They had a gap. My legs were screaming. I slowed just a little and Francine came around me. I saw the top of the hill and was just figuring on surviving the hill to try to recover fast enough to catch on later. I felt that they would get away. I watched and saw Meshburg move in front of Jessie and......they sat up. But we were gaining on them pretty quickly. Everyone was trying to get away and make a race of this.

Francine bridged and we hit the tailwind hard. I moved up to the front and kept the pace high. I held it back just a little bit...wait for it. wait for it. wait wait wait for the corner that goes to the cross wind! I felt GOOD. GOOD legs. (tailwind always feels good) I was going to just go as hard as I could at the corner. I was thinking of what to do. At this point if someone did a powerful attack at the corner they might just get away into the cross wind. Maybe to set a smaller break. But...For all I know someone behind me was thinking the exact same thing and *I* was on the front leading fast to that very corner of truth so I could easily easily get attacked by someone behind me now. GET READY! This was it. HURT and more HURT. In any event we were racing. I was getting my money's worth finally.
Suddenly ...... right about at the start finish line, I got waved at by the pace car dude. At first I just waved back. My mind was totally on my game plan. Then I saw the pace car coming closer so I thought of it like a carrot to make me go faster. But he slowed more and told us to stop. WHAT? It finally dawned on me when Meshburg shouted out neutral lap.
NO!!!!!!
THey stopped us cold. DAMN IT.
Wait for the men to pass. Kirsten Meshburg asked if we could have the gals off the back start in the same place. The official said yeah sure. But he forgot. Or he didn't care. We were soft pedaling for about 10 minutes as the men's front break passed. Then waited till the rest of the men's pack passed us. It was too hot to just stop and wait on the hot cement. We had to keep moving. This sucked.
THey started us all up again all together. No one did anything after that for a couple laps. I honestly dont remember but it never picked up again like that. I tried to get away again at 2 laps to go but that didn't take. No one countered and everyone did the 'settle in for the sprint' routine. One of the gals that got dropped by more than 500 yards had been let back on because of our soft pedaling neutrality. She kept quiet in the back for the rest of the race (once bitten twice shy, right?) SHe waited till the sprint and she podiumed. LOL. funny. I love it. ...oh... But who cares. Whatever. ITS DONE AND OVER AND SUCH IS THE WAYS OF BIKE RACING.
Well. Another race I messed up. Water under the bridge. I am still kicking myself. I lost sleep thinking about how I didn't jump first. You know, I shoulda had that in my head...
Guys that raced the course said it was really tough to get away. Hindsite.... I should have just dove into the cross wind on the last lap. Pearson won the cat 1-2 race that way and no one saw that coming. But the girls in the peleton had some power left and I might not have made it. However I still shoulda woulda coulda tried that. Hmmm. doh.

But the real kudo's still goes to Meshburg. She jumped first and won the sprint.

WELL...gripes aside.... If they had not had to neutralize the race so much for the men to pass us safely, it might have been a bad accident. But maybe with so few women present we would have been ok? I don't know. It was just the way it was. Everything went smoothly for the men's race . If we had not been neutralized I do think at the very least it would have been a much more interesting and harder race and not the boring schlog-fest that it was. Instead any hard pace that was established was immediately nullified. It was like having a free lap every 3 laps. ((that sounds like a rap tune))

I don't even know how to blog about this. LIke I said, I so so SO do not want to dis the organizers and I came to the race just to honor that fact that they held a race. I really came to race. I guess the only thing left to do is to just get ready for Cross.