Tonight we raced a sort of crit in a team
relay on the cobblestones of Trento. I’d
tentatively ridden around the streets last night, testing them out. Hmm, didn’t feel great. 11 teams, 5 of them Aussies.
I sought advice on riding cobblestones
from that reputable source of truth – facebook friends – and discovered I
should variously use double the amount of Savlon, stay up the front of the race
to avoid crashes (similar to advice from Phil Liggett as it happens!) or ride
like I’m riding an Aussie dirt road.
Actually, that last one would mean “have a tantrum” from past experience
and as some friends can attest. And let
the tyres down to 80psi – which I considered and decided that they had probably
lost a bit of pressure since I last pumped them up.
Met my team - Michael, John and Kevin at
12:30 for a pre-race meeting. All
good. I borrowed one of their jerseys and adjusted it to fit with safety pins.
They decided I was the boss and
adopted my strategy of putting slowest person (me) first and fastest person
last.
4:00pm and they let us on the course to
warm up. This really only served to make
me more nervous especially as although the course was officially closed,
pedestrians were wont to pop out at inopportune cornering moments and we all
nearly took a few out. It was hard to
get the sense of the corners in race conditions.
Then eventually the race started and by the
2nd corner … I was in last place.
All the blokes in the first leg, took off like startled rabbits. Just me and another, younger, Aussie woman.
She was unbelievably nervous, turned out to
be her first ever crit! That’s worse
than a newbie racing Heffron. Anyway,
couldn’t corner so I sat on her wheel for 2 laps and then passed her and took
off.
By my 5th and last lap I was
well ahead of her and pretty stuffed. I
think I rode quite well considering the corners and cobblestones and was
getting braver and faster on the corners on the last lap. I couldn’t get out of the saddle on the drops
without the back end feeling like it was going to bounce – but then didn’t
really need to sprint much except out of the corners. Glad to give it away on that lap before I got
too confident.
I hadn’t given my team the greatest of
starts, but at least we weren’t last.
But the blokes gradually reeled them in, especially as many other teams
had put their woman in second place.
Some dubious lap counting by the race
officials confused us all. In the end,
we finished in second place with first and third being taken by Italians.
Followed, eventually, by a proper flag
ceremony with flowers and everything!
The boys took the wine, I took the flowers and then rode the 2.5km to my
hotel with them balanced on the handlebars and a backpack on my bag.
Tick that one off!
2nd. Love your work.
ReplyDeleteSo what exactly was the format? A team crit (is there such a thing?), a team relay where all members pull the same number of laps, or were the lap # discretionary as to how they were split among team? And were all the teams 3 males, 1 female? And how did the team come together?
A team relay in a crit format. Everyone had to do 5 laps - no discretion.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't work because some people got lapped and the organisers had no idea how many laps people had done, nor did the other people in the race. Some people knew they did 4 laps and then got pulled off the course. A schmozzle.
All the teams had to have at least one woman in them (none had two).
The organisers just asked for people who were interested so I put my hand up and there was a team of 3 Australian men looking for a woman. Bingo!