Menlo Crit & Easter Classic Crit

Menlo Crit
Women 1/2/3
Place: mid-pack out of 47
Teammates: none, they were at Copperopolis

I did this race twice last year (W3 and W123) and liked it well enough, but
this year was so much better. Mostly it wasn't 45 degrees and raining, that
helped a lot. There also weren't any crashes this time around, and the race
felt very safe to me. I felt like this was a very good race for me, not
because I finished well, but because I learned some lessons and felt much
more solid cornering in a pack. Cornering has always been my weak spot in
races, but I've been working on it and I think I'm getting better and more
comfortable. Anyway, lesson #1 was don't work to bring back the break when
you don't have any teammates, especially when there are a couple of teams in
the pack that aren't represented in the break. Lesson #2 was don't bridge to
the break when the gap gets down to 6 seconds - I bridged across, but the
leaders were tired and the pack was hungry, so we got reeled in quite
quickly. Lesson #3 was move up in the pack early for the finish and stay
there - I lost position when the pack slowed with 1.5 laps to go and then
the speed picked up so I couldn't move up. Anyway, not a great result but a
good learning experience for me.

Easter Classic Crit
Women 1/2/3
Place: 10th of 14
Teammates: none today

This was a bit of an odd race, with two hairpin turns. The field was pretty
small, probably since it's a new race and a lot of people spend Easter
Sunday with family, etc. I rode over to the course for a nice 10 mile
warm-up and got there plenty early, which gave me time to watch the Masters
35+ 1/2/3 race and see just how brutal the wind was in combination with the
hairpins. I think their small pack split in two only a lap or two in, then
further splintered as the race went on, so I knew going into my race that
positioning was going to be key and no matter what, this race was going to
hurt.

Well, I may have known that positioning would be important, but
implementing that was a bit harder, and after about 15 minutes I got dropped
on a hairpin after a couple too many times around at the back of the pack
with tired legs. After not too long, Josie Morgan caught up to me, since
she'd been dropped too, and we settled into a nice long chase. For most of
the race, it looked like this: Liza Rachetto and Elis Bradshaw were off the
front widening their gap, there were 8 women in the pack, and then me and
Josie holding steady behind the pack. We went pretty hard the whole time,
not letting the pack get too far away from us, but we didn't really have a
chance of catching back on. So, we practiced our corning on the hairpins,
went hard out of every turn, and got some good training in. On the last lap
we passed another girl that had been dropped, and I beat Josie to get 10th.
At least we managed to not get lapped by the leaders, who were probably
about half a lap ahead of the pack and a quarter lap behind us by the end.