McLane Pacific Criterium

By Brooke Miller
Date: March 4, 2006
Category: Women 1/2/Pro
Teammates: Eryn, Julie, Amy, Jamie, and Tracey
Place: 12th
Winner: Laura Charameda, McGuire

Today's course was a downtown crit in Merced California -- we have determined that Merced means "Mole" and that said city is in fact the Mole Capitol of the Free world. The course was a bit sketchy with a couple curves and then a swoopy S curved section, that I have since learned is called a "chicane", Brooke's new SAT word for "curvy section where cyclists frequently crash and images of one's own death consistently flash before ones eyes." We did luck out with beautiful weather, so we had that going for us.

The pace was hot from the gun, as there was a lot of money on the line in the first 6 laps. The field was full with 100 women and a full showing of some fast-as-hell women who are generally scary and often make me want to cry. T-mobile, TEAm Lipton, Victory Brewing, Webcor and other women decked out in those funny stripes that they put on the arms of national champions and world champions.

For me, this was my first race of the season and was also only my second NRC race and it was the first crit on my new, GORGEOUS and wonderful new Look 555 bright metallic pink PABW team bike. It was also the first time that I have ridden said bicycle on the road, as I had just built it up two days before and had been forced to ride indoors because of rain for the last couple days. Anyhoo, so I was a bit nervous (READ: very nervous), not only of the strong field, but of doing this on a new bike that I loved more than sweet life itself. If you have the means, I HIGHLY recommend one, as Ferris would have said.

Naturally, I had a bad start, since I had new pedals that I had "clip-in issues" with. I was the last person off the line and had to bust my butt just to try and move up to the top 50. I was nervous, but was relieved after about 10 laps (out of 40) to see Julie racing strong and encouraging me on. The race was not that hard in terms of pace, but it was just so damn hard to move up with all the corners. And on every good place to move up, the entire field "moved up" and I ended up sticking right in at 50th place. I was watching as Julie moved up toward the front and tried in vain to get up to join her.

I finally settled in and worked on finding strong wheels and learning to move through the field. I started getting more comfortable at about half way through the race when the crash-fest officially began. I am not sure what happened, but I saw a bunch of riders going down and narrowly missed riding over a downed "bella" in the apex of the chicane. It gave me confidence to be calm in the face of near death, and I was able to move up a bit more easily after that.

Several more laps ticked off, a few more crashes, and then Kim Andersen of T-Mobile launched an attack heading in to 6 laps to go. I figured that she was setting up a break that would stick and jumped hard to get onto her wheel. Kim dragged along a couple riders and it became clear that she was not setting up a break, but just picking up the pace, as she then sat up and moved over. The effect was that she strung out the head of the race and filtered the field so that the head of the race was now just composed of the top teams and the top riders. Somehow I was there too. I gave myself a pep talk, "I belong here, I have a cool bike. Yes, I belong here. My bike is pink. I belong here." With 5 laps to go, there was another crash, which was a super bummer, as Amy and Julie got caught up in it and then did not have any more free laps to go, so their race was over. Eryn got behind it and had some suffering to catch back on. I was able to get in behind the leadout trains of TEAm Lipton and Victory Brewing.

Going into the last two laps, I lost some position as more strong riders swarmed up. I did hold to a top-20 position and was feeling strong. The pace was picking up and the leadouts were getting well organized and I was getting shuffled. In the last corner, the field swung wide toward the right end of the road in a single file line. I knew that I could not move up on the right, so I decided to cut the corner hard and started a sprint on the left side, in the wind from the corner. It was a long sprint, and it hurt. I felt a bit slow, but felt good. In the end, my move did pay off because I was able to move up a few places and finished 12th. Eryn pulled in right behind me, but with the big strong field, she pulled 46th, without ever leaving zone 2, or so she said. I am not sure how Tracey and Jamie fared, as we got separated after the start and missed each other after the race.