Snelling Women's Cat 4A Group

I really think getting up at 4:00 am should be banned on Saturday mornings. I want to move up categories just so that I don't have early morning start times!

The Women's Cat4A group start time was at 8:35 and I drove and got myself to the race with plenty of time to spare. That turned out to be a good thing since they implemented the use of timing chips for this race and the line to get them was pretty long.

The race itself was very low key. There was hardly any wind, and the roads are relatively flat and well kept. With the exception of a few gals most people just sat in and kept the pace around 18-20 miles per hour. I was getting a little bored, started singing some songs to myself, wrote some poems in my head - the usual, but I wasn't really feeling like I had the legs to get up in the front and really pull and make a break away. But I knew with the conditions being such as they are, it would have almost been impossible to instigate something myself and have something stick for a long period of time.

There was one crash after the first lap and that split up the field in half for the 2 laps remaining. A few attacks were made, but they were sucked back into the group quickly. The next exciting thing happened about 3k towards the finish line on the last lap. A strong rider tried to make an attack, but she had been pulling for the whole race practically and got overtaken after the right turn into the finish. As she made the attack the pace dramatically increased up until the end. It was a mass finish with our little group and a Webcor gal took the win. I ended up not doing so great, 11th place out of 43, but I was just happy I was able to stick in for a road race! Most road races I get dropped on - I feel like a 4 cylinder SUV racing against 12 cylinder sports cars. That will change though as the season progresses!

All in all a good race that I hope to do well in next year too!