First Road Race Tomorrow

Hi people!! So tomorrow morning is my first road race. This whole process of becoming a road racer is the LONGEST and most uncertain path I have taken in life besides life itself. I didn't no ANYTHING about road racing when I started... I listen to girls on the team talking about famous bike racers I have never heard of and watching them race... Do you race as a team? Do you race alone? Why do you fight for someone else on your team to win? Why does a person decide they want to become a domestique (a person on a team who expends a lot of energy riding so another may conserve energy until the end of the race and ultimately end up taking a higher place in the race than the domestique... they are on the same team)? Will I do terrible? Is this commitment going to be a regret timewise or other (I am riding around ten hours a week currently)?? I have no idea what I am doing and no clue how things will pan out... Do I have what it takes? I will have to wait months to figure this out as I have no clue what it takes...

I have spent the past few months (since October) riding on weekend mornings with Team Group Health (www.soundvelocycling.com) and riding alone for training a couple times a week. TGH has been voted several times as the top women's cycling organization in the nation. For very good reason. Since I have joined, these talented women have done nothing but be incredibly selfless and fabulous mentors in teaching 20 of the new "cat 4's" (category 4: there are 4 categories of amateur racers for women, category 4 being beginner, category 1 being directly under pro) how to ride and how to race. It has opened a whole new world of cycling I didn't realize existed and shown me the appeal in what has otherwise previously been some strange sport where people wear really tight clothes and ride really close together... I had been completely happy tooling around on the roads of Seattle with friends (all male I must add :P) until now! Occasionally I would do organized rides with Cascade (www.cascade.org) and such.

We have done hill climbing clinics, sprinting clinics, bike handling clinics, race prep clinics, and lots of riding around Seattle. All to prepare for what is coming tomorrow morning! We even rented a closed race track so that we may be coached by the experienced riders on riding in a pack. (In road racing, there is what is called a "pack." Race strategies involve conserving energy and riding in the draft of other riders-they are blocking the wind that would otherwise slow you down.) We worked on attacking (passing), counter-attacks, and being comfortable with bikes moving at 20 mph inches from all sides of you. All that means is if something happens, if someone swerves, or bumps you, you cannot react by hitting your brakes... Which is what happened at the second clinic. Needless to say I was involved in a 5 bike pile-up at about 18 mph because a bike in front of me clipped another bikes rear wheel. We all went down so fast I didn't have time to be scared. Now I can say I am a real rider... With real biker scars...

One thing I have learned about the cycling world is that it is some type of strange bond. It is maybe similar to the bond that strangers who are in the same sorority or fraternity have only 100 times stronger. A woman on my team GAVE me her carbon fiber handlebars when mine were damaged in the crash. My boss at work is a cyclist and he told me anytime I get stuck anywhere due to some type of mechanical failure to give him a call and he would come get me. Another coworker offered the same. My bike has sparked all kinds of conversations with other cyclists which felt like we have known eachother the first time we have spoken. I still don't quite understand this, but cycling brings out some type of inner caring amongst complete strangers and it is really a pretty cool thing to experience.

So yesterday my coworker who is a racer for about 5 years asked me if I was nervous about my first race. He said after five years he still gets nervous at every single race. I said no, I hadn't really thought about it. Then he said I should be nervous :) I said I have no idea what to expect. That is when he invited me over to his desk and pulled up the course on google maps. It is two, 12-mile loops around Mason Lake in Washington, west of Seattle. He pointed out the ~3% grade hile about 5 miles in. I should try to stay with the pack up that hill (I am heavier than the typical rider so this requires more power on my side). The other side of the hill is a wide-open decent where you can reach a speed of 40 mph on your bike so long as it isn't too crowded (I can descend like a bat out of hell for the same reason climbing is difficult, so I am hoping to blow past riders here). That is the first half of the loop. The second half is narrow and twisty and rolling hills. From what he says there is likely no room for passing there--hopefully I will have used my advantage on the descent to get a good place in line here and remain there and bust through the second hill climb around to the end of the race... Those are my hopes. From riding with other Cat 4's on my team who are racing tomorrow and looking to upgrade, (to a higher level because they are winning the cat 4 races) I know I will feel like vomiting at the end of the race. Which is great and fine by me, but it means this is not going to be easy!! But that is the fun of it.

All night last night was spent trying to take my fenders off and replace brake pads that had a stripped screw holding them in (I bought bullet-proof fenders as I thought I wouldn't need to take them off because I never expected to race), and adjusting my front derailleurs so the chain wouldn't hop off the chain ring during the race (I have been kind of lazy and have let this go for awhile... I have been shifting VERY carefully while riding and watching the chain as it shifted to the top chain ring... not a safe thing to do in a race). In trying to do all this I disassembled my brakes which had a spring and basically exploded at the removal of the wrong fastener. Thank goodness I live 3 min from a bike shop. Nearly 3 hours and two trips to the bike shop later (where both the mechanics and I were laughing at my valiant and failed efforts to remove my own fenders) I called it quits and went to bed with everything installed/fixed and relatively satisfied with my efforts. Since I woke up this morning I have been cleaning my bike, cleaning the chain, the wheels, etc. All I have left to do is pack my bags with my racing clothes and a change of clothes and some food for tomorrow.

I will let you know how it turns out! Wish me luck!