Greenbelt B Race 5/07

Some of you may have noticed a subtle change in my blog. It’s very slight… instead of green on black it’s now blue on black. Why? Because I’m on a new team!!! Not that my blog colors matched my kit colors before but I thought it would be kinda cool.

I’m very excited about my new team, C3-Sollay.com, and made my debut in the black and blue last night at the Greenbelt race. (A special thanks to Beth for bringing me a jersey.) I’ve stepped-up to the B race so I was not sure how long I could hold on, especially considering my legs were already burning on the ride up to Greenbelt trying to keep up with Sonja. Her easy pace seems to be my tempo these days. Thankfully, she would be racing the A’s tonight.

The first couple of laps were fast and a couple of the other women fell victim to the pace leaving Sara Z and Wendy, both from Cyclelife, and me to mix it up with the boys. I actually never saw Wendy during the race as she was pushing the pace at the front while Sara and I were mid-pack and working on our pack-riding skills :-). At one point I noticed we were riding 20-22 mph up “the hill” and I thought to myself, “I just want to hang on for 2 more laps.” Unfortunately, on the next lap on the long sweeping and very fast downhill, some dude hit a pothole and went down taking Sara with him. I know... never look back, but it was Sara, someone I consider a friend so I glanced over my shoulder to see if she was ok at which point I lost contact with the pack. It didn’t matter anyway, my head was out of the game after that but I had met my goal of hanging on for over half the race. Yipee! And Sara is fine… just a couple of scrapes and bruises. She didn’t even tear a hole in her kit.

So once again, a race ended prematurely for me because of a pothole! Oh, I guess I never wrote a Poolesville race report but if I had it would have been titled “Done in by a Pothole” and that’s pretty much Poolesville in a nutshell for me.