So Winter held off for a day, and gave us beautiful clear, Spring-like skies for the Mt Hamilton Classic. Oh wait... that would be because it actually is Spring! Oops, who would have known?! Either way it was a beautiul day, and with the 30km, 4,600 ft climb up Mt Hamilton looming over the 30 something women standing at the start line of the 100k race, it was set to live up to its name, and be an absolute classic.
The moto towed us through the neutral section to the base of the mountain, and then the race was on - and it was on like donkey kong!! Jane Despas from Yahoo put in the first attack, and within the first 3km the field had completely shattered. There were big bucks on offer for the first over the top of the mountain, but had someone forgotten to inform half the field that the climb was actually 30km, not 3?!
Flavia Oliviera floated up the road as if we were standing still, sandwiched by two Peanut Butter girls, Tayler and Alison. Others tried in vain to go with, but soon dropped off the pace. So now it was a matter of settling into a good rythym and hoping that we could keep the gap to a minimum by the top.
Tapping away with my group of four or so, suddenly out of thin air popped Flavia! I heard later that she apparently had a mechanical, but on the down low I swear I saw the remnants of some tea and scones in those bushes. So after fixing her 'mechanical' and waiting for the rest of us to catch up, she jumped back into the race, and jumped right away again, adding insult to injury and dropping us for a second time, and going on to claim the QOM bounty.
More than an hour later, which included an uphill crash and some pointless attacks from my small chase group, we crested Hamilton, and zipped up the windvests and pulled on the armwarmers to face the descent and remaining 70km journey to Livermore.
In true Norcal racing tradition, the race wouldn't be complete without some interesting course features, which today happened to be cattle grids on the fast and windy descent. Having only heard tales of this fabled descent, I approached with caution, but soon decided to let that go with the headwind that would later face us, and pushed ahead eager to make up some of the time lost on the climb. Catching 2 of Flavia's other victims, the race was now on to close the gap to the 3 leaders.
Coming off the descent, and moving on to the rollers that followed, my new chase group, consisting of Susannah from Freemont Bank and Christina from Specialized/Missing Link, got some nice turns rolling and we had them in our sights. Olivia from Peanut Butter had also joined us, but with her teammates sandwiching Flavia up the road, she could catch a free ride on our train. Once they were in our sites, Olivia decided we'd delivered her nicely to her station, and turned the after burners on and took off, now resorting to her own big TT engine. Big kudos to Susannah and Christina who played it cool and kept our little train chugging away at a nice steady pace that would eventually get us all back on. We were awesome team mates... at least for those 15 or so kilometres.
Now there was a lead group of 7 girls - almost half of which were Peanut Butter's super strong time triallers, so understandably after clearing the worst of the rollers, which were peppered by a few little attacks just to get a feel for how everyone was going, the real attacks started. By this stage the group of 7 had now become 9, with Beth from Fremont Bank and Molly from Metromint latching back on. But really apart from the two Freemont girls, it was Peanut Butter up against a heap of lonely riders, which obviously played into their hands.
One after the other the Peanut Butter girls launched off the front - so predictable, but effective all the same. When you have strength, why bother with stealth?! The first half dozen or so times, some sort of a chase was formed and they were reeled back in, but eventually it became too much, with too few people willing to risk their legs for the benefit of the group, and Olivia escaped out of sight, never to be seen again.
Molly from Metromint showed her time trialling prowess and moved to the front to tow us all to the line at a steady rate of knots, into an equally steady headwind. She kept the pace that high that no-one really attempted to get off the front in the race for 2nd place, and so we crossed the bridge with about 1.5km to go, chase group in tact.
Strung out tip to tail, it was going to be a fast finish. Sensing the need to move up, Flavia moved out of the pace line, getting out of the saddle to kick ahead, and unfortunately was bucked by her bike and came down hard. A very unfortunate end to the day for someone who had made the race up Hamilton her own.
With a bit under a k to go Starnes launched an early dash for the line, dangling off the front until the pack charged, lead by her teammate Tayler who held off Beth Newell to make it a well deserved Peanut Butter 1-2. They may have had the numbers, but you still have to pull it together and execute, and they did just that, riding a tactically impressive and powerful race.
Webcor came in 4th. We may not have quite made the podium, but to just finish that race, and say that you conquered Mt Hamilton is pretty good I reckon. Nice work to all the girls on toughing it out.
happy riding
Bec
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