Candi Murray/Oregon Bicycle Racing Assn
I thought I'd share a note from Larssyn Staley. She is currently racing in
Poland while she awaits the World Championships in Belguim
Candi
-----Original Message-----
From: Larssyn Staley [mailto:hyperb-@hotmail.com]
I only raced once the weekend, but somehow it managed to be as crazy as
ever. On Saturday I went out for my ride, 2.5hrs on my TT bike with 30k of
it cruising in my 52 x 12, ouch. I came home, washed my road bike, and
prepared everything for a crit the next day. The coach of the club here,
was supposed to come and get me, but we weren't quite sure when. From the
looks of registration and start times he would be there to get me any time
between 6:30 and 8:30.
I woke up at 6:00 to be ready at anytime. I looked outside and it looked
like Oregon. It was raining everything was soaked, and it didn't look like
it was going to stop any time soon. The woman I am staying with called the
coach, and he said that if it didn't stop raining we weren't racing, and if
it did stop he would be by for me at 10:00. I plopped down on the couch
with my book, and spent the morning like that, with a couple cookies on the
side.
It stopped raining, but was still very wet. 10:00 came and went. So I was
trying to decide what I was going to do for training, since it didn't look
like I was racing, and Mirek had already left for a race with the boys. At
10:18 my ride showed up. I threw on my warm-ups and sneakers, and before I
was even out the door my bike was already loaded on the roof. I threw my
bag in the back and was about ready to go, when I glanced at the roof of the
car. The other bike was a time trial bike. Somehow, in Polish, in managed
to find out that we were doing a time trial instead today. I have no idea
what happened to the crit, but they were ready to go and wanted to talk
details in the car. I told them to wait. I ran to get my time trial bike
from the garage. When they saw what I cam out with they were like, "Aw tak,
tak, barza dobry." That's not spelled right but it translates to "yes, yes,
very good. so they switched bikes on the roof quicker then I've ever seen
and we were off to the time trial.
I was not looking forward to doing a time trial. I was tired from
yesterday, and was afraid that the cookies would not settle well for a TT.
I began to ask questions and discovered that it was a fifty-two kilometer
time trail. That alone did not settle well with me. We drove the course
and it started out very rolling I felt like it kept going up. It was all I
saw and my throat suddenly felt very dry. I sipped from my bottle for
comfort. Fifty-two kilometers I though.... As the loop went on it wound
through a little town on a very narrow road with lots of twists and turns,
and then went onto the bumpiest road I have ever seen. It was paved, and
there were no potholes, it was just a horrible, horrible paving job. Not a
single line on the road was smooth and it lasted about seven kilos. Then it
was two flat smooth kilos to the finish. We would do the loop twice to make
the 52k.
After arriving at the time trial, I soon discovered, to my relief, that it
was a two man time trial. It still seemed like a long way, but it sounded a
little more positive. I was racing with a junior boy named Verona(sp), I'd
never talked to this guy or ridden with him, all I knew was that he is the
fastest junior on the team. Normally before a two man time trial you would
want to practice just like a team pursuit, but we obviously had no practice,
and what was worse he didn't speak a word of English. I knew that by the
time trial was done he would not like me. He would either be pissed,
because I was not strong enough and slowed him down, or he would be pissed
because the girl killed him. Either way I knew we would not be friends once
it was over.
Verona started out wicked fast, as if we were racing five kilometers not
fifty-two. I could hardly stay on his wheel. For the first 10k of the race
we could not ride together. We dropped each other with ever pull. It
looked as if it was going to be a very long day. Luckily after that 10k
things smoothed out for us, and we rode quite smooth together. Though I
would always gap him in the corners and I would always have to hang on for
dear life up the climbs. The worst part was not the actual climb, though
that was tough. I would have to pull through over the top and then down the
hill, and the hardest part was getting back right on his wheel after that
pull. We flew through some sections though. I loved the narrow, twisty road
through the town. That was wicked. We both hated the bumpy road. It was so
hard to just keep a rhythm through there, your wrists just hurt so bad from
holding the tt bars you couldn't concentrate.
We passed pairs right and left. That was pretty cool. At one point I was
pulling and we were coming hot up onto a pair, which turned out to be a pair
catching another pair. We were about to hit a sharp left turn that was
covered in sand and gravel. As luck would have it, it looked as if we would
all hit the corner at the same time. I backed off just a bit so we entered
the corner right on the heels of the four, and I punched it out of the
corner to shoot by them all. It was so sweet.
So it ended up being a much better race then I'd anticipated. Though we were
covered in grime from the rain, which had started back up again. When we
crossed the line I didn't feel that dead, maybe because you could be
drafting part of the time, or maybe we just never had a killer rhythm, or
maybe I just didn't ride hard enough, but all in all I felt decent still.
After the race we stood around forever just hanging out. I didn't know why
exactly. Races are all really big here, with food, live music and stuff,
it's a festival basically, and there were lots of juniors from the team I go
to the races with to hang out with, but I didn't know what was taking so
long. After awhile I asked, and was happy to discover we were waiting
because Verona and I won, so we had to o up on the podium. I'm not quite
sure how we won, our TT was pretty messed up, but I'll take it. We did the
rolling fifty-two kilometers on rough roads in 1:09.35. That is about a
45kph average. So it was ok. I thought we were just the first junior pair,
but apparently we were the fastest time of the day, which was pretty cool.
So things are going well in Europe to say the least. Next week I am doing
the Polish junior women's national time trial championship. I obviously
can't win but I can race it just the same. SO now I am looking forward to
that.
Talk to you soon.
Larssyn
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
teamo list options/changes/etc:
http://www.topica.com/lists/teamo/
To UNSUBSCRIBE:
mailto: teamo-uns-@topica.com