Cascade Stage Race: Stage 2 & 3

Here is Emily Foxman's race report for stages 2 & 3 of Cascade Stage Race.

Cascade Day 3: stage 2 time trial
at last it was the day for the time trial one of my favorite
disciplines and the one i thought i would get my best result in at
cascade. my race wasn't until the afternoon so i was able relax in the
morning before my time trial. I had
one of the earlier start times, but I still had a good amount of
people in front of me so I got to chase (yay! it's always more fun to
be able to catch and pass people :P) I was pretty excited for this
stage I had previously had a great result of a slightly longer version
of this course at elite nationals (in which i was 2nd of U23 women). I
started out hard since on this course the way back was mostly downhill
there wasn't much point to trying to save energy for the end. I was
feeling pretty good and passed 4 or 5 people ahead of me. I finished
with a time of 40'40" in 49th. looking back I think there were a few
places on the descent i should have gone faster, but it was also a
really strong field with a lot of pros that I look up to, and next
year i'll return for a better result!

Cascade day 4: stage 3 Cascade Lakes Road Race
well today was a lot hard than I thought it should have been,
considering it was the "easy stage" of the race. I probably should
have spent a bit more time warming-up in before and a bit less time
worrying about the race, but live and learn... The race started out
tough, there was a climb right from the gun and I think the front of
the pack was drilling it at the front to shed some of the field, or
maybe it just felt like it because I wasn't quite ready to jump from
the gun... so I started out chasing, I caught back on but I realized I
need to spend some more time working on my descending skill with a
large pack to increase my comfort level, or just think less and trust
my bike more. after the repeated bouts of chasing
back to the pack I cracked with a little less than 20k to go, which
was probably the result of me not taking in enough nutrition during
the race, which i will definitely pay more attention to in the future.
I was however, still able to finish within the time cut (sigh of
relief) and i think i am now more aware of a lot of things i need to
work on and will hopefully be better and more prepared next year!
either way I'm going to keep going as long as i can and not give up,
at least I'm still in the race!

--Emily

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