Tour of America's Dairyland: East Tosa Gran Prix
Thanks for the photo Shardy Nieves!
Greetings from Chicago! My three race run of ToAD is done and dusted! Phew!
I'm on a 5 race no puke streak and I'm feeling pretty good about everything. It was nice to have a good couple of days of feeling good on the bike. I'm really hoping to carry that feeling through to Europe!
Yesterday started as per usual. God warmup, first to staging. I lined up first row today. I assume they were running behind and decided to only call up the two leaders jerseys. I'll take it! The started the race and I sprinted for the the first corner. Still gotta work on that, not satisfied. I did would I could to hold my positioning, but I think mentally it takes me a few laps to get comfortable taking those corners with the group. That's where I lose my spot. Gotta get over my trust issues, it's causing more work on my end.
So back back back I went. I feel like I never saw the very back, so this is an improvement. I stayed mostly midpack to 3/4's of the way back. Still not a great place to be, but I was never barely hanging on. I made some ground here and there, and found my way to the front with about 11 to go. It was super fast, and I was doing my best to stick to it. A small gap formed behind me, but the pack eventually caught up and swarmed.
I'm bad at catching the right wave when the swarms happen. I need to start accelerating before the swarm, if there's a swarm it means the front has slowed down a bit. If you're not moving forward, you're moving backward. That's fact.
With about 3 to go I was on the outside in turn 3 when the woman on my inside and I were glued together. I had a flashback to locking handlebars at Bariani. Words were exchanged, but we both held our line and counterbalanced like pros and made it through. DEAR LORD. There were less than five minutes left in the race, I was not trying to go down like that. I unglued myself from her and moved left a little. I lost my position. Ugh. I jumped back in and tried to move up some. Not much success there, but I did hang in and finished safely. Not a top 20 repeat, but 28th would have to do for the day.
- Didn't throw up,
- Didn't crash
- Was pretty freaking aggressive.
I am proud of the way I rode this weekend, and I can't wait to get into it in Europe this July/ August. I expect to come back a much better racer than I left.
In the words of Chaka Khan "Through the fire, to the limit... through the fire, to the WA-aaa-ah--aaalll!!!
Don't forget to sign up for Do Better Together July! It's the last one of the series! Woot!