Wow. What an awesome weekend! Great weather both days (cliched I know, but you really can't beat Wellington on a good day), good riding (with good company), and just a generally fantastic couple of days. Went out to dinner with my hubby on Friday night to Great India (awesome service, and their $5 house white wine was lovely!), went on a nice sifty MTB ride of the PNP course with Jude and Catherine on Saturday, then did a bit of window shopping in town. Spent the evening cleaning and prepping my bike for today's race, and Cabin and Nic came to stay the night.
I woke up feeling pretty tired this morning, with that awful feeling that today was perhaps just not going to be my day. But I was determined for it to not be a repeat of Round 2 of PNP in Wainuiomata, where I lost the motivation to "race" quite early on in the piece. I had decided on a few goals for the day: 1. to ride the techy sections I'd been working on the past couple of weeks, 2. to ride the climbs from Alexandra Rd saddle to the summit and from the end of the dovetail to the saddle in my middle chain ring, 3. to actually drink on course (aided by the fact that I decided to run a camelbak this time around, when usually I'd run bottles), 4. to make it around the course in under 2 hours.
Lining up on the start line I looked around and thought I was glad I didn't make any of my goals for a certain place - it was certainly looking like pretty experienced Womens field out there! 10...5,4,3,2,1 and we were off! Around the velodrome, I was sitting towards the back, but passed a couple of girls heading into the first climb. Changed into my little chain ring for the climb and uh oh! The chain had come off. Argh. Caused a little bit of a hold-up for the U19s behind me (sorry boys!) while I tried to move myself off the side a little to put the chain back on, then ran/walked my bike up some of the climb until there was a break in traffic to hop back onto my bike. Slowly made my way up the rest of the climb (passing KC who'd managed to get ahead of me while I was putting my chain back on) and sat a few metres behind Michele on the climb to the summit, with the rest of the women disappearing off into the distance.
The course for Senior Women was one "long" lap followed by two "short" laps. The long lap was mostly the same as the short, but included a wee bit more singletrack, followed by a short 4wd downhill, then a steepish climb back up. Then into the new section with the ski slope. A bit later into the lap it also included a bike push/carry section up through Celia-high shrubbery, and a techy section (the "waterpipe" section). So the first lap was pretty hard as I was just getting warmed up. But I was happy I rode everything (bar a brief encounter with a tree and my handlebar - I was hugging the tree on the side of the track while waiting for a few people to get by before I could let go of the tree, get my balance back, and carry on my merry way!).The second and third laps were pretty similar, and my legs weren't feeling too bad. I hadn't seen any of the other girls since the summit on the first lap, so it was up to me to keep my pace up without any external motivators - I generally go better when I know there's someone in my category behind me (nope, pretty sure I was the last Senior Woman out there!) or if I know there's someone in reach ahead of me (turns out there was another girl not too far ahead, but I wasn't aware of it!). So I was spending a bit of time asking myself if I was going as hard as I could. If I was, then I'd stay in that gear. If I wasn't, then I'd change up and see how that gear went. It worked quite well actually, and it definitely felt like I pushed myself a lot more around the course than I did at the last round.
Right towards the very end, I saw Michele not too far ahead of me. Since the last part of the race consisted of a lap around the velodrome, I entered the velodrome and changed into the hardest gear I could push and pedalled as fast as I could. Didn't catch her, but it was pretty fun trying!! Got off my bike and collapsed on the grass, while my lovely husband went and got me a can of coke :)
Going back and reevaluating my goals for the race, and I'm pretty happy with how I went. I may have been the last Senior Woman to finish the whole race (a couple DNFed), but coming last felt pretty good. I met all my goals: 1. Yup, made it down the techy sections I had worked on - I guess spending the past couple of weeks up there practising had helped. 2. The last couple of climbs were beginning to hurt, but I did make it up them in middle chainring, sweet!. 3. I actually ran out of water halfway through the last lap! Now that's a surprise for me! I have no doubt that if I'd been running a bottle, I wouldn't have drunken nearly as much, because it takes quite a bit of effort to reach my bottle on my bike (under the downtube) and often I just don't bother. and 4. Just had a look at the results and I came with just over 7 minutes to spare from my 2 hour target. 8 seconds behind fourth, and less than 10 minutes behind third. And I'm pretty happy about that since they're both racing Pro-elite Women (I think!) at Nationals this season :)
Post-race: I managed to win a spot prize (Yay new track pump!), and gave Robyn's track bike a wee spin around the velodrome! Oooooh now that was fun! And I think I might tag along to the first Track night of the season this coming Tuesday! Spent the afternoon hanging out at home, then headed out to the Warehouse to check out BBQs (it's getting into BBQ season after all!), and finished off with fish and chips with Scotty looking over the waves at Lyall Bay.
So all in all, a pretty damn good weekend!
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