Back at it!!!

It was pretty close to six years since I have been in a bike race and my first race back was spring series #1. What a way to start, lots of crashes. Ah, the joys of bike racing!! Spring series #2 and #3 brought another weekend of good weather but no crashes this time around. I was pretty nervous on the way to the race on Saturday. I didn’t even realize that I drove over a bridge to get to the house I was spending the weekend at, in fact I didn’t even notice it the 2nd time over to the race either!! And my rear wheel kept going flat but thanks to the amazing support of fellow racers and our race director I had a wheel to race on. Saturday was short and flat, with the pack staying mostly as a bunch. The pace was medium for the first 2 or 3 laps and I finally got to the front. Still need to work on better positioning but felt less sketchy than last week. Managed to get the pace going with a few other guys, though no breaks stuck. Lap 9 I was in good position, hoping to lead Lisa out but still lacking aggression to keep up at the front. But all in all I think the Giant Whistler Elite Cycling team had a presence in the race and how it all panned out. The girls in the C race had some great results too! Sunday was an entirely different story, 11 repeats of Armstrong hill!! I think we were all in for some hurting and I was nervous again. The pack stayed together for the first 4 laps. The pace was hard, but didn’t drop many people. On the 5th climb it did get strung out and a gap formed. I managed to bridge the gap to the main pack, and in the process get away from the majority of the women in the race, save one, a pro mountain biker who stuck out the hills with the fast men. I got dropped on the 6th climb again after bridging the gap, caught back to the pack with a small group of guys but unfortunately we caught them at the base of the climb so that was the last time I saw the lead group. I basically went into tt mode for the last few laps and managed to stay ahead of a hard charging pack of women and a few guys. Luckily for me someone made a break from that pack and mentioned I might want to pick it up for the last 300m because there were three women hot in pursuit. All in all it was a good race. Need to work on acceleration but its good to be back racing my bike! Cheers Jessica