Okay, so I wasn’t really pedaling squares (a term referring to someone who’s hit the wall an can’t pedal properly). The race, however, was indeed a square.
The whole day was surreal. I never felt so pro (yet so scared at the same time) while waiting in our room, kitted up ready to go with my race just around the corner from the hotel. I got very little warmup on course – about 1/4 of a lap. I managed to borrow a trainer from F&M (thanks guys) near the start/finish line to warmup near Natan, Pavel (NYU), Jeremy (UMass), and UPenn.
We rolled into staging, with a surprisingly less catastrophic manner than normally happens in ECCC races. Cox (UVM) got the ECCC callup, and Natan got the first callup for BU. I came up for the second (and final) BU callup, although it didn’t really put me in the best of starting positions. I hot a high-five from Joe on the way there too
We were primed and ready to go.
Let’s just say that this race was FAST! The course wasn’t technical, but the speed and the slight hill after Turn 3 caused for a difficult race. Despite the wide roads, it was extremely difficult to move up in the pack: one, because there were 119 other people racing around you; and two, we were blazing away at 28+ mph. I’m pretty sure our course was around .6 miles long and our laps were between sub-minute to 1:10 times. So yeah … stupid fast.
One moment stands out. It was maybe 35-40 minutes into the race going through the start/finish after a super fast lap. Dave Toll, the race announcer, boomed over the PA "and watchout! 'cause these riders are literally flying!" That comment plus the huge crowds and the blaring Euro-techno music created a fantastic situation. I was happy, and I had a huge grin across my face.
There were a number of close calls right in front of me, like 4. Two were riders unclipping mid-out of the corner sprint. One rider went down mid-pack on a flat – not really sure how that happened, but I got around it no problem. Another rider crashed in Turn 1 two or three ahead of me on a faster lap. I ended up having to slam on the breaks and by some strange act of the Bike Gods I managed to drift my bike right (and yes, I literally mean drift) and avoid the crash.
I got a real good look into other conferences: sketchy. There was a lot of riding going on in addition to the crashes that was simply scary. A number of us ECCCers talked about it afterwards and all agreed. The intra-conference team relationships. I saw a lot of ECCC teams and riders helping each other in the race in addition to having good times off of the race course. I saw little-to-none of that from other conferences.
I finished up with 66th place out of 122 starters. Not horrible – I finished, which was hat I wanted to do, and even did so with the pack. Natan finished just two spots ahead of me at 64th. According to Chair, this now makes the the Highlander. I’m not quite sure that this will mean for my future – other than being able to gain people’s powers through decapitation with a sword and a Scottish accent – but I’ll take it for what it is.
Oh yeah, Kim got 14th in the D1 Crit. Way to go girl!
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