Albany Criterium

Jenni Tafoya

By Jenni Tafoya
Date: July 23, 2006
Teammates: Julie and Tracey
Field Size: 31
Category: Women 1/2/3
Winner: Courtenay Brown (McGuire)

Since I'm never one to turn down a chance to race for Peet's, Albany is a staple on my race calendar, despite the fact that I don't love the course (square and flat, too much opportunity for swarming). Several laps into the race, Carola (Alto Velo) attacked. I bridged up and we were soon joined by Jenny (Morgan Stanley) and Courtenay (McGuire) for a nice four-person break. We were working well together, but the pace wasn't exactly blistering (like being in the Santa Rosa break wtih Helena, Jenny and Cindy Carroll--that was painful!) so people kept bridging and the break swelled to a group of 8 or so, which further slowed the pace a bit. In hindsight I perhaps should have been more aggresive and tried to get away with Jenny, but I had super-sprinters Julie and Tracey back in the field and figured they would be trying to make it across, so I didn't want to hurt their chances.

On the last lap, there was some weird sketchiness coming out of the penultimate turn (I think Carola actually went down), resulting in me getting chopped losing all my speed. I ended up 5th (disappointed but also happy to have avoided a crash), behind a Metromint, Jenny, Mary Maroon, and Courtenay. I hear Julie handily won the field sprint for 9th, and Tracey came in for 14th.