WCA Spring Prairie Road Race State Road Championship result for hcurnutt

Heidi and I represented MadCity in the Women's 1/2/3 race, which was 6 laps for 39 miles (plus a bonus "neutral" time up the hill at the start). 21 women started (8 or 9 IS Corp, 4 BH and several solo riders). The first half lap was quite slow, then Heidi went to the front and strung everyone out for a quarter lap or so. Everyone bunched back up together coming into the bottom of the hill then spread out quite a bit going up. I started the hill at the very back of the field and managed to pass several riders on the way up and even managed to chase back on to the front group with a few others after the steepest part of the climb. Closing that gap took a huge effort, and after a few more big efforts to stay with the group, there was an attack that I just couldn't stay with and I was off the back with 4 1/2 laps left to race. Looking behind me, there were BH (Anne Meyer) and IS Corp (Meredith Peterson) riders slightly behind, who had also lost the pack on the same attack, but they were far enough back (and I knew they had teammates ahead, so they weren't likely to want to work with me much) so I decided to just keep going on my own. For at least a lap, I could see the pack about a minute ahead and kept holding out hope that some more women would fall off the pace and I'd have someone to ride with. I was pushing hard, hoping not to be caught from behind. Then I focused on catching as many of the 50+ men as I could. I ended up holding the same position to the finish, so it ended up being much more of a time trial workout than a road race for me. I averaged 20mph, and I would guess that we were going slower than that for most of the first lap, when I was actually getting to draft. I've never been able to close a gap to riders like Kristin Wentworth and Devon Haskell before, so I was happy with the 5 minutes or so when I felt like I was racing well - and I had 4 1/2 laps to wonder if I couldn't have sucked it up for the last surge that dropped me. (Looking at my heart rate data, it's entirely clear why I couldn't handle another surge so soon after the first major effort!) In case Heidi doesn't chime in, she had a strong race and was in a pack of 4 after the first lap who were generally working together and/or fending off attacks from Diane Ostenso.