Banana Belt #1

The weather threatened to bring rain this morning. Luckily, we'd get a little sprinkling, but the wet came from the upsplash of the huge field- of 14. I guess that's not the smallest 1/2/3 race I've ridden, but I wish that there were more places to hide and hang out. The race included Kori, Laurel, Andrea, and Shari. Darien made it out to race today as well as a couple of old teammates, Lollie and Allison. There's this girl from Byrne Specialty Gas team that I need to hone in on next time.

We started out mellow, like usual. I even spent about half of the first lap in front, with a tail wind on the back side. Although, I was up front, I wasn't working at all, else I wouldn't have been there. There wasn't a lot of chit chatter today, thankfully. I'm not that into catching up and talking about my work and all that. I just want to ride my bike, mostly.

The first two laps continued, without an attack or any trouble up the hills. About half way through lap three both Laurel and Kori launched little attacks, but nothing to stick really. I yo- yo'd off the back, then got back in the mix, then to the back, and so on. By the time we hit the steeper hill, I was pretty tired from chasing here and there, and was just hoping to tempo up the hill and be able to stay on. Unfortunately for me, the climbers of the group were hoping to finally shake us sprinters, like brushing the crumbs off their laps. There were 11 riders. I was 10th up the hill, with Lollie there to yell at me to get on. Her and I worked together to chase on, which we did, and were together again by the finish line bell ringing. I was just hoping that it would all stay mellow, but by the next roller... I rolled right off.

Georgann and I worked together and caught Bridgett, who helped up catch up to Allison. By then I had recovered enough to help out, but knew that I'd probably be the first of us across the line. According to my counting skills, we were 8-11. Up the hill for the final time, I felt confident that I could win a sprint. I got impatient down the final descent, and took off around Georgeann. I'm not really sure if they chased or not, but I was able ot sit up across the line.

Overall, I'm happy with the race, but wish I would have started up the hill on lap 3 from the front, so I could have reacted to Kori's attack. Andrea outsprinted Kori for the win, Doug got 5th in the 1/2 race,a nd Steven got 6th in the 3s. Charbie won her race (again.) I'm looking forward to Mason Lake next week.