good report Meg. I'm surprised you spelled balut right haha. So anyway, here is my report:
Saturday was pretty fun. My parents drove me up there that morning. I slept really well in the car. I ate a half eaten Chipotle burrito and a bagel for breakfast. It was nice and sunny and the winds were minimal. Meg and I started at 10:25am. This weekend had the best start times ever this season.
We had a field of 18. Davis showed up with a buncha new wonder girls and former slug Lia. They drove the pace for the entire race with Lia making quick accelerations up every climb. It got split up fast, with like 5 or 6 girls in the lead pack and Meg, myself, and some Cal girls sorta chasing. We dropped them and stayed in no man's land. The lead pack were just several hundred meters in front of us for a while but the winds picked up on us and the gap kept opening wider so we stopped chasing and tea partied until after the turnaround where we worked to catch a dropped Davis girl Dana. All three of us took turns pulling into the wind, up and down the hills. It was quite pleasant. We made it to the final stretch and managed to keep away anyone behind us. Meg opened up the sprint. I snatched 5th with Meg 6th and Davis right after. My lungs were shot, as were my legs. My new ride was solid though and made it through her first race. It was great.
We ate Italian that night. I had bruschetta, assorted sliced meats and cheeses, gnocchi, and gelato. Deliziosa. It started to get hella windy that night. Meg and I watched figure skating on TV before we went to sleep. A Korean girl won the world champs. Good for her.
The next day we woke up at 7 and packed everything up. We had free breakfast at the hotel. It was pretty good. I ate fruit, oatmeal, some egg, and this really good cinnamon bread. But anyway, we left for the UNR campus.
It was really fucking cold outside. Besides it being 35-40 degrees outside, the 30 mph winds made it seem like 25 or 30 degrees. It was the worst and I did not feel like racing. We got there and every single person was inside their cars cause no one wanted to be outside. We regged and found out everything was pushed back an hour. Cool.
So three hours later it was time for us to race. I didn't warm up as much I had liked and was cold to the bone. Even during and after the race I never got warm. I rode my Cannondale that day cause I did not want my Scott to get raped by the shit course. It was actually not a bad course, I feel like it was one that would have suited me well, but extreme winds and gravelly sections made it unbearable. I hung in for as long as I could, catching, dropping, and then getting caught and dropped after not caring and just wanting to finish at that point. So I rode into the wind and the whole field was strung out. Until the final few laps, I caught onto the lead pack instead of letting them lap me and they pulled me all the way to Meg and some other girls in the last lap. I just sat on and finished it out. It was balls, but we were done.
We stuck around and watched the last races. The winds slowed a bit, but it was still cold as shit. Stanford took Men's Bs, Davis Women's As, and Paul Mach lapped the Men's A field like 3 times for his second UNR crit win. After that we went home. Ok racing. Next weekend will be better.
