DINO #1 Winona Lake
The first race of the weekend was held at Warsaw, IN at Winona Lake. Warsaw is about 5 hours north of Evansville. So I took Friday off and went up early to pre-ride the course. It was dry and it was fast, which made me excited. However, this race series is not my 'A' race series, it is my 'B' series. I basically am using this series as a training tool for me. DINO doesn't have the same distance for men and women. The women always does a lap shorter than their male counterparts. Which is really annoying to me because we can last just as long if not longer. I find really dumb. But in this case it kind of works for me. Since DINO is not a USAC sactioned series anymore, I am able to move up a cat than what my license is for. Now I am not anywhere close to being a cat 1 racer yet, but to get there I need to be chasing these fast women. And that is what I plan to do. I go the same distance that I would in a cat 2 race, but I am needing to push harder to even want to be a competitor.
Race day nerves kick in as soon as I get to the course Saturday. I warm up and start getting excited. 11 cat 1 racers! Wow that is the biggest field I have ever been in before. I breath and tell myself to get into the woods in the back. I don't want to blow my legs up. The whistle blows and we are off. I get into the woods 8th. The start in the woods is a little slow and it made me realize that I probably don't want to start for far back if I want to be a real competitor in the future. I lost the top tier pretty fast with a few in front either crashing or slowing the pace and just with the cat 2 men who GOT TO START IN FRONT OF THE CAT 1 WOMEN RACERS. No, it's fine. That doesn't seem dumb at all. Whatever. I got around the girl who started in front of me when she went down about a mile in. But I got passed by the girl who started out behind me. So I kept my placing, but came in 7th only because one of the top women crashed and DNFed.
I went slightly faster than I had intended and was lucky that this course wasn't hilly and technical. Because if it had, my legs would have been even heavier the next day. After the race I jumped in the car and made the long drive back home only to pack my bag and clean my bike for the next day.
Race day #2 at Land Between the Lakes
Now I'm not sure if she knew what she was doing, but when Christie said she was expecting a sprint at the beginning, it got in my head that I needed to go full out if I wanted to get in a good spot. My original strategy was to go in behind Christie and Abby and just hang on. Instead I got to the woods first and no one was close enough for me to let in. So first in I went. And I got excited and forgot it was wet. So first corner and on the ground I was. I let Abby and Christie in front and jumped back up in front of the next woman because if I wasn't in the top 3 to begin with, no way would I get back to the top 3. I was lucky enough to keep the 2 others in eye shot for about 20 minutes before they started to pull away faster and faster. But I kept pedaling as fast as my legs would let me.
My first lap I had averaged 10 mph. But I knew that I wasn't going to keep that speed the whole time during my second lap. When I was entering the woods for it, someone had told me that the girl in front of me was really close and I could catch them. That fueled me to push and go hard. I found them early on in lap 2 and was excited only to be disappointed to see that it was a cat 1 woman. Not someone I was going to be wanting to hold onto or pass or be next to on the podium. And it made me question where Abby was.
After passing Marsha, I was sure that the person behind me was the 4th place cat 2 woman. I don't know why, but I wasn't seeing pink in the kit, just navy. Which was the color of the stanky creek riders. It made me panic. No way did I just work really hard on the first lap to have not gotten any gap on her. And every time I saw her during a corner, I would pick the pace up and push for as hard as I could until I didn't see her any longer.
I've never gotten cramps during a race or a ride before until this lap. My legs were hurting. And they wanted so badly to stop and rest. LBL isn't a flat course. No the canal loop is climbing, and I knew that if I had to get off my bike and push it up any of those hills, I was done. So when I got to a hill, I cried through the pain. I'm not being playful either. I literally cried. It was terrible. But not once did I ever stop pedaling. Because that girl would just pop back up and make me ride even harder to make up for the slow climb I just did.
The last 3 miles are the toughest. Because you have almost the majority of your hills back to back with no place to keep your momentum going. You are relying on your strength. And when I realized this and that the next racer was close, I cried again. I did not want to lose my spot on the last 3 fucking miles. I would get off my bike and throw it at her if it had happened (okay not really but I would have been slightly sad). I started out the first climb and boom, there she is. And I started to panic and tried to push until I felt vomit in my mouth from overexerting. I took a breath and just called out, "please tell me this is Marsha who is behind me." "Yes, it's me." The sweetest answer I heard. I took another deep breath and kept on climbing.
LBL wasn't all about skills or speed. That was probably my first lap. It became about strength and mentality on the second. As long as I said I could, I did. If my mind was I can't, then I wouldn't have finished. I would have stopped on the 3 sisters climb, laid down and died on the side of the trail. I was so happy to have finished with my goal of placing 3rd. My body is strong and I love it for not stopping.
