By Ryan Hostetter -- Butterfly Crit (W2) -- 06/06/10
So I am happy to say it has been a while since I have done a crit w/o my rad minty team mates, and for Butterfly I was flying old school-solo. The field was not too big (20 gals), the course was a bit technical, and as I sat at the start line I was trying to plan how I would approach this one:
1. conserve other then trying to follow fast girls and see if I can attach myself to a break
2. try to form my own break
2. sit around and do nothing
3. Let the ninja PLAY!
(for those of you know don’t know “little ninja” has been a nick-name of mine given to me a while ago when I was able to attack over and over during a race …. It has been a while for me to be able to do it again)
So no.’s 2& 3 it is! I really did not care about how I would finish but I thought it would be cool to practice forming breaks or getting into them and with this course and wind …. It was a good way to increase my odds of a podium if possible. As it turns out Mary Maroon was totally up for playing with me and we were mostly on the offensive back and forth. Along with Lauren Hecht we were off the front quite a bit. Then it happened….. the counter attack to Mary and I after one of our big efforts….. NOOOooooooooo and there it went…. Darnit! Well I guess you can’t form and be in all the breaks during the race. Jasmin Hurikino (III Pillar) and Haley Juno-Galdes (Webcor Alto Velo) got away from us with I believe it was Rita Szeto (Touchstone Cat3). That was the winning break… those girls were drilling it and eventually Rita got dropped from the break but by that time we could not catch the two leaders but did get to pick up Rita but by then the race was coming to an end really fast. Now I have to decide how to ride the end of the race: Well I want to be in the action so why not make it happen right? So I picked up the pace a hair the last lap and only Mary and Lauren jumped to come around me for the sprint… I just held my pace to finish for a respectable 5th!