A Wet Mason Lake

The first Mason Lake race last week wasn't worth writing about.

The second one, yesterday, was a little more entertaining. Let's start with the rain. It was hecka wet. My tooties were soaked in the first few miles. There were moments when it seemed to let up, but it was just a tease. As soon as you thought you could actually ride directly behind someone without getting water up your nose... the drops would start coming down again. I got into a fight with my glasses- fogged, so I pulled them down on my nose, but then I'd get splashed in my eyes, so I'd push them back up, and couldn't see, so I'd have to wiped them with my sogged glove. Late in the race, someone commented that I had foam coming out of my shorts chamois. Huh? Guess there was some soap in there. "What? someone else answered... don't you have self-cleaning shorts? They're the newest rage."

So, about the race. I thought we'd go easy for a bit, but it wasn't long before this woman, Beth started attacking. It felt like a crit, there was so much attacking. She did most of it, while a few of us did most of the chasing. Luckily, Lolita was much responsive. She must like the rain. My only bike issue was a hop in my rear wheel- must be out of true or a tire thing. But anyway, there was a lot of action, between 2 teams, and two loners- me and another woman. She did lots of pulling too.

At one point, Beth took off. she got a quite a gap. Her teammates did a pretty nice block, but I squeaked by on the left side, avoiding center line) and bridged, taking another strong rider with me. We worked together to get to her. The group stayed put. Yey, I was in the break, but also a little pissed that the group didn't come up. A minute later, I was spent. I yelled to them to go I rejoined the group for our last little more than a lap.

With the two active attackers out on their own- one from each of the two teams, the rest of the race was at an easy pace-just fast enough to discourage anyone from attempting another breakaway- just tempo.

There is a red, white and green sign to look like the Italian flag about 2K from the finish. At this point, I was somewhere at the end of the pack. Everyone was pretty aggressive about keeping on the wheel they had. I drifted up to the front, so I could be first down the big hill, then up the little hump, and a little more before the last left turn. I was still leading, along with another rider who came up on my right side with her teammate. I decided to go... much too early. Whoever was behind me, came around, I got 3rd in field sprint. The finish was exactly like last years, with 2 in the breakaway (1st and 2nd), so I was 5th overall.

I'm going to an easy 2 hour DRY ride this afternoon.