The Hop

This is actually going to be a timely race report.  Yesterday was the race formerly known as the Bunny Hop.  They went cutesy and flipped it to the Hunny Bop, but it just doesn't sound right, so "The Hop" is my take on it.  It's only about 5 miles from my house so I actually get to ride to the race.

Hot and humid and generally nasty is how to best describe the weather.  Unlike Saturday, where the humidity was a little lower, Sunday brought a hazy blue-grey sky.  Oh well, what do you expect in mid-July here in the swampland??  I'd gone ahead and registered for two fields, even before I knew for sure that I wouldn't have to set aside my racing to fill in as Chief Judge.  Happily Caitlyn stepped up to do that, so I got to race.

Lisa took care of all the support stuff - number pinning, setting up the canopy, etc.  I seldom bother with the canopy when I don't have her along as support... too much hassle for too little return.

First up was the women's 40+.  There was an immediate crisis in that somehow the BikeReg page information got entered wrong and there was a 30-minute discrepancy in the start time for the race.  In the end the officials were nice enough to recognize that most of us don't download the official flyer, we rely on the data entered into BikeReg and honored the later start time.  That gave us 30 minutes of warm up on the course.  I couldn't tell how I was going to feel in the race.  The warm up felt crappy - which is how it's supposed to feel...get all that crappy feeling out before the race.  I decided to race the Cane Creeks, though I'm still not totally happy with the behavior of the front wheel so far as airing it up goes, it seemed to air up pretty well.  They're great wheels and it's good to use them for more than TTs.

I raced hard in this race.  I wasn't worried about saving anything for the next race.  I did my best to help chase down early break attempts, throw a scare or two into the field, and, of course, recover in between.  It was a fairly fast race.  Cat and CK were racing as well, but we didn't have any sort of team strategy planned.  Cat took 2nd in a 2-place prime.  CK finally got away in a small break between the leaders and the field.  I moved up to the front to disrupt the chase at that point.  Cheryl Osborne did her best to be helpful by calling out to me as I made the move up the outside of the field that I had a teammate in the break.  I knew that, but nice of her to let me know in case I hadn't known. Sometimes you can miss important stuff like that and inadvertently chase down a teammate.  CW was doing most of the chasing so I did my best to discourage that activity.   Once the message got across, I eased up a bit.  No one bothered to take over or chase any more.  Gabanski decided to attack into the first turn on the bell lap.  Well, I couldn't let that go - a matter of personal pride - so I dragged the field around the backside to catch her going into the final turn.  It cost me a place or two in the field sprint, but it was worth it to turn up the tempo one last time.  I'm fine with having finished 9th, and really happy that CK took 4th.

There were some squirrels in that field though.  One woman, wearing BBC colors, didn't even know enough to have her inside pedal up when taking a turn.  So I had to teach her that before she crashed herself (and maybe others) out of the race.  Dana needs to learn how to hold her line....she was all over the place.  In Linh's case I think she's just too small to be able to have good control over the bike.  

I could go cliche here and suggest that they both need stronger cores, but "core" has gotten to be sooo annoyingly cliche...suddenly a "stronger core" the answer to every athlete's woes.  Ain't no doubt, you need a strong core to race a bike well because the core is how you isolate the leg power and translate it fully....upper body motion is wasted energy.  But I'll argue that you need some arm strength too - we're not talking bodybuilding here, just enough arm strength to control the front end and to bunny hop a bottle or other hazard as need be.  So do your crunches and get some dumbells and do some bicep and tricep work.

Post-race, I didn't waste any time getting back to the car and sitting down in the shade.  I downed a bottle of water right away, then started trying to dry off a bit while I took in my recovery bottle (Recoverite with Endure added in).  In the shade with the breeze, it was halfway nice.  Lisa's car took some bumps and bruises though as the canopy had gotten blown into it during the race.  She'd set up the trainer, but I never did use it.  I had the on course warm up (plus the ride over) to prep for the first race and I was thinking that for the 2nd race,  rest and recovery were paramount.  Not like my muscles were going to get physically cold in 95+ degree air.

I had thought the second race was a Women's 1/2/3...but it turned out to be a 1/2/3/4 with the 3s racing for a separate prize list.  I wasn't thrilled about racing with 4s.  And of course the younger racers would have fresh legs so it would undoubtedly be a challenging race experience.  What the hell... I could always pull out if it seemed too sketchy.  I had no clue how I would feel.  Two warm up laps and let's get it on.  I hung on for dear life for two thirds of the race.  I had enough to hang on but nothing more.  Not sure what happened with Eva, it seemed as if she got curbed by Marni - that is, it looked like they'd both ended up going really wide on the second turn and Eva just ended up hitting the curb and getting dumped into the grass.  Didn't look serious but I told Matt there was a rider down when I went through start/finish.  A lap or two latter, Marni & Jen Maxwell almost took each other out.  And then there was some movement farther up in the field - sideways movement that almost took some folks out.  I think it was a combination of heat and fatigue causing these near misses rather than aggressive racing.  I popped when there was a surge for a prime lap.  Matt gave me a couple of laps to try to chase back on then said I was done with my "noble effort" as he called it.  I was ready to be done, I had nothing left.   I wasn't the first to get pulled, and I know several folks simply abandoned the race long before the pulling started.  End result - 22nd overall, 9th among the Cat 3s.  The race was a little more than 1mph faster than the 40+ race had been.  And the average temp was 101!

Overall it was a good race day....not a bad way to finish up with crit racing for the season as there are no more crits in MABRA and I think I'll go do the TT in VA on Sunday instead of driving to PA to do crits.  The TT will be better relative to Church Creek.

Decided to add some extra fun to Church Creek by hooking up with Tania and Amy to create a 3-woman team for the TTT competition.  And then, if I'm feeling really crazy, I'll drive down the Chesapeake for the final PLT TT.  Be a hard weekend but also the last of my racing until Turkey Day so what the hell?