By Amanda Eaken -- EMC2/Vellum Cycles Crit (W3/4) -- 05/07/06

EMC Vellum Crit
Women’s ¾ Race Report


Now I’ve cut it close before at races. We all have. But Vince hit a new low on the way out to the Vellum Crit. At 7:05 Bruce rolls up to my house and I head downstairs. On the way down the stairs, the phone rings again, and sweet, calm, level-headed Bruce was as close to anxious as I’ve ever seen him, “Hey Amanda, you think you could hurry up and get down here, Vince’s race starts at 8am!” Keep in mind, Google Maps tells us it’s a 45 minute drive to Pleasanton. Bruce drives like a man possessed, we make it by 7:33, and Vince at least has time to reg., pin his number and suck down a goo before the gun goes off. If you’ve ever met Vince, this rockstar move would make more sense to you. It’s the “first 10 laps of the race are your warm up” attitude. Nice.

Before Vince’s race, Ali and I have time to take a couple of laps around the course which is essentially flat, one sweeping turn and three corners, good pavement office park loop (evidenced by the fact that Ali makes it around the loop three times with Mike’s latte in her water bottle cage, without spilling a drop), with lots of bots dots. We clock it at something like .75 miles.

Monique and Elis also seem to be at the race early, cheering on their men who are also racing before us. When Laurie and Julie roll up, the team is complete. Our squad for the day: Elis Bradshaw, Allison Krasnow, Monique Quandt, Julie Baird, Laurie Simonson, Amanda Eaken. Today the women’s 3 and 4 fields are racing together, so we take advantage of greater combined numbers and our ability to race with teammates in a different category. Unfortunately, we learn that Julie has just spent the past 24 hours “carbo-unloading” with a stomach flu, but we are psyched to see her rally to come out to race.

Elis facilitates the race meeting. We decide that we should leverage our numbers by doing some good attacks, keep the pace high, work together on positioning, and set up a good lead out at the end. Now other teams have access to this public website, so I don’t want to share too much of our scheming, but suffice it to say that I had earlier overheard some Velogirls talking about Elis and it appears she may be marked for the day. Hence the brilliant plan of making Elis (one of Metromint’s star sprinters) the SWEEP for the day, rather than the target for the win.

Rolling up to the starting line, we get comments on our numbers, and feel confident that as we represent 6 of the 30 or so in the race, that we should place well. The race announcer is very difficult to understand, but it appears that in our short 40 minute race, there will be something like NINE prime laps!

The race starts off pretty quickly as Lisa Penzel of Los Gatos attacks pretty early to set a fast pace. Ali and I have talked about trying to attack together, so after the first lap, I come around her at the second corner and jump, to test out how long we can hold an attack pace trying to gauge the finish of the race. Ali correctly decides that if she jumps on my wheel from the front of the pack that she will just pull the pack, so she sits in to block and let’s me attack solo. I make it around two corners and almost to the line to take the prime, when Lisa Penzel and a Webcor girl come around to pass me at the line.

Here’s where the race becomes a fuzzy blur of a whole lotta primes, a crash, a re-set of the race of everyone at the start/finish line with 9 laps to go, but I will include the following highlights.

- Ever trying to foil the other teams, I came up the right hand side of the pack with half a lap to go on one of the prime laps, yelling “Hey Dartmouth”, thinking Ali would of course know that I meant that I wanted to lead her out for the prime. While Ali didn’t respond, Laurie did jump on my wheel, and she came across the line first for the prime.

- About 2/3 of the way through the race, Ali made a courageous attack and I yelled at her to go go go. After pulling for ½ a lap, Ali realized she had two other girls on her wheel, and the three of them worked together to stay away from the pack for three laps, helping to set a fast pace for the race as we let the other teams chase and sat in ourselves- nice work!

- As soon as Ali was caught, I grabbed Monique’s attention by yelling, “Hey Rob’s girlfriend”, she jumped on my wheel, and the two us kept the pace of the race up with another attack, which was unfortunately caught fairly quickly.

- Throughout the race, Elis was doing an amazing job of working with Monique to help her be positioned well, one of Monique’s stated goals for the day.

- Unfortunately, Julie decides that the she is sufficiently carbo unloaded to have little energy to keep up with all of the attacks, so she decides to sit out the latter half of the race, but shows her commitment to the team by cheering in support from the sidelines. And can you hear that girl scream!

With a little more than half a lap to go, Elis, Laurie and I are sitting near the front of the pack heading around the third to last corner. Laurie takes charge of the situation, yelling as she passes us on the right, “Are we doing this or what?” I quickly jump on her wheel and let her know that I am on, and Elis jumps on my wheel to play sweep.

Laurie Simonson, aka, “the Rocket” then pulls off one of the strongest leadouts of all time. She pulls down the far side of the rectangle from the finish, around the second to last corner, at which point she gasps, “I’m dying”, but I yell words of encouragement and she finds she can actually take me and Elis all the way to the final corner. Just before the last corner I jump around her, yell at Laurie to block for me, and then take off at a full sprint for the line, probably less than 150 meters away. After I cross the finish line, I turn around to see Elis right behind me, confirming that we have taken 1st and 2nd. Elis let a nice gap open up on me, preventing Holly Roberts of the Velo Girls from coming around, and taking second place to boot! After her phenomenal lead-out, Laurie still manages to get 7th place, although she swears that as soon as she saw me and Elis go around her, she almost summoned the energy to sprint for 3rd just to get an all Metromint podium.

Ali and Monique both finish in the top 15 overall, which I believe means that they would both be top 5 in the Women’s Cat 4, if not higher, nice work ladies, both accomplishing their individual goals of attacking and working on positioning for the final sprint.

I think we were all psyched to cover the top two spots on the podium with blue dots and special thanks go to Ali’s boyfriend Mike and the EMC/Vellum crew for putting on such a great race.