Courtenay Brown

Today I went to Williams, California (~50 miles North of Sacramento on I-5) with Greg to race the Leesville Gap Road Race. It was kind of a last-minute decision to go with him, prompted by the massive influx of tourists into Tahoe this weekend thanks to July 4. Riding around Lake Tahoe on the busiest weekend of the year vs. a 63 mile road race with 4,000′ of climbing and roads so chopped up and strewn with potholes that even a full-suspension mountain bike would seem inadequate… the choice was obvious! Road race here I come! Goal for the day was to have fun while getting good training in preparation for 5430 Long Course Tri in August.

My only other road race this year was the San Dimas Stage Race down in Southern California at the end of March, so Leesville was my first local appearance of 2008! I did lots of chatting with old friends, it was great, and yes I was grateful that the women 1-2′s started an hour after the first men’s field because I had plenty of time to gossip, sip my Mocha Latte Neuro1 (my new favourite flavour by the way) and get ready for my race.

We lined up with maybe 17 girls, an average-sized field for a race of this type. I never got a chance to count though, I attacked after 1.5 kilometers and got a good gap. The attack itself was fun, about 14 seconds after that I remembered that a successful attack can really hurt and WHY did I think it was a good idea and UGH ugh ugh… Soon I was joined by Susy Pryde of Jazz Apple, an ideal breakaway companion because she’s strong and smart and has a ton of racing experience. We arrived at km 16, the beginning of the rough roads and the main climb, with about a minute lead on the field. By km 33 we had two minutes, and we were joined by Ruth Corset, also of Jazz Apple. That little girl is a rocket, let me tell you… We had about 2 more kilometers of climbing before reaching the long plateau section of the course, and I hung on for about 250 meters of that at best! I finished the climb at my own pace and waited for the chasers, there were 3 but one of them was a Jazz Apple so she was not working. We worked together only sporadically, everyone seemed to have a different agenda and the pothole-strewn road made a rotating paceline a little hard. After about 30 more km’s (so now at 60k of 102 total) and with the gap hovering around 2:15, we passed Susy on the side of the road with a mechanical, indicating that Ruth was now up the road alone. This significantly lifted the spirits (and pace) of my chasing companions who hoped that they could catch a lone rider by the finish line (but btw they did not catch her), again I hung on for a while but when we hit the last climb my legs were done!

I finished off the last 35k in a decent pace, getting caught and passed by about 5 other racers from my field, all of whom complimented my early move which was nice of them! I reconnected with Susy for the last few km’s, it’s always fun to chat with breakaway companions once the day’s work is done. Some breakaways are miserable, you can have people who aren’t contributing for tactical reasons, or people who are just bad break riders (don’t ride smooth, pull through at 500 watts so you have to surge to get the wheel, don’t pull off to the windy side, don’t try to utter syllables of encouragement between huffs and puffs, etc.), but it was fun to ride with Susy and the move worked out well for her team. I had no teammates at the race – early race attacks are more tactically effective when one has teammates to benefit from your antics, and they generally set up the attacker for a long day in the saddle. Nevertheless, my early attack ensured that I met my goal for the race!! I had a lot of fun being off the front and practicing my cyclocross skills on the potholes and gravel, and I got in great training… 2 hours of riding at threshold followed by another 1:45 at endurance pace – I can guarantee that wouldn’t have been the case had I stayed in Tahoe this weekend .

Oh and Greg demolished his Cat. 4 race field, coming in solo some 15 mins ahead of the second place rider! We celebrated at In-n-Out.