[Race Reports] KHMTT Week 1 and Louisville Criterium

This past week was when I actually intended to start my race season with the KHMTT on April 1st.

KHMTT - Week #1
My goal for this 9.5-mile, slightly hilly TT was to finish it in under 30 min. I have to say the weather conditions and my pre-race nutrition were not ideal but I was still able to get it done in 29:30. I jokingly told Eric, who starts 20 seconds ahead of me to not let me pass him...and then he took off and immediately opened up a big gap between us. Still, he told me he felt like he was being chased the whole time, which is a generally good outcome. I ended up 10/15 which is a pretty decent standing, especially since TTs are tricky because people often show for them who don't show for crits/rr so they are just strong time trialists who never do anything else. We'll see what happens next week.

Louisville Criterium SW4
On Saturday, I raced the Louisville criterium SW4. This was a ton of fun - big corners and a sizeable downhill, moderate uphill that, while not terrible, got old real fast. My goal was to hang on to one my teammates' wheel who is likely going to cat up to SW3 in the coming weeks. Within the first 2-3 laps I was excited because I got her wheel and was towards the front of the group...and then someone attacked and she jumped on it and I was toast. It was absolutely the right move by them because they broke the group in half - which was probably partially my fault, given that I was toast from working so hard to move up to the wheel I wanted to be on. Still, I wasn't completely broken down. I was tightly secured in the second group and we were only seconds off the others. In fact, lots of girls who held on to that group ended up dropping like flies off the back and then trying to hang on to our group, so we just kept getting bigger. Ultimately, I stayed in there and actually talked through handling, etc with some of the other girls who weren't as sure. Even though the hill beat me up and I got really tired, I managed to push myself through it. Unfortunately on the very last lap the girls in front took off and lapped us and when we had to swing over to the right, I lost the group because they didn't really pull right like they should and the girls off the front were yelling at them. All in all, I was pretty happy with my performance in this race.

Here are some sweet shots:

Taking a corner, looking fierce

that face - I promise people were around me

see, here are those people!