Monday, March 17, 2008

Finally a Race Report!

LA Circuit Race (is it still a circuit race when it is just on one road with 2 u-turns????)

A few of us girls ventured south for
the LA circuit race. There were actually 7 SB area women in the women's
3/4 race today--a great showing by the locals!

I was feeling quite organized--I even left the house on time (ok, 1
minute later than planned) this morning. However, due to a little time
loss picking up Marian (new cat 3 in the area) I was late getting to
Olivia's. I knew I was in trouble when Olivia called me on our way
there, and there was no salutation to be had, only a terse "where are
you." Oops...we weren't THAT late! Anyway, we did finally leave the SB
area, after our much needed Starbucks stop. In Starbucks, I asked
Olivia if she was nervous, and got "no....(small pause here), well, only
about not getting there in time!" Oops again. On a good note, we
managed to fit 3 people, 3 bikes, 3 trainers, 3 duffel bags o' random
stuff all in one small VW Golf! We were probably the only ones who
actually followed the directions on the race flyer which said "please
prevent global warming and consider carpooling to the race in cars of 3
or more!"

We fit ALL of this into the car? How are we ever going to get it back in there...


Anyway, we did get there, and got out of the car only to be nearly blown
over by the wind! Hmmm. It was going to be a chilly day at the races.
Turned out that the riding direction was exactly perpendicular to the
wind...pure crosswind the WHOLE course. As I was getting readyW3/4 ,
Olivia was following me around like the paparazzi--I felt so famous.



On to the race....the race was about as interesting as one could expect
from a flat road with a U-turn at each end! There were about 30 women
in the 3/4 race. Susan Farber was also racing for Chicken Ranch, and I
had "stealth teammates" Olivia and Marian. As Olivia said...(based on
her inability to fit into the new kits), "she is just too big for the
chicken ranch britches," but can still be a "stealth chicken rancher."
(note--Olivia is a lot smaller than I am...so I'm not sure that this is
quite accurate) And stealth teammate she was! She attacked on lap 2
because "the race was too slow" and I got to see who was strong when
they chased her down. I was happy to block for her, even if she was
wearing the frog colors of Echelon :) . The race really came down to
the final sprint. Marian attacked on the final corner, which was too
early, but managed to string it out a tad. I had a pretty good wheel
going into the sprint, managed to time it better than I have all season,
but I still have some work to do. The wheel I picked didn't quite get
me where I needed to be so I had to do some dancing and managed to get
3rd, still accelerating at the line.


Checking the results...and watching races in the background.



The rest of the Ranchers...
Susan Farber 8th
(stealth racer) Olivia Walling 14th
(stealth racer) Marian Hunting 18th

We stuck around just long enough to hear the race results and pick up
the cycle computer that I managed to win, and then it was back home,
with a nice stop in Malibu for lunch. Good times...next up, San Dimas!

How'd everyone else do this weekend?

Ciao!

9 comments:

Itinerant Rick said...

Hey, third sounds darn good to me. Glad to hear you are back in form with the saddle issues resolved.

When do we get a full kit view. I am trying to piece together the orange pieces in your pics into a cohesive view. Then we can have twinkie give the kit a nickname; my team's kit was dubbed 'ice cube'. What will yours be?

Chris said...

3rd is solid! Way to hammer down in Socal.

dr-nitro said...

Ah, the carriage returns are hurting my eyes.

Somewhere in there was a third place result, I think. Good job. Cat 2 soon.

Unknown said...

NICE RESULT KIM! WAY TO GO! I was in bed with the flu so I missed the race ;(. I was sort of dreading the course anyhow (sounded like cat 4 crash city in my head)... SO I wasn't TOO disappointed with missing out. Keep up the good work!!!

X Bunny said...

yay!

i was looking at the results and i don't think they listed the women's 3/4 category....they may be lame or i may be blind.

X Bunny said...

oh, now i see....."more results coming soon"!

~ lauren said...

awesome! you killed it!

marian! i miss her already. i guess she won't be racing cross up here next fall. man, she's fun.

meh-wee-uhn said...

It was, all in all, a great day.

I'll try to write a race report about it before I actually line up for the next one...

chatterbox said...

good job! Sounds like a great race.

We had a windy race at Bariani. I was able to apply some things I've been learning with some success and then find some more things I need to learn :) All in all, a good day.