Altoona Race Report

by Barb

Saturday Road Race:

I love the Midwest. Where else can you get a post race meal, on the road, with all food groups for $4.99? At your local Des Moines Hy-Vee grocery store! Chicken and biscut casserole with green beans, broccoli and a whole wheat roll. It was great. Better than a cheese and mayonaise sandwhich. :burp:

Anyway...my first race of the season I am happy to say I am in better form than I was last year this time.:D I finished mid-pack and I am happy with it as the group I was in had some strong women form MN (Birchwood), Iowa, and Lincoln, about 20+ women total. The course was great-rolling hills, scenic farm lands with GREEN stuff and good old midwestern wind and rain. The race started out calm and reasonable. Then a super attack by the Birchwood Bettys got things going much faster than they were. :shock: I stayed on and our group now was half the field that started. We rode somewhere between moderate and harder than I really wanted to. But that's good for me. Up and down the hills we went. A good down pour of rain washed all grit off our water bottles. The last time up one of the beloved rollers I was not able to survive the attack, was dropped and rode it in hard with Andrea (socks) V. I tried to contest the sprint, but my legs were having none of it. Over all I really enjoyed the race--it was challenging, the women in the race rode well, I got to see friends from seasons past, and stayed with the group.

Tomorrow, the crit, and then back home to start spring break!!

Later,
Barb

PS, Iwas not listed in the results, but I finished 11th.

Sunday crit:

What can I say about the crit...the temps dropped during the night, the wind picked up and the course was not what I had hoped. I was not able to get a warm up (too cold, didn't know my way around, too whiney, etc). The course was a large circle, down and up, down and up. No fast corners, not speed, just up a long brutal, to me, hill and then down a long hill with cold wind in my face. About half the women from yesterday showed up. We started down the hill and that went OK. But up the hill I had nuthin', zero, zip, no legs and no will. So I came off, coaxed my self to ride a few more laps but still all goose eggs. So I did what I hate to do, I dropped out. Blah! I only get to do that once a year, so now I have to finish all the other races this year. :?

I watched the rest of the race huddled in my car shivering while a small group of very strong women duked it out. It was a good race to watch. Our MN women did well. Not a whole lot else to say, as it was cold, windy, grey. I thought about you'all riding the hill ride.

Can't wait for Opus.