The last major race of the season for most racers on the east coast, we sent one rider as school started for most of us - Kristy teaching in high school, I in administration and starting my first graduate class and the rest of us done for the season.
Okay, McLoon-inator started "school" too, working on her Ph.d. at Harvard but she was able to make the trip to GMSR. Here is her report. I am going to provide it in three or four parts as I could only read one day at a time. ~ Good luck with cross season to those racing; enjoy the break for those of you taking time to smell the peaches and apples. Michele
Hey friends! I hope those of you in ME had fun at Sheba's wedding, and Kate (big Kate), I hope your neck is healing well and your new school is good-Kristy and that life is oh so good for everyone else right now.
SO I was planning on only writing up a few words on the weekend, but y'all know by now that I'm not good at succinct race reporting...
Thursday: we (me and 2 other Harvard cyclists) drove up after I finished this CPR class I had to take in order to volunteer coach the Harvard skiers again this year...I pray to God I never have to do CPR on an actual person, though. After the long, traffic filled drive up to VT, we previewed the TT course as the sun was setting and narrowly avoided getting run over by a pickup. Fun times.
Friday: My time trial was early, which was good in some ways because it got windier later in the day. Anyway, I was not happy with my time trials earlier this season so have been working on time trialing for the past month or so and it totally paid off! I know reading about watts and stuff is boring as all anything, but I'm super proud that I gained almost 30 watts of average power over a 16-17 minute effort and improved my time by 45 seconds compared to last year, even though with the conditions most people were slower this year. I ended up second in the time trial by 7 seconds (helped no doubt by the playing field leveling "no aero bars/no TT bike" rule) which was awesome, but to be honest, I know the most important to me was knowing how much better I was compared to myself because that's all I can really control in a time trial.
Anyway, I sat around all day waiting first for Chris to finish his TT, making friends with a regional cat3 men's team in the process. Then we decided there wasn't time enough for us to go over the mountains and back in time for the awards, so we went to hang out with some of
his pro/cat1/cat2 male friends. Finally we made it over to my collegiate cycling friend Emma's house, where we had time to relax and settle in and generally chill with a gaggle of other cyclists and our hosts.
Saturday: I had a clear goal: get me the yellow jersey. I didn't think I had a shot at it when planning for the race a month ago, but since I figured out how to improve my TT by so much, I had to try! I also wanted the sprint leader's jersey, 'cause I was second in that competition last year and it's the prettiest jersey. SO I went for the sprint points the first lap, and went too early and came in 3rd. After that, we climbed up to the QOM point (it was a longer climb than
I remember from 2 years ago, but maybe that's just 'cause people were pushing hard up the climb from pretty much the bottom this year) and I was second over the top to Lea Davidson, a super nice woman and Vermont-native pro mountain biker. A few of us had a bit of a gap
over the top, but it quickly chased back together over the long descent. Noting how much effort the climb took, I decided to focus my energy on the GC and sprint jerseys. I do love hammering up the climbs, but reasonable is reasonable. I did a better job of timing the second sprint, so got the maximum points there, which was good, and then tried to conserve energy and plot my best for the finishing sprint. The pace really started ratcheting up the last 3-4 km and I
decided to shake things up a bit and was sitting on the left side of the pack. Someone attacked really early and in the shuffling, I was pushed out into the wind on the left and decided I'd better just go early than kill myself in the wind and risk not being able to react well enough. Emma Peterson, a super nice Kiwi from the Ultralink team, edged me out across the line, but I still had enough points and enough seconds of time bonus to be in the yellow and sprint leader's jerseys.
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