Palmer Road Race, Mass. 4/27/08

My legs were still quite sore from the hills and pace at Sturbridge, but I was ready to race.  Elena and I would represent the team in the P123 field.

Luckily it had stopped raining and the roads were dry.  60 miles in wet weather would have been miserable.

There were some familiar faces in the field from Saturday, but quite a few new ones, including 4 or 5 women from Independent Fabrications.  They showed up with fresh legs and reminded us of that throughout the race. 

The course was the same as last year.  There were some small rollers, some nice descents and a false flat coming into the finish.  Elena and I tried to stay up front to cover attacks and there were quite a few.  All of them were chased down and nothing got away until the last lap.  Silke attacked and got off of the front with only a few miles to go.  A girl from Terry chased her and both teams blocked the rest of us for a bit until they had a nice size gap.

We came into the final turn before the bridge leading to the finish.  It was a bit chaotic.  Suddenly I found myself swallowed by the pack.  A women in front of me hit her brakes and our wheels rubbed.  My bike wobbled a bit and my back wheel brushed against the wheel behind me.  I didn't feel safe in the pack and wanted out, but it would be hard to get up closer to the front.  I was determined though and didn't panic.  I just slowly eased my wheel forward and kept moving up.  Then we hit the 200m sign and the Terry girl off the front wasn't too far ahead of us.  I squeezed my way between some riders and went for it.  I was overgeared, but focused and in so much pain that I knew the faster I went, the sooner it'd be over.

I got the Terry girl at the line and won the field sprint somehow.  With Silke off of the front, I had gotten 2nd place!  Huh?  Not sure how I pulled this one off.  I think having Ashley and Erica screaming their heads off on the sidelines really helped me those final seconds of suffering.  Thanks ladies.  :)

Overall Elena and I raced well.  The two of us were outnumbered by other teams, but still had a great presence in the field.  Unfortunately Elena had some bad luck and got boxed out of the sprint, but she still managed to be in the top 15.

A challenging weekend of racing for Radical in MA.