Race Reports - BikeJam and Somerville

Now it's time for some race reporting...

This past Saturday, Taitt and I raced at the BikeJam Kelly Cup "criterium" - I use quotation marks because this was not really a criterium course, it was more of a miniature circuit race, a one-mile loop with a hill, lots of curves and turns, and not a whole lot of pavement (think Bike Path). We got OK starts, but the course terrain combined with the wind and the mild pace made it really hard to move out of mid-pack. And there was so much bumping, I thought I was going down so many times. I finally got to the front about halfway through the 20-lap race, covered a couple of moves for a couple of laps so my mom and her friends would be sure to see me, and then promptly sunk back into mid-pack, never to re-emerge. Taitt fared a bit better than I, but not quite as well as she hoped - she came across the line 18th, in the money, and I finished 27th, 2 spots out of the money. We had 90 starters. All things considered I was happy with my race - all the big teams were there, given the course it was a big advantage to have a bunch of teammates, I did get into the action for a few laps, and I muscled my way around as best I could. I just wish I were a little stronger.

The cool thing was we had a cheering section, led by my brother. My mom and her friends had never been to a bike race - beforehand my mom was like "now sweetie do you want us to say anything when you go by or will that distract you?" and of course I told her to please cheer and to remind me to go faster! Apparently the first time she chose to cheer, there was a big crash right in front of her right after she cheered, and my brother told her it was all her fault those girls crashed! We are so nice to my poor mom.

Then yesterday was the Tour of Somerville, in New Jersey. We drove up on Sunday with some massive detouring thanks to my little sister - will blog about that separately. Somerville is actually a pretty part of New Jersey, and we went on a nice morning ride that was very picturesque (and included a Turtle Rescue! See below). The race is the oldest continuously-run race in the country - it started in 1940. The course was cool - a downtown course just over a mile long, the most technical elements were the first two turns, because they were more than 90 degrees, and the long sprint finish had a slight rise and then slight downhill. All the big kids were there and were set on making it a faster, harder race than Saturday's BikeJam race - they succeeded! And it was about 90 degrees in the shade so I don't remember much else. But we had a good time.

Next race: Captech Classic in Richmond on Thursday.