Three for Three

Apparently my back wheel is some kind of magnet that draws other bicycles into it. Or perhaps it's a vortex, I'm not sure. What I do know is that in three weeks, I've done three races, been involved in three incidents, and had three wheel repairs...

Saturday was the Lake Sunapee Bike Race. The first seven or so miles are flat, and then the hills start. After what happened at Sterling last week, I kept thinking about those first few miles and wondering how sketchy it was going to be, especially with a women's Cat 4 field of 34 pre-registered riders. That's a really large field for Cat 4.

I felt a bit sick to my stomach the night before the race, and that feeling carried over into the morning as well. When the race started, I didn't feel like I wanted to mix it up in the front, and I was sort of hanging back a little, hiding in the middle of the field.

There was a lot of nervousness: the pace was fast, then slow; people were moving around a lot, and then randomly you'd hear "slowing, slowing"! At one point my teammate Katherine S. got a gap on everyone else, but she got reeled back in.

After about 4 miles or so, I heard crashing noises from behind me, then I felt major impact on my back wheel, and something pulling me over on my right side. There was a rider to my right and slightly ahead, and as I started to "fall" towards her, I shifted my weight, controlled my bike, then regained my balance and kept going. I heard weird sounds coming from my drivetrain, and looked down to see my derailleur in a strange position and the chain rattling around in it oddly. I wasn't sure how badly it was damaged or if I should continue, but I shifted through all the gears in the cassette and they all worked.

The noises were especially bad in my easiest gear (25), but other than that it seemed stable. I couldn't see the derailleur hitting the spokes, but that's sort of what it sounded like. Anyway, by this point I had drifted off the back of the pack, but decided to continue and chased back on with several other racers who had been delayed by the crash.

After we turned onto route 11, we started to overtake the other women's (Cat 1-2-3) field. They were racing two laps to our one, so they were probably going easier at the start. The same thing happened last year.

When we hit the big climb they started passing us back. It was a little awkward. One of the riders in my field dropped her chain, but reacted to it very safely, told everyone what had happened, and people just went around her. I worked really hard to get over the crest of that hill more or less in the middle of the main pack of riders. I passed a lot of people and I was really happy about it untill I realized that the crest wasn't the top - there was still more climbing to do. Oh no!

Most of the folks that I had passed started to overtake me and I jumped on Leah's wheel (Cambridge) as she came by. I managed to stay with her until the middle of the second hill, but my legs had turned to mush and she just rode away from me.

I pushed hard to try to catch her on the downhill, but couldn't. After a while I looked back and saw a group behind me. One of the riders was teammate Loraine, and I was really happy to have them join me. We had a group of five for a while, but at the next big hill, one woman rode away from all of us and sadly Loraine popped off the back.

I worked with the two other women for the rest of the race, Jill (Cambridge) and Carol (Portland Velo). We got a nice double rotating paceline going and it felt good (although the noise from my derailleur was annoying and I was really missing the 25 on the hills). About a mile from the rotary before the finish, we caught a Noreast rider who had been dangling in front of us for about 10 miles. The four of us entered the rotary together, but Jill and Noreast climbed up the finish hill much faster than I could, with Carol finishing just behind me.

I was both pleased and disappointed with my result. I would have liked to have placed better, but all things considered, it wasn't too bad. I sort of wonder what would have happened if my bike hadn't been damaged, but in reality, stuff just happens.

I completed this race 3 minutes faster than I did last year. So that's some measurable progress, at least.

Huge congratulation to my teammate Shannon who got 2nd place! She's riding super-strong this year.