Dartmouth Road Race

The Men's D category went off a few minutes late. I was doing pretty well for about 12 miles, keeping with the field. Everyone was together but that was because the first lap we weren't going anymore than 15 miles average, which I was getting impatient. However, I couldn't do anything because I was near the back of the field. I kept trying to work my way up to the front, but there were too many riders, and the yellow-line rule was in effect of course.

Then, unexpectedly, when we were just starting the second lap the field started speeding up, and I was caught offguard by that and before I realized fully what was happening I was already 10-15 seconds behind with no chance to catch up. I kept focusing on this one guy ahead of me that was dropped shortly after me, but couldn't catch up to him for a while. So I just rode on my own for a while.

The Women's B category, which started about 10 minutes after the Men's D, caught up to me, with a leader pack of 4, and a chase group of 10 or so that my teammate Christina was in. They passed me, and a girl who was trying to chase the first chase group caught up to me, and I rode with her. Then it just kept adding on, more girls caught up, we caught up to more girls, etc. at one point when it was like 5 or 6 of us, I saw two riders ahead of me and I was just hoping they were Men's D, so I broke away from the Women's group I was with and caught up to them. It turned out to be a Men's D rider and a Women's B rider. So I stayed with them until the group I was in caught up, and I told them that we should catch on to the back. Well, they dropped right away and so I kept up with the girls I was with previously. After that, the pack kept growing, and it got up to 10 or so of us working a pace line. I actually did pretty well, keeping up with them for the rest of the race and working with them. Then, when there was 5 miles left I just stayed a few bike lengths behind them because I didn't know if there were still places left for points, and didn't know when one of the girls would make a break for it, or when the sprinting would start. I didn't want to get in anyone's way.

I got 54th out of 55 that finished (63 started), my worse placing of the season, but still one of my best performances. I say this because I actually learned to ride in a pack of riders, even though it wasn't with riders in my own field.

This was the last weekend of the ECCC Conference. Overall DeSales University is in 8th place for Division 2. We were 10th before this weekend which is AWESOME!

After next week (Finals week) I'm going to really get down on my training, avoid the cars, and come back stronger and better next year.