Merced Weekend #1

Spending three of the next four weekends in the Central Valley. Woo hoo!

Snelling Road Race on Saturday. Women's Cat. 4A (50 women). Note: There were two fields of Cat. 4 women, 50 each. 100 women Cat. 4 racers. A first in the history of the race and totally fantastic. Over 900 people raced on Saturday, I think they said.

OMC (Original Merced Crit) on Sunday. Much smaller fields and some passing showers (after raining all night).

Lessons learned from the weekend:

1. Fill your registration form (hard copy or online) out correctly and fully.*

2. ALWAYS check the results and do it within the 15 minute time period so if you need to file a protest, you can.*

3. Get to know your fellow racers from all the teams. But factor in extra time if you know lots of people and everyone wants to inquire as to how you are feeling.*

4. Eight days totally off the bike and 3 weeks of very limited training leaves one with no hard miles in the legs. Not the best way to do a road race. **

5. Start position is important in a road race with a large field.**

6. Plan to get to a race early, but if there are any last minute changes or new things, get there even earlier than you think you should.**

7. Teammate's family rocks. Don is the best soigner! He even has the beer ready and open. The Chaney boys and Allie were super good kids all weekend.

8. It was fun to watch two friends WIN races!! Yea Elliott and Scottie!! And it was great to see all the Mice get great results and to cheer on all the first-time racers!

9. If you have SOs who are not racers and they come out to the middle of no where to cheer you on and take pictures, you owe them.

10. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and regroup and revise your goals.

** They threw the whole timing chip thing in at Snelling and we got there early, but definitely not early enough since the chip line was about 200 people long (they could learn some things from triathlon about registration), so that left about 5 minutes for a warm up and then rush to the line up and I had to go through the B field and teammates Katy, Izumi and I were clear at the back of the A field (plus 4 or 5 other teammates were in the field) and when the motor pulled off and the front of the field took off, we were caught out behind some people and got gapped and that was it. Plus, I had nothing in my legs and on the uphills, I could feel some pain in my back/sacrum, so I just rode it steady for the most part and dropped after the right hand turn after the finish line. I did one of three laps. I tried to hammer enough to get Izumi up to the little group in front of us, but couldn't quite do it. Plus, from the start I was still a little leery of riding in a group. There was one crash in the A group due to an inattentive rider, so I guess I was OK to be in the back. Glad I did take the start at least.

* Sunday was the crit and damn, I wish I could have done it, but I was good and didn't race (Doctor had said, "No way"). They put all the women cats together and there were about 13 or so to start (6 P,1,2s; 5 Cat. 3s, 2 Cat. 4s, I think). From the gun it broke up pretty quickly as the P,1,2s wanted to break up the pack. On the line it was noted that in the 4s, they had 3 starters, but looking at the results, the person who they had as first Cat. 4 was actually a Cat. 2. That left Lark and Rebecca as the only 4s. A protest was lodged and they changed the results. Why did they have the Cat. 2 as a 4? She didn't put a category down on her registration so they just assumed she was a 4 (huh??). We'd been wondering all race why she'd had a different number than all the other P12s.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend and my team had multiple top 10s in the races, including two 2nds. I got some riding in and now know where I am, recovery-wise. Time to get back to it.