Cascade Crit

Heya Everyone,

The day started out great. Teammates Bec, Lauren Robertson, and I went on an

easy spin in the morning to check out tomorrow's circuit race course,

got our necessary dose of caffeine and spent some time checking out

downtown Bend and did a somewhat reconnaissance walk of the crit

course for later in the day.

We didn't race until 5:45pm so the rest of the day was pretty chill.

Then we road over to the course, signed in, and I went on a hunt for

free swag, but wasn't able to find too much.

Our race started out pretty well, I felt pretty good and was moving

up, but then all hell broke loose, I'm not 100% sure what happened,

but I crashed in turn 4 pretty early on in the race. I remember

something causing my rear wheel or derailleur to lock up and then I

gloriously somersaulted over my bike and was soon run over by a

cycling BC rider. I popped back up pretty quickly and ran (well ran as

well as I could in cleats with blood streaming down my leg) over to

the neutral support. Once I arrived I was put on our spare bike, the

team's somewhat TT setup Orbea, with a massively dropped stem, adamo

saddle, and reverse brakes that were not completely even. So that

definitely made it an interesting rest of the race. I was shaking from

either adrenaline or blood loss when I was being put back on the bike,

but our awesome DS, KCM, reminded me to breathe and got me to calm down

before I was put back into the race. I was a little nervous and became

aware of the issue with the brakes on our spare bike coming into turn

two when I almost slid out again, but luckily I was able to recover.

After that I just focused on staying in the race until the end and

making the time cut and with each progressive lap the raw road rash on

my left leg where there had been skin 40 minutes before was burning

more and more so I began counting down the laps until I could get it

cleaned up. Bec also had a bit of a mishap; her tire blew out after

turn 3 later on in the race, but she was able to get in and finish

with the pack. Though we had a few issues things still worked out. I

was able to finish the race with the bunch and we all made time cut,

and I'm still stoked to keep racing tomorrow

cheers

-Em