Hey Team,
I’m sure most of you tuned in yesterday to watch a very eventful Paris-Roubaix unfold, even though I’m still a little bummed they never show a women’s Paris-Roubaix. I’m sure women racers have just as much, if not more, enthusiasm about racing those cobbles as the men. I know I was envious. I just hope that one day maybe I’ll get the chance to race on one of those cobble stretches with an impossibly long and unpronounceable name, strewn with crazy spectators that make obstacles of themselves. For now, though, I’ll just have to settle for the bastard son of the Queen of the Classics; Hillsboro-Roubaix.
With this having been my fourth year of racing the grueling Hillsboro road race, I was surprised at how familiar I was with it. I could even point out the exact spot along the side of the road that, four years prior, I literally stopped mid-race and lay in a ditch. Better yet, my mom (who was also racing that day) eventually found me sprawled along the road and even stopped to give me a massage. Believe it or not, I actually got 13th place that year in the cat 4s.
But looking back on that pitiful day, I realize that I have come a long way, and I finally see how ridiculous I must have looked laying by the side of the road. I hope that most people have erased that from their minds by now. I can’t have Webcor or Colavita knowing about this. Quick roadside breaks are not exactly smiled upon in Paris-Roubaix, and worse yet, there’s a slight chance my mom might not be there to give me a massage.
Anyway, I felt confident as I lined up for the Roubaix once again. The course consisted of two 22-mile laps with a tough course mixed with nasty little bumps (as Sarah Tillotson once called them) and long, blustery stretches of road with no shelter from the wind. The final mile to the finish is a loop around the downtown area that takes you up a long, killer hill that leads into town (actually I think the only reason it seems so bad is because it’s at the very end) followed by a sharp turn and a fast descent onto…drum roll…THE COBBLES. I wish I could say Hillsboro contained 37 miles of cobbles like Paris-Roubaix, but I think it’s more like 0.37 miles. It’s just enough to make you realize that cobbles really aren’t that much fun. Just a tip: they look a LOT smoother than they really are.
Well, the race began and I made sure to situate myself in a decent position in the top fourth of the field. I figured I would have some time to get settled in before any major attacks came, but apparently the field thought otherwise. Rebecca Much (a Webcor Pro) sat in second position from the gun, using her unique ability to smell attacks and knowing that the winning move was just around the corner. We were not more than three miles into the race when the attack came on only the second hill of the day, and the field shattered instantly. A break of three ladies formed (including Rebecca, Catherine Walberg, and Sydney Brown), setting a record from the year before of the earliest successful break I have ever seen. Three other ladies and I formed the chase group. Indeed, this year the field was far more intense than the year before. Not only was it bigger, but the teams more vast and some of the big guns had come out to claim the prize of a stipend for free racing and lodging for Nature-Valley. There weren’t just cat 1’s in the field this year; there were Pros.
Since the break was not so far up the road (just a few hundred yards), I assumed we would reel them in in no time. 15 miles later, the three ladies were still just a tantalizing distance away. There is a possibility they could have been playing with us as a cruel joke. And just when I was starting to convince myself they were just a hallucination, the gap closed and we finally joined the front riders.
With my sharply honed senses, I could tell some of the ladies were getting tired. My first clue was after turning a corner when one lady hit the apex and made a straight, unwavering bee-line into the ditch. I battled internally on whether or not this was intentional. I, too, might have done the same thing four years ago. It was to no one’s surprise that she got dropped at the beginning of the second lap; I didn’t even see her go, she was just there one instant and gone the next. Perhaps a spectator can recount seeing a cat 1,2,3 lady laying by the side of the road, and maybe even stopped to give her a massage.
Once again we set off into the backroads rotating in our neat little paceline for one last 22 mile loop. We made good time at a pace of a little over 21 mph, especially considering the killer winds, which in some places seemed to be coming at us in all directions except from behind. The field was nowhere in sight, and a lady wearing all pink got a flat tire.
So coming into the final downtown mile there were only five little Indians left; the survivors on a long and treacherous journey over the Roubaix. The decisive attack came on the final long uphill when Rebecca Much exploded past the pace car (which got caught behind some other finishing riders) and gapped us as if we were standing still. My legs were shot from the many hard miles of racing, and I was instantly separated from the other ladies, and forced to finish in a grueling solo to fifth place. I was still pleased as punch that I managed to not only hang with, but work alongside the top riders in the region, not to mention racing and actually competing against a seasoned pro racer like Rebecca Much.
That definitely gives me incentive to train hard and race even harder to reach my goals this year. That includes making the junior national team and qualifying for Junior Worlds that will be held in Moscow, Russia in August. My first test in going to be in late May at the Junior World Trials in Nashville, Tennessee (Jenny Busch, I know you will be happy about this). If I manage to qualify, I’ll see if I can get away with wearing my ABD booties with my Team USA kit at Worlds.
Until my next adventure,
-Jessi
4/14/2009
4/10/2009
Prinner Report: Kenosha & Beloit
Hey Team,
It’s definitely about time I started with the rider reports again since I’ve finally got something to talk about (let’s face it, nobody really wants to hear a report on the indoor TTs. This is about the time of year that we all just prefer to forget about them).
My first race of the year brought me out to Kenosha to race on one of the widest, flattest courses I’ve ever seen in my life. Not to mention one of the windiest. And it didn’t help much that there was an airport next door, and a little ways from that a giant, smoke-belching factory of some sort. I was a bit tentative at first seeing this; not sure whether I would come home with some sort of a mutation. An extra leg wouldn’t hurt, really. Anyway, I didn’t come to Kenosha to race with the women, as most would have assumed, but instead my first race of the season was with the cat. 1,2 men. I thought it would be a good omen. Actually it was more just for training purposes, because you can’t really go any higher than the men’s 1,2 field. Well, I was definitely excited and ready to go out and kick some butt after a long, dull winter in the trainer (my rollers were out of commission for a while. I trained so hard that I snapped them right in half. If you ask Farrell he’ll say the molding was defective, but I like to think otherwise). Plus, I just received my brand new ABR license, even though I was a little bummed it didn’t rank me as Super Galactic Professional like I had asked. Oh well, maybe next year.
So the men’s 1,2 race began with a meager field of about 25 guys on the line (I was really hoping for a Superweek turnout of at least 120), but I still got my workout by sitting in and practiced basic pack-racing skills like moving up, holding my line through turns, fending off riders to keep my position and blowing snot on the rider behind me. Since a decent sized breakaway had gotten away early on in the race, I figured going for the win was futile, and besides that the wind was really a monster and nobody’s bridging attempts were making it very far. Rob Jungals attacked and stayed away to the finish on the last lap, while I attempted to secure a good position for the field sprint. I somehow went from third rider with half a lap to being boxed in at the back by the last straightaway, so I counted it as a pack finish. I was pretty pleased, though, with my first performance of the year, and I didn’t go home with an extra arm sticking out of my head from that scary factory.
The next weekend I showed up at Beloit with only one desire in my mind as I stepped out of the car—to go home. For some reason I had it in my mind the day before that it was going to be sunny and beautiful up at the crit/speedway, even though people were telling me left and right that it was going to miserable and possibly even snow. So when I arrived at the race the following weekend, I was actually surprised to find that it was really, really cold. And windy. And believe it or not, the course was even wider and flatter than Kenosha, seeing as though it was actually a racecar course.
I was even more surprised to find that about 12 women had actually decided to show up. Did they, too, share the same mental delusion as me? My own teammate, Sue, should have known better than this. She pretty much all but writes a research paper on every race she does. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt the odds of her knowing the ground temperature as well as the atmospheric pressure that day. The day before she had been wisely hesitant about going, but I coaxed her with super slick words and convinced her to suffer with me anyway.
So my original race strategy had been to wait until about halfway through the race to attack since it was 55 minutes long, and I figured that way I would conserve my own energy as well as whittle down the field’s. Well, it sure sounded like a good plan, but in reality I attacked on the first lap, sending my race strategy right out the window. Immediately a group of about five ladies formed and we worked together trading off pulls, steadily increasing our gap from the field. That’s pretty much all we did for 55 minutes. I decided not to attack since one of the riders was Kristen Wentworth, a super strong lady on Kenda Tire who is known for being a powerhouse. To attack her would be like me trying to wrestle a grizzly bear. Absolutely pointless. So I put my money on the final sprint, hoping she wasn’t amazing at that, too. The final lap arrived and Wentworth tried a beast of an attack, but I managed to catch her before any large distance was put between us. For the remainder of the lap I sat on her wheel and then began my sprint way too early and suffered all the way to the finish line. But I still won. And I got two waterbottles and a baselayer long-sleeve out of it. Hallelujah.
‘Till next time,
-Jessi
It’s definitely about time I started with the rider reports again since I’ve finally got something to talk about (let’s face it, nobody really wants to hear a report on the indoor TTs. This is about the time of year that we all just prefer to forget about them).
My first race of the year brought me out to Kenosha to race on one of the widest, flattest courses I’ve ever seen in my life. Not to mention one of the windiest. And it didn’t help much that there was an airport next door, and a little ways from that a giant, smoke-belching factory of some sort. I was a bit tentative at first seeing this; not sure whether I would come home with some sort of a mutation. An extra leg wouldn’t hurt, really. Anyway, I didn’t come to Kenosha to race with the women, as most would have assumed, but instead my first race of the season was with the cat. 1,2 men. I thought it would be a good omen. Actually it was more just for training purposes, because you can’t really go any higher than the men’s 1,2 field. Well, I was definitely excited and ready to go out and kick some butt after a long, dull winter in the trainer (my rollers were out of commission for a while. I trained so hard that I snapped them right in half. If you ask Farrell he’ll say the molding was defective, but I like to think otherwise). Plus, I just received my brand new ABR license, even though I was a little bummed it didn’t rank me as Super Galactic Professional like I had asked. Oh well, maybe next year.
So the men’s 1,2 race began with a meager field of about 25 guys on the line (I was really hoping for a Superweek turnout of at least 120), but I still got my workout by sitting in and practiced basic pack-racing skills like moving up, holding my line through turns, fending off riders to keep my position and blowing snot on the rider behind me. Since a decent sized breakaway had gotten away early on in the race, I figured going for the win was futile, and besides that the wind was really a monster and nobody’s bridging attempts were making it very far. Rob Jungals attacked and stayed away to the finish on the last lap, while I attempted to secure a good position for the field sprint. I somehow went from third rider with half a lap to being boxed in at the back by the last straightaway, so I counted it as a pack finish. I was pretty pleased, though, with my first performance of the year, and I didn’t go home with an extra arm sticking out of my head from that scary factory.
The next weekend I showed up at Beloit with only one desire in my mind as I stepped out of the car—to go home. For some reason I had it in my mind the day before that it was going to be sunny and beautiful up at the crit/speedway, even though people were telling me left and right that it was going to miserable and possibly even snow. So when I arrived at the race the following weekend, I was actually surprised to find that it was really, really cold. And windy. And believe it or not, the course was even wider and flatter than Kenosha, seeing as though it was actually a racecar course.
I was even more surprised to find that about 12 women had actually decided to show up. Did they, too, share the same mental delusion as me? My own teammate, Sue, should have known better than this. She pretty much all but writes a research paper on every race she does. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt the odds of her knowing the ground temperature as well as the atmospheric pressure that day. The day before she had been wisely hesitant about going, but I coaxed her with super slick words and convinced her to suffer with me anyway.
So my original race strategy had been to wait until about halfway through the race to attack since it was 55 minutes long, and I figured that way I would conserve my own energy as well as whittle down the field’s. Well, it sure sounded like a good plan, but in reality I attacked on the first lap, sending my race strategy right out the window. Immediately a group of about five ladies formed and we worked together trading off pulls, steadily increasing our gap from the field. That’s pretty much all we did for 55 minutes. I decided not to attack since one of the riders was Kristen Wentworth, a super strong lady on Kenda Tire who is known for being a powerhouse. To attack her would be like me trying to wrestle a grizzly bear. Absolutely pointless. So I put my money on the final sprint, hoping she wasn’t amazing at that, too. The final lap arrived and Wentworth tried a beast of an attack, but I managed to catch her before any large distance was put between us. For the remainder of the lap I sat on her wheel and then began my sprint way too early and suffered all the way to the finish line. But I still won. And I got two waterbottles and a baselayer long-sleeve out of it. Hallelujah.
‘Till next time,
-Jessi
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)