By Amanda Eaken -- Wards Ferry Road Race (W2) -- 03/31/07
The week before the Ward's Ferry Road Race, my coach calls it "the best road race course in America." So I decide I have to do it, and rally Molly, Sarah and Jane to try it out with me. It's 4 laps of a 12 mile course in foothill country, just shy of Yosemite, near Sonora - Bruce Johnson's home town. No long climbs, but up and down the whole time. Fortunately Molly drove up early friday and got to do some course recon so she could prep us for the longest climbs and the places where the pack was likely to get strung out.
Our starting field is maybe shy of 20 girls including some strong Touchstone climber girls, Jane Despas, Lisa Penzel, Flavia Olivera and a few others I don't know. We start off with a neutral promenade of three miles, a small downhill and almost immediately we hit the first and longest uphill - 3/4 miles which Molly has prepped us for. In an extremely assertive and confident move, Molly decides to head to the front of this climb and set tempo. This makes me very happy and is a very powerful display of Metromint power right from the start.
The course undulates into a sharp right hand turn and a very bumpy narrow downhill which would claim two of my water bottles in the laps to come. The field gets quite strung out here since everyone is flying down the descent and pedaling hard and I notice that this might be a place to separate the pack. Sure enough, when we get to the feed zone, which is just about near the end of the first lap, Kelly of Touchstone notices that there are only 8 riders with the lead group. I turn around to see that Jane is still with the lead group, but I can't see Sarah and Molly. I later learn Molly dropped her chain and Sarah got separated on that twisty descent.
Wow. Only 8 riders left. Incredible. One of my season goals has been to get in the winning break of a 1/2 road race. So I decide this is it. I have to stay with this break at all costs. Kelly and Pat of Touchstone take turns attacking the field and by 2 laps in we are down to 6, which sadly means no more Jane Robertson. Kelly and Pat are the only team with more than one rider in the break, so they set tempo up the climbs and are clearly trying to get one of them away to win the race, but the group fights to stay together and 1K to go we are actually 7 strong since Jane Despas has caught back up with the lead group after an early flat.
Just after the 1K to go sign in the final lap there is a nasty little kicker hill. I decide to get on Pat Ross' wheel up this climb and to my delight, Kelly comes around Pat just after the hill to lead her out, so with 800 m to go I am sitting third wheel on the Touchstone lead out train. Kelly ramps it up and when we see 200m to go at the bottom of the start/finish climb, Virginia Perkins decides it's time to go up the left. WOW, EARLY I think, but good for her if she can hold it. I decide to sit on for a tiny bit longer and when Flavia goes up the right I decide it's time. I close in on Virginia and don't feel anyone else challenging me from behind. Ok, I've got second place, now, can I reel in Flavia who has got a jump on me? Oh dangit, there goes my right hamstring cramping just at the wrong moment. Maybe 50 more meters and I would have had her, but the course ran out in 25. Flavia held on for first, and I took 2nd for the day. That's one season goal accomplished, and a fantastic course - everyone should get to race it next year. And to boot - you can stick around for the Tuolumne Crit the next day which is charming.