Usually I look forward to Fridays. They tend to be low key; roll in a few mins late, leave an hour or so early. I'm often the last one standing on Friday at 3:30pm. Then there's the anticipation of ride/race plans for the weekend and a whole two days without adult supervision to look forward to.
This week work has been kicking my arse - between playing IT girl (how did the accountant become IT?) and implementing a new payroll system, I'm fried. And today I have been plagued by employees who have some issue or another and I have apparently become Miss Fix-it. No real time to work through race plans and my grand plans to book lodging for Speed Week have all but disappeared. I suppose this is why we call it "work" and not "fun".
So on to the stuff I want to talk about: this weekend is a big one - the first two-fer of the season ... Chantilly on Saturday and Dolan (or Richmond Int'l) on Sunday. So far it's been a mixed bag for me. A good start at William and Mary in Feb. At Black Hills I did my best not to chain-ring a bride-to-be that landed in front of me and wound up chasing the rest of the race. Morgantown was an interesting experience that included cracking BOTH my 303s. Thank you to Haymarket Bicycles for handling the crash replacement process! Nothing quite like discovering the damage and being able to lean over to the next car and say hey, Jared, I'm gonna need a set of 303s. Jeff and Jared stripped the wheels and, aside from the monetary cost, I didn't have to do a thing.
Jeff Cup was all Jeff Cup tends to be. It was a gorgeous day to be on the bike and after a fairly spirited pre-ride, Team Evo was ready to rock. I know I haven't been training to peak at Jeff Cup so I didn't have huge expectations. Somehow I found myself on the front leading the first lap. I really need to work on hiding in the draft but there I was and no one was coming around. On one hand, it wasn't terrible to go my own pace up the hill. On the other - as my coach said - DON'T DO THAT AGAIN.
We survived the first two laps with relatively no issues. Dana and Kelley are both super awesome at finding the right place to be and staying there. Again, I have to learn these skills. I'm so trained from prior race lives to take care of teammates and to do the heavy lifting that I forget to be smart about ME. Laura from Velocita jumped early and I put in a good dig to chase - then sat up muttering to myself "I don't know what the eff I thought I was doing". I think someone giggled at that. A lap later, Jenette put in two hard attacks and I happened to be on her wheel both times. What can I say -when I find a wheel that I know is strong and steady, I usually stick there. Anyway, I used a couple matches to chase onto her, only to have the field latch on shortly thereafter.
We rounded to start lap 3 where things were just starting to get spicy. Katy (ABRT) jumped a couple times and eventually had a few seconds on the field. We gave chase only to be neutralized right before the last little bump leading to the right turn into the hill. We waited what seemed like hours. In reality it was probably about 10mins. Enough time to have lunch and answer a call from nature if necessary. I had enough time grab some honey stinger gummies and roll over to Avenell from BikeBeat to chat about blogs.
They finally set us free and it went off like a bat outta hell. Because my luck is what it is, I couldn't get clipped in and wound up at the back going through that corner. The leaders attacked as we came into the hill and my legs said "no, thank you". I cursed and chased but to no avail - I was off the pack.
Teammie Gwenn had slowed to latch me back onto the pack going into the turn so as we both slowly dropped off the pack, we teamed up to pick off other riders. We stuck together for a good while until some guys came by (Philbilly was in there!) and I latched onto them. All was well there until it went vertical and I couldn't match their speed so I came to that winery-turn again all by my lonesome. After catching another guy (VeloWorks?), we paced each other to the finish where, when I crossed the line, I asked "am I done here?". They said yes and I blessed them.
The good out of all of this is that Team Evo had 2 in the top 10 for the 1-2 Category! Dana was 9th and Kelley had an awesome race to wind up in 10th. I can be happy for whatever I might have contributed to those finishes and come back to race another day. That day will be tomorrow.
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