Bike Jammin'
-by Kim Foland
It's a trek from racing in Raleigh at 7pm and then getting to Balt for a 1:30 race the next day. This is how we did it. We cooled down, jumped in the cars and caravaned up to Richmond stopping at a Food Lion in rural North Carolina for dinner. That's right, we're living the dream! Nothing says glamor like 10pm in the Food Lion parking lot without a shower.
But we got back on the road quickly and made it to Richmond around midnight to stay in a dumpy "three star" Holiday Inn. The next morning the breakfast was very fine however at the hotel diner. Of course, we didn't get enough sleep but we're on a road trip! And we're eating waffles!
We blast up to Balt. and get there just in time to realize it's damn hot and we have to walk about a mile to get our numbers since we didn't get to park in the Pro parking area. Even with a team car! Again...living the dream!
Our team for the race consists of me, Kim S., The Missy, The Cora, Nicole our fab guest rider and Lauren Shirock who we all meet for the first time while she's sitting on her trainer right before the race.
We line up with 80 or so other women and Kim and I are about dead last in staging because the officials tell us to "take a lap". We do, our teammates don't, they get good starting positions, we have to haul ass to move up on the first lap. Luckily, that works and once we moved up, we stayed near the front. It was Kim and my goal to get in to the sprint. No break away happened because the course is not selective, just kind of an oval with a couple of weird turns at the end. And damnit, we're sprinting!
We don't really have a team plan, just look out for yourselves and see how it goes. About 1/2 way through the race I started to realize just how hot I was. I think the heat was really a factor in the race. And about 1/2 way through was when I started to realize there was a really annoying man shrieking in turn 3. And in Spanish. Now I'm fine with people yelling, usually I don't hear them but how could shrieking at that volume motivate anyone? It would motivate me to punch him if he was my boyfriend/husband/whatever. Just kidding, I'm not a violent person.
So now it's three laps to go, I forget that it's hot and the man is yelling still and the girls are starting to get antsy. Kim and I both agreed that we almost crashed about 4 times in those last three laps. But we do what we set out to do and end up in the sprint, sprinting each other for 19th and 20th. Not really, Kim was definitely moving up faster on the right hand side, I preferred the left and was farther back but she got caught behind a couple of the leadouts and lost places.
The team finished well as a whole with Lauren 44th, Cora 45th, Missy 55th and Nicole 58th. Very nice.
* sorry no photos, no one loves us/knows us in Baltimore, except my brother and sister and they didn't take any photos.