BLUE DOME TWILIGHT CRIT - TULSA

Props to my two teammates for being so strong in this race after waking up at 3:00 a.m., flying from California to Colorado to Oklahoma, and then racing at 8:00 p.m in the dusk/dark. It was a new experience in many ways for all of us, I think. Our race started at 8:00 p.m. just as the sun was going down. None of us could decide whether or not to where our glasses, so we all did. bad idea. Visibility was terrible with or without glasses. The race was extremely fast from the whistle. Field of 35 girls with some local teams and traveling superstars. The course had 8 turns in it and with a lot of money on the line for the both primes and placings, people were just taking ridiculous risks. Either you had to sprint to get to the corner first or you could guarantee you'd be on your brakes and up against the curb on every one of them. There were also two gradual (big ring) hills in ! every lap, which made it easy to move up in the field. Primes were $40 -$60 dollars, so they were well worth going for. The finishing stretch was 3 blocks long and very wide. With about 30 minutes left to race and one girl dangling off the front, the prime bell rang and just as we came around the last turn I could see that she was close enough to take, so I went for it. I jumped off the pack and sprinted to try and take the girl on the line. I just missed her on the line, but the crowd loved the effort (the crowds were awesome)! I looked back and found that I had established a pretty big gap on the field. Maybe the promoters wanted to make the race interesting, or they felt bad for me that I had tried so hard and failed, but they rang the bell again just as I went through the start/finish. So, I stayed away for the rest of the lap and claimed my $40. Now there was about 20 minutes left to race, so I sat in and tried to r! ecover. The last five laps things got really sketchy and really fast. I moved myself up into the top 10 and waited for the last lap to come. On the downhill just before the last 2 left hand corners, a rider jumped on my left. I jumped with her and we moved up to about 5 and 6th positions. That's about how it stayed into the last corner when everyone jumped on the outside and I found myself in about 10th place. I knew the straight away was long and the money was big, so I shifted and shifted until I had moved myself back up into 6th place. Niki was just behind me in 10th and Emily behind her in 18th. We were all totally amped after the race, at least I was. I couldn't believe how fast and how strong and aggressive the girls of the midwest were. We were all in the money as the places went 20 deep, so we took our money, grabbed a beer, and watched our RH Villa buddies race at 9:00 at night in a field of 130 guys that was strung out the entire race. - SHELLEY