Fitchburg -Days 3 & 4

More news from Anna:
Well, Fitchburg's over and clearly the score is bad luck: 2, Altarum 0 for the weekend. Sorry to disappoint.
The road race was solid for me. I was still feeling pretty wiped out, but able to ride into it, and it's the kind of course that suits me; climbs but nothing longer than a few minutes. I was doing a good job of riding forward and was in several non-breaks (ie. we got a bit of space from the field, but didn't organize). We got neutralized for the pro-men to pass us, and apparently the field had split and regrouped after that (I hadn't even noticed we'd shed that many people). That was on the top of the hill, because clearly the organizers like stopping us after doing a whole bunch of work, instead of after the downhill, once things have had an opportunity to shake out... anyway, at the bottom of the descent on the second to last lap, 4 women sprinted off and surprisingly the field didn't shut them down.
On the climb, I was with the front of the field, and maybe 6-8 of us had a sizeable gap, and Alison Powers used her fearless alpine skier guts to tear it up on the downhill, and while the group never organized and were caught (Alison and Evie, who were 1 second apart in the GC were playing mental games, and the rest of us weren't going to put in work uselessly) we reeled in 3 of the 4 women, leaving Andrea Dvorak to solo it for the rest of the lap to the finish, and she held off the field by 11 seconds.
Once our group got caught again, I had a bit of trouble staying right up at the front, so climbed across the line in 16th place, which is solid, and I'm satisfied with the way I rode, and the way I stayed where I needed to be.
In the evening, I went down to the river to watch fireworks, 'cause why not, really.
The road race in the hot sun took a lot of energy out of me, but I felt OK warming up for the crit. Unfortunately, I got a flat warming up with 15 or so min. to race start, so borrowed a neutral wheel... after 9 or 10 laps, the chain popped off the cassette and jammed, and they pulled me within a lap and a half of that, since that's not the kind of mechanical that gets you a free lap, and I slowed up at the pit to ask instead of just hammering on alone.
SO, that's it. DNF for me. Bummer. I've had nothing but trouble from the shifting on this bike, so I should have known it was finicky and just asked the neutral dude to replace the tube and waited...lesson learned.
Peace,
Anna