It's a Super Week for Velo Girls -- part 5

Three Team Velo Girls members travelled to Wisconsin to participate in the legendary week of bicycle races -- Super Week! They'll be racing everyday for eight days -- 6 criteriums and 2 road races. Here is the report on Day 5 from team member, Jill Eyres:


Racine.org Criterium
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Racine, Wisconsin
Women 3/4


The fifth race in five days (!) was in Racine, about a 40 minute drive from where we're staying near Milwaukee. Our race was 28 laps of a very short course -- about 0.7 miles per lap in downtown Racine -- with eight turns per lap. The online description of the course says it's "flat" but that is, quite frankly, a complete lie. Also missing from the online description is the fact that the pavement in some places is just terrible, which caused a couple of explosive flats during our race as well as one near crash.

It was a warm sunny day, and quite humid. Our warmups over the past five days have been getting less and less enthusiastic, as we've been more tired and sore and as the days have been getting warmer. I think we may have put in scarcely 30 minutes on the trainer before wandering off in search of shade and rest before our race. We were a bit disheartened to see a number of new jerseys in the mix, people who haven't been racing for multiple consecutive days and therefore have fresh legs. (We've been joking that there should be a 20 pound penalty for each Superweek race a person hasn't participated in.)

The race started somewhat fast. I stayed on for a couple of laps, trying to keep a steadier pace rather than sprinting out of every corner which seems to be the general M.O. of this group. When I fell off I started working with a girl named Alma in a plain kit. We caught up to a Project 5 girl named Jeryl, and worked with her until we caught Dana. The four of us worked pretty well for several laps, and were eventually able to catch three others, including Dolce Rachel.

Right after we caught them, though, we were lapped by the pack (did I mention it was a really short course?), which still included Emily (yay!). The pack had slowed down considerably at this point, so most of us stragglers were able to hop back on. It was clear that whoever was in front of the pack was tired of pulling, and no one was willing to go up and take their place. Dana and I stayed with the pack for most of the rest of the race, until the last lap when they all took off again; we weren't going to kill ourselves sprinting for 25th place so we continued our time trialing.

Emily said she wasn't well-positioned at the end for her sprint, and we don't know exactly how she placed. We didn't go check the results after the race. We were parked pretty far from the registration/start/finish area, and by the time we had cleaned up and packed the car, we were more focused on root beer floats than on walking 3/4 mile back to registration. So far they've been pretty good about posting the results quickly so we should know soon.

Sorry this isn't the most exciting report. Also we don't have any photos from the race. Maybe tomorrow....

~jill