By Lina Martensson -- Burlingame Crit (W1-3) -- 06/27/10
It's important to have goals in racing, or you'll never get anywhere. So I set two goals for my first 1/2/3 race in Burlingame:
1. Eat princess cake* at the Copenhagen Bakery
2. Win the award for most aggressive racer, since I like wine.
One of these goals is usually harder to achieve than the other, but since the Copenhagen Bakery is located inside the race course at Burlingame the roles were reversed and the second goal would be the more difficult one for this particular race.
Knowing that I don't really belong in a 1/2/3 race, I lined up at the front so as not to give away my secret suckiness right away. There was an actual miniature cannon set off by teammate Laurie Simonsen to signify our start! The announcer said to cover the ears, but I guess that doesn't go for racers.
Off we went and my fine starting position didn't help me much as I soon had lots of people ahead of me. That wasn't going to stop me from trying to achieve my goals, so on the second lap or so I attacked from way too far back in the pack! No dice, that just landed Jane Despas on my wheel (Aaah! I'm racing with Jane!), and the rest of the pack on hers.
While other people attacked on prime laps and whatnot, that's not what I was going for. I'm not going to win a prime anyway, so I'll just go whenever I can! Which wasn't really much of the time... but hey, whenever I could, I did! Sitting in is boring.
But the heat (approximately 874 degrees C) and the pace was getting to me, and after a bit, all I could do was to sit in - and by "sit in" I mean "dangle on the back". I was in deep s*** as a gap opened up between me and the pack, but I either had to drink, or puke. Since drinking water is one of my big hobbies and puking is not, I opted for the former, despite knowing how dangerous it is to let a gap open up. But with all the corners that came up right then, I easily got back on and felt a little bit better.
Rikke Preisler (fellow Scandinavian who I was hoping to see at the bakery after!) was trying to encourage me or something as she said "only 10 to go" at some point, which I optimistically interpreted as minutes but as we came around for the next lap I realized that she meant laps. Dammit.
I think attacks were hailing but how would I know, from my position close to the back! Ex-teammate and mentor in the 4 races Elis Bradshaw started a great attack from just in front of me (Aaah! I'm racing with Elis!), and wouldn't it have been awesome if I could've hung on to her wheel, but I just can't accelerate like that. My attempts at attacks had mostly dwindled but oh hey, there's that girl that's sketched me out in races before - ATTACK! Oh wait, that landed me about two wheels up and now I'm back in the same position again.
Yukie (Aaah! I'm racing with Yukie!) suddenly came up near me and said something I couldn't hear but I think it ended with "let's go!" or something equally efficient at me getting on her wheel which would've been great had I not lost it to someone cooler than me within a few hundred meters and back I was to dangling on the back.
And with two laps to go someone crashed right next to me in one of the sweepers. Aaah! Like a good bike racer, I tried to pretend it didn't happen so as not to freak out and rode on. As we came back around the marshal (Hi Mark!) was standing in the middle of the road telling us to slow down and I saw Yukie walk off the road. Crap! She's had really bad luck this year, but walking is good.
Back at the start line, we were stopped and were told we would be restarted with 5 laps to go. Since I was cooked and all I wasn't really looking forward to doing 5 more rather than 1 more, but at least I had time to drink some water. I also realized that while we had been racing, the temperature had risen to 1035 degrees C so no wonder I was feeling like shit! That slug of water did good though and I survived the final five laps and had a good time, decided to screw any semblance of tactics and just went as hard as I could with half a lap to go which turned out to be a good idea since I moved through like a third of the pack and just barely finished in the first 2/3rds, nearly beating Annie Fulton (Aaah! I'm racing with Annie!) but she had me by four inches.
This was f****** rad. I never do well at crits, but my new bike is AMAZING and it's probably the best crit bike ever (too bad I don't do it justice!). But if I'm going to finish in a sucky position in a crit, I may as well have fun and go really hard and die during the race rather than feel great, feel great, oh what a lovely leisurely Sunday ride we're out on, hey crap now everyone sprinted ahead of me again!
Then Max and I had princess cake at the Copenhagen Bakery. One out of two goals achieved, that's good enough for me!
*) This is my favorite type of cake. It's Swedish, and hard to find around here. You can buy frozen ones at The Ethnic Grocery Store (tm) (aka IKEA), but frozen cake isn't that great.
*** No, that wasn't actually a footnote, that was censorship since there could be all these families that jump at all my race reports as soon as I write them.
****** Anyone who has six footnotes in a text this short has a serious problem.