Submitted by Karen Brems on 9/1/09
As final preparation for the upcoming Tour of Missouri crits, Katheryn, Lauren Hecht and I loaded up the team Subaru and headed to Vacaville for the Northern CA district criterium championships (also part of the Cal Cup). This is actually a race I had never done before, but I had heard it was a fun course. Not your average four corner crit, but almost more like a circuit race with a 1.1 mile loop including a "large overpass-sized" hill, some tight turns, a chicane at about 150m from the finish and thousands of bots dots in all the places you wanted to be. Karl Ehlert and Dan and Andi Smith from SportVelo came out to support and cheer for us and Dan volunteered to be the voice in the radio.
The field was not huge - maybe 25-30 women or so, but it included Kim Anderson of Team Columbia High Road and recent winner of the women's Route de France, as well as Stacy Marble from Colavita. We knew Kim would attack, it was just a matter of when, and Katheryn was assigned guard duty. Lauren was to watch Stacey and be our sprinter if the field stayed together.
I decided to practice my CX start and got the hole shot to the first turn off the line. I led for about half a lap and then Starla Teddergreen (Sugar CRM) attacked up the hill. She was caught relatively quickly and Katheryn attacked the next time up the hill. There were some more attacks and counters and it was pretty fast for a while (at least it seemed that way to me!) with Katheryn, Kim, Stacy and I all marking each other. After a few laps, Katheryn was in a small group that got caught and there was a bit of a lull. Lauren attacked hard on the back straight and nobody reacted right away and she got about a 10 sec. gap. Katheryn and I patrolled the front, but I tried to make sure that one of us was always behind Kim. Jerika Hutchinson (Tibco) attacked to bridge to Lauren and we let her go, thinking Lauren would like some company. Jerika got about halfway up to Lauren and another rider joined her, but they never quite caught Lauren and she was off solo for about 2 laps. As she got caught, the pack kind of mushroomed and I was on the curb, surrounded by the pack with no real access to the front. Kim chose this perfect time to launch an attack into the hairpin turn. Katheryn was also momentarily boxed, but attacked after the turn to try to bridge. Stacy of course followed Katheryn.
Over the hill, Kim had maybe 10 sec. on Katheryn and Stacy and they had about the same gap on the pack, and both groups were pulling away. Katheryn and Stacy held the gap to Kim at 10-15 sec. for quite a while and both groups disappeared from sight of the pack. Eventually Kim started pulling away and won by over a minute. Stacy outsprinted Katheryn for the bear jersey (Kim is not in our district) and they were well ahead of the field.
Meanwhile, there were still people trying to chase and bridge from the field and I pretty much just stayed 2nd to 5th wheel the rest of the race, but without the 3 pros, the pace definitely slowed a bit. The main excitement was when a spectator walked out in front of the field in a turn! The first 3 riders went right as he froze in his tracks and I went left just before he started to back up into my line. There was a lot of screaming and elevated heart rates, but luckily nobody went down or hit the spectator!
With 2 laps to go, I started to look around for Lauren and planted myself on Starla's wheel as I knew she was one of the best sprinters in the field. Shortly thereafter, I heard the universal call in the radio: "Lauren get in position!!!". Same sentence, same timing. Different voice, different name. Sometimes it works though. About 2 turns before the hill on the final lap, I see green out of the corner of my eye and hear Lauren say "I'm on". The group kind of surges up the hill and since it is a cross tailwind, I stay in the front row with access to the front in case anyone attacks, but on the downwind side, slightly behind the rider on my right. Over the top, I see Lauren all the way on the left side of the pack so I move over to the left and she slots in behind me down the hill as I ramp up the speed.
From the top of the hill to the finish is .5 miles (I measured before the race) which is a bit long for a 1 person leadout, but with 2 turns and a chicane before the finish, I didn't want to get caught up in traffic. We swoop through the 2nd to last turn and hit the headwind back straight. I am going pretty much all out by this point and look under my arm and see Lauren still on my wheel and we have a gap on the rest of the field. Cool! The final turn is slightly uphill into a cross headwind and still about 350m from the line. I take it as fast as I dare to try to keep my momentum up, and as I ramp back up to speed out of it, I am just hoping I can keep going to near the chicane and Lauren will start sprinting around me fairly soon. Then I hear Lauren yelling "Go, go, go!!!" and I see empty space under my arm. I take a glance back and see a pretty big gap to Lauren and a bigger gap to the field. I try to accelerate with what little I have left (not much!) and the finish line seems an eternity away, but I do make it there before the rest of the field for 4th.
Overall a good race and and the strongest rider won!
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