3rd at PR

The rain held off long enough to have a nice race at PR and enough women showed to run a beginner / Cat 4 split race. We all did a neutral lap down the escape route and then the Cat 4s continued that route while the beginner group stayed on the flats.

Only one other woman besides me, Julie, has been there every week and races with the beginner group. When the race started we were both mixed into the Cat 4 group and when we looked behind us the rest of our field was about a half lap behind. We decided to slow and wait for everyone to catch up, but maybe we should have just dropped the hammer and gone -- oh well.

Once everyone caught up we ended up riding in a single paceline for about 2-3 laps before I started thinking, "Ok, this sucks. Somebody do something!" Julie must have been thinking that too because both her and I attacked at the same time and started having some fun. A few girls went with us and we finally had a race! The beginners tend to be very relunctant to be aggressive and attack.

Most of the night was frustrating in that Julie and I were doing all of the work. Everytime we were in a paceline of about 3-4 riders no one else would pull! They would just sit off the back and let us do everything. At one point a girl got away a bit and we were the only ones willing to work to chase her down. Even Martha said, "That's not nice. They're making you do all the work!"

With about two laps to go Julie and I caught the girl that had been dangling out front and dropped everyone else. This girl was a little difficult to ride behind because she wobbled and didn't ride very steadily, but I was trying my best to be patient and make her do some work for a change. We came around the final corner to the finish and Julie hammered in with the other girl right behind her. As seems to be typical for me, I just couldn't hang and ended up 3rd. Argh! Julie got the win and the only prime of the night. After the race I was very frustrated as again I didn't think I gave it a good enough effort. Every week I work hard the entire race and then get dropped on the last corner to the sprint. I'm very irritated with myself. It seems I am just not a strong rider on the flats, I really need to work on this. Where's my hills?

At least I learned more again tonight. Mostly, I learned that doing all the work sucks! I did learn that Julie and I should have done shorter pulls to keep ourselves fresh. And maybe we shouldn't have waited on the pack in the beginning...maybe we should have just lapped them.

I'm in second place overall in the series right now with 4 races left I think. Unfortunately racing doesn't come back to PR until July so it looks like I'll be doing Seward in the coming weeks. I had considered doing the Ballard Crit tomorrow, but after hearing Gina say that her goal is to hang for 5 minutes I decided I'd be donating my money to race for 5 seconds, so I think I'll show up with a camera and cheer on the Zoka guys instead.