AVS/Deltec Woman’s Team 1st Race

March 6, 2008 on 2:56 pm | In Racing |

The women learned a lot about racing yesterday.  The moderate pace and surgi-ness of the pack was surprising.  I had been warned, but I didn’t expect it to slow down as much as it did.  Erica experienced being forced to the front of the pack first hand.  She tried to some extreme slow downs, but the pack just went with her.  This may have been pack punishment for a couple of wobbles in the first first lap.  They left her in the front until she blew up.  With that said, she probably pulled the group for 10 or so miles. That shows a lot of strength.

I couldn’t see Candance the entire race, but I learned later that she was right behind me.  She hung in there very well for the first 4 laps, but got stuck behind the yo-yo-ing at the back of the crowd and had to keep working hard trying to catch the pack.  Eventually that burned her out.  That made me wonder how teams know where everyones at.  I never knew where she was the whole time.

I stayed with the pack until the end.  I sat in through the entire race and watched the teams work.  I listened to what they said to each other, watched how they pulled in a break, and watched how they tried to support breaks (by the way, I didn’t think any of the teams were organized enough to be at the front and block for a girl on on break).  I thought the actual effort of the race was minimal.  I tried to make one break in the last lap because I had so much energy, but I probably went too hard and gave up too easily.  I was surprised at how lonely you feel all of a sudden when you go off the front.  You really get used to how easy it is in the pack and the security of having everyone around you.  All of sudden your alone and exposed and you know your getting chased.  After I got pulled back in,  I sat back and recovered.  I tried to position myself around one of the girls from the Lee-McCrae Team who I knew had to be their sprinter.  I’d ridden with her before and had pretty good idea what her strengths were.  I wanted to be where she was and watch how she moved up at the end of the race.  I was able to easily move up in the last half mile.  I finished the last hill about five back with nothing in front of me.  I could make a million excuses for myself, but the bottomline is, I didn’t go for it.  I stayed in my seat and peddled as hard as I could, but that didn’t comptete with the ladies who stood up and hammered.  I lost that race the second I knew I’d have to sprint.  I was 8th in the Cat 4 category.  I was dissappointed in myself for having so much left and not giving it my all in the end.

Lastly,  thoughout the race I saw a lot of teams working together and controlling the race.  I made an assumption that they were higher categories only to find at the end of the race that they were cat 4 teams.  That was a wake up call to me that it’s time for us to really start working together.  I feel good about the strength of our team, now we need to fine tune some skills and start working together.

Most importantly, my biggest fear was not realized.  I did not hate racing.  I had a lot a fun and I’m excited to go back today and do it again.

I watched The Juniors finish and can say they finished first and second by a pretty good gap.  No cameras needed!
-Jody Mcfarland
AVS/Deltec Womans Racing Team (sponsored by BioWheels)