Mt Tabor Circuit Race: Round 5 of 6, July 8, 2009

Race report, Tabor Race #5, July 8, 2009

Women’s Masters 40+, 1st Place! the pressure is on!

by Elaine Bothe

Heading up to this week’s round, I’m leading the overall points over Kendra by just 16 points. The pressure is on for sure. I relax and think to myself, my goal for this series before it started was to get some good workouts in preparation for short track. I’ve attained that goal already.

Before starting today’s race, I decided I’d keep my upper body and face relaxed, work hard at my pedal technique to engage my hammies and glutes, and stand more often on the hills to give my quads a rest. And I wasn’t to worry about results. It’s just a really good workout.

Weather was great, just this side of chilly. Perfect. No wind. Low turnout, there are just four of us masters. Even Eileen took the day off. There’s a major road race series in Bend this weekend, the regulars including Kendra must be saving strength and didn’t show. Yay! Oh, I mean, aww, how I miss them!

Plus a bunch of Cat 4s got upgraded into Seniors, so their field is smaller too. The organizers start the 15 or so Cat 4s and the four masters all together for 6 laps.

Whistle blows. Off we go. OMG this is a slow rollout. We’re all in a pack up the hill. We are not 100 percent sure the organizers will score the masters separately or together with the 4s, that would be disastrous for my points situation. Oops, I’m not worrying about that. But I try very hard not to draft any 4s just in case, which is really hard to do in a big pack but I latch onto a fellow master’s (a Guinness rider) wheel for the first lap, what the heck. It was there for the taking.

Teammate Alana came out for all the fun in the Cat 4s, yay! good job Alana! I’m alongside her for a while. Things scramble up the hill. Nice formations and working relationships disintegrate. Alana gets ahead. There’s another master close by, someone in a blue kit. In case there’s a prime I didn’t know about, and for the fun of mixing things up, I accelerate toward the finish line.

I beat the other masters but there’s no prime. This next lap, the announcer calls out. OK, cool. Stand, “rest,” breathe deep up the hill. Face relaxed? Check. Hands loose? Yup. Crest the hill, the hairpin to the right. I peek, Ms. Guinness is still climbing. Hmm.

The downhill is funny, super fast, you can hammer but rest at the same time. Drool flies out of the corner of my mouth. Hopefully no one’s on my wheel, sorry! I run a fast smooth clean line, picking off some more Cat 4s. Keeping Alana in sight, I make it past the finish line again, in first place for the masters. The announcer calls out another prime lap, I’m not sure it’s for the masters, it’s a little confusing.

I hang onto my lead and take the win, my first of the series.

Photo by Mark Bothe.