The Webcor team of Katheryn and myself are planning to go to the Gateway Cup, a women's criterium series held over Labor day weekend in conjunction with the men's Tour of Missouri, and will be adding Webcor/Alto Velo women's team rider, Lauren Hecht for the races. Lauren recently earned a bronze medal in the national U23 criterium in Bend. We decided it would be good to do a few local criteriums together as a tune-up. We raced the Susuin Harbor Criterium, which is part of the Northern CA Cal Cup series. To indoctrinate Lauren into the team, we made her write the race report this time!
Here is Lauren's report:
We arrived separately in sunny, cool Suisun Harbor. We found a good loop to ride for a warm up and discussed our strategy. If it came down to bunch kick, Karen would lead me out. Otherwise we were going to attack and cover. We lined up on the start like with 19 other women. When the whistle blew Karen went right to the front for the first lap and started setting a good tempo. A couple laps later, Karen attacked and went off the front with Jane Despas for a short time. Then Katheryn went for the first and second primes, taking them both. After the second prime, she kept rolling and established a good gap on the field. The rest of the race Karen and I covered attempts to bridge and/or chase.
Katheryn finished off with a large gap of about 40 sec. and I found Karen's wheel for a lead-out on the last lap. I was late finding her wheel, but when she kicked we were first and second into the final 2 turns. I wasn't quite prepared for Karen's lead out and she gapped me a bit going through the turns. When we hit the front straight she had about a bike length on me and we had greatly gapped the rest of the field. I sprinted but didn't come around Karen knowing the rest of the field was not going to catch either of us. We took 1, 2 in the field sprint making it a Webcor sweep. A fun day of racing and good practice for our upcoming trip to Missouri for the Gateway Cup.
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