Georgetown Grand – W4 Race
The W4 race at Georgetown grand was an exercise in how not to race. I wasn’t expecting to win the race but I was expecting to do pretty well and thought I had a good chance at the podium. I was worried that if I over-thought it or got myself stressed out, then I wouldn’t do well. Unfortunately, I went a little too far in the other direction. I did almost no prep for this race. I looked up directions just before going to bed, I got lost on the way up there because I didn’t look up where to park, and then I had no idea how to get to registration. I also left later than I should have because I felt groggy.
By the time I finally got to registration I was flustered and that’s when things really went downhill. I lost my car keys twice. Once when I left them at registration and once when I left them with the ice guy. I spent countless minutes running around in flip-flops trying to find them. When I say running, I mean full out on cold legs (huge mistake here). Finally, two lost keys, and extra pair of sunglasses, and 1 heart rate monitor later, I was finally warming-up. Yup, all 15-minutes of warm up.
The first lap was difficult but bearable. One very strong girl went off the front early in the first lap and the rest of us chased. I focused mostly on position and not getting gapped. On the second lap, there was one girl in between us and the lead girl. I can’t say if we were catching the second girl or not. I had gone to the front to drive because I was worried about the small chase group getting caught and I wanted to catch the second girl at least! I feel like we were catching her but I also know I didn’t see or hear the crash so she must have had a decent gap. We came up to corner 7 right as she crashed out.
After that, it was just the 7 of us chasing the lead. Of course, I didn’t know how big a gap we had on the pack so I kept trying to get us to work together. Looking back, I really should have attacked. The girls were hopeless. They had no concept of taking turns on the front and when they did pull, they treated it like an attack so that we were always speeding up or slowing down. We were never steady. Somewhere around 17-minutes in, I cramped hard in both calves coming around corner 5 (remember all that running I did earlier?). The rest of the race was spent trying to stretch them out on the saddle to prepare for the sprint. There were times that it felt like we were going so slow! I tell myself that if I hadn’t cramped I could have attacked more. Who knows if this is true. It’s amazing the way your mind twists things once the race is over. Looking at my HR profile, I didn’t have much wiggle room.
When we came into the final turn, I had good position and was feeling strong; outside of the cramping. We separated and kicked out of the turn and up the one rise on the course. I’ve sprinted trough a calf pull before so I wasn’t worried. This ended up being a long sprint! Actually, it was about 270m of sprint. I would have backed off and then kicked closer to the finish, but my calf cramped so hard up that hill that my toes curled and would not uncurl. Not only did I not pass the two girl I should have, but two more passed me! 6th overall. Not the result I wanted and I hate that it came down to good preparation, not training.