Mengoni Pro123

Mengoni

The race stayed together until the 2nd lap when someone attacked and about 8 girls went. Cecelia and Ashley were up in the break. I should have gone, but missed it. I stayed with the second group content 2 Raddys were up the road. We had one large junior that didn't understand wheel overlap and was constantly swerving to avoid going down. He was scary
and big, not a good combo.

Our third time up Harlem Hill I attacked. I wanted to get away from the scary juniors. Liz from TN and Reem from Advil came with me. We rotated a bit, Reem fell back and Liz and I kept it up for a while. She yelled at me do more work since I could TT.
We eventually slowed down and the field caught us within a couple miles.

Our fourth time up the hill the men's field passed us. The moto didn't neutralize us and the field came around us fast on our right and on our left. It was a mess and extremely dangerous, we are fortunate that none of us went go down. I then went to the front to get away from some sketchiness and just took it slow since no one wanted to work. We got
down by the carousal and our moto looked back and went down hard. Since I was up front, I was able to swerve left and avoid disaster. I screamed when I felt the wind from the rider and moto brush my right leg. Too close. I didn't realize at the time, but Elena,went down in this fiasco. Sorry, Elena, had I known...I would have stopped to wait for the ambulance with you.

The final lap was uneventful and it seemed everyone was done racing. Between all the work I did and the close call with our pace moto, I just wanted to finish and be done. Iwasn't even that tired, but mentally it was over. While we were setting up to sprint to the finish, a moto pulled up next to us and told us to neutralize for the men's finish. As I pulled to the right, a few women passed me and one even bumped me to move forward. She apologized after, but it was silly. We were neutralized.

I think I am done with park races. Between the # of people in the park, the lack of marshals and motos that don't know what they are doing, it is too dangerous to be worth it. Maybe next year I will feel different, but something has got to change. Maybe it's how the races are run or maybe it's just me. I will work on me, but hopefully CRCA will work on speaking with the motos about neutralization and getting more marshals out there.

Congrats to Cecelia & Ashley. They both rocked, giving Radical 2 top 10 places.