[race report] Steamboat Spring Stage Race: Stage 2 road race

I was incredibly nervous about this day because the course was pretty hilly and I truly did not expect any great results, but I did NOT want to do this race alone.

The night before I'd talked to some friends and teammates just making plans to try to hang out together if all else failed.

As we started, the whole group was scared and not taking anything very hard.  We knew a lot was ahead and we really didn't want to trash ourselves. Then came the first real climb. I held the pack for a little but soon was kicked off the back. My teammate Denise was up about 100 meters ahead but my friend Trisha was just next to me and having a hard time so I backed off a little and told her to just breathe as easy as she could. I had committed to Trisha and I knew I should wait with her.

As we descended  and climbed again, I caught up with another Primal girl named Dawn. Trisha was a little back so I fell back to grab her and bridged her up to work with us. We hung out for about 10 more miles. Dawn was really hell bent on catching Denise and another woman from the masters group. We started organizing a paceline to speed up to grab them. 

Coming in to rollers, I made a pretty big effort to jump up and catch them. We climbed all together to the turn around and Dawn took off. Personally, not what I would have done. I'd much rather go a little slower and have people to work with than time trial for 24 miles, but ok. Denise and I descended from the turn around next and probably could have caught up with Dawn but Trisha had a mechanical issue and the other woman was still back a bit. We both agreed it was better to wait for a friend who we knew would work with us and was having a rough time, than push to catch Dawn, whom we didn't know and had run away without us. Plus, we weren't going to win and really didn't want to leave Trisha by herself.

Once we all got together we worked on a rotating paceline. It was nice because I got a lot of time to recover. I also had a lot of fun riding with my friends - which made me feel good about working with them. As we came up the climb everyone calls the corkscrew, I was feeling beat. I'd  felt pretty good up until this point but I kept letting myself hold back because I knew I had some climbs coming to kill me. Glad I did that. After the corkscrew we had another (and our final) sizable climb. I was spent and the others were totally dropping me. But, in our understanding, they chilled out at the top and waited and we worked together on rollers and descents for the rest of the ride. 

Towards the end it definitely began to feel unending. As we came in the last stretch we talked about whether we would sprint for it or cross together. Ultimately, Denise decided she wanted to practice sprinting tired and I just used her wheel as a lead out and held on until the line. Trisha and the other masters woman came in right behind us. 

We all agreed the RR felt a little more like a hard group ride than a race but we had each other and had fun and did something challenging - and that was exactly what we all wanted to accomplish. 

I was excited as we finished to find out my new teammate Emily had won the RR! She is a bad ass and a very strong rider (and climber) so it was awesome to see her do well. This also made her second overall in the GC by 1 second! 

We went home that night to talk strategy about how we could potentially get that second back and have her place well in the crit the next day to take the overall win. Definitely an exciting day ahead.