Fall River Crit/ Cat 4/ July 16, 2006, Blake Fitch
18 Riders (not counting 2 juniors that were thrown in at that last sec) 4th Blake Fitch, 5th Cathy Rowell, 6th Aiyana Currie, 8th Carrie Lemieux, 9th Jen Cunningham-Butler, 11th Loraine Warner, 13th Helen Pearce, 14th Kathy Martin, 15th Julie Lockhart, 17th Catharine Womack What I will remember most about this lovely little race of 10 laps is that it was wicked hot, harder than anticipated and we all worked our tails off. We rolled into it with the following plan …. attack, attack and attack some more. We had ten riders and it was a great chance to try some of the tactics we’ve been talking about. So we had ‘attackers’ and ‘sit-inners’.
Aiyana was ready to give a go at a win. So we were to sit in as much as possible and then I’d give her a lead-out at the end and we would win the race and the crowd would go wild yelling NEBC. Unfortunately, our dreams of glory didn’t unfold quit as we had hoped. Considering heatstroke probably hit all of us on the first lap, I might not get all of this straight. My recollection is that Helen launched a hefty attack (maybe lap 2) causing the pack to stretch out a bit. Loraine attacked on the 1st prime at the hill (maybe lap 3). Though she won the prime for the 4’s they gave the prize to the junior. Right after the jr. fell behind. Two Chowda girls and a Hub girl stayed with Loraine and powered through the prime, developing a reasonable split! Shucks, not in the plan! Since Loraine had killed it up the hill and won the prime…she was getting a bit tired and fell back a bit. I sweet talked the jr. into trying to lead a pace line up to the break. He did but faded and got dropped (perhaps revenge for stealing the prime). At that point Aiyana and I worked together in an effort to catch the break. Meanwhile (maybe lap 5) Kathy Rowell worked her ass off generating the next split from the pack and bridged up to us. Back at the pack, Jen and Carrie very effectively kept anyone from chasing us down. Even after getting yelled at by other girls to ‘Pull Through’ which they replied to by saying…’Hey, we’ve got teammates up the road!’ and probably Jen gave a look that said ‘get real’.
Then for the remainder of the race, the three of us (Blake, Aiyana, Kathy R.) worked very hard to chase the three lead girls down. We nearly had them in the first two laps of the chase. However, a few things flubbed us up…. The Chowda break was running scared and took organized and well maneuvered pulls; especially at the pesky downhill 90 degree bumpy corner (they told us so after the race). I don’t think that they were necessarily stronger than we were, only a bit more savvy at getting through corners and working a pace line. Our primary weakness was not maneuvering through the downhill corner quickly and effectively. That said, we learned a lot about each other’s riding styles and worked hard to get them working in sync. Gene (CCB- Loraine’s groovy fella) was great at offering advice from the sidelines on how to catch them.
All the ladies helped the team overall. Loraine, Helen and Jen sacrificed there overall placing by busting a gut due to attacks and such. Thanks ladies! Carrie rode very well and super strong, considering it was her first crit. Kathy Martin also had a good race. Julie and Katherine had a goal of finishing the race and did just that – great job! Thanks to everyone for all the hard work and for hanging in there on such a hard and hot day!
Blake