Ahhh Mt. Hamilton.... My only previous experience with this race was
quite possibly 8 or 9 years ago. I ended up leading out a group of 4? and got 4th? only to be disqualified for crossing the center line. I was quite upset and inwardly vowed never to race the race again. Well with time, all things are forgotten. I had only a feeling within myself that this was a very hard race and I was not planning on racing it. I had in fact told Nicky that I would race the Memorial Day crit. Well on the Wednesday ride with the Lombardi boys I ended up hangin' strong with Darin and Tyler. With Darin pulling like two horses around the lagoon and down the coast and finally up from the Pelican Inn, I had the glimpse of feeling like a climber. So I then decided to race the Ham. Barb kept telling me that the climb wasn't so bad because it was not so steep and that ended up being true! I got a ride down with Barb and her friend Ray, chugged my secret sauce (home made Kombucha) and lined up with a small field. We headed up the first of the foothills at a very gentle pace and then I can't remember a thing! No! I am just kidding. Turns out the first climb is just over a smaller hill, then you see across a valley to the observatory at the top of Mt. Hamilton. Well I love going downhill and so on this first (and delightfully unexpected) descent I just decided to let it roll and push it through the turns. I immediately dropped the field and rode out of sight. Some girl in a yellow jersey got across to me at the bottom and we crossed the valley to start climbing up the real climb to Hamilton.
I figured the field would let us go for a while until closer to the KOM, so I let the yellow jersey gal set the tempo. We got maybe a minute on the field before they started to chase and when they got back in view Shelley bridged across and then attacked. Yellow jersey started to chase and I suggested to her to "let her go" and go she did! Shelley put I think 3 minutes on us and won the Queen of the Mountain. I felt surprisingly good on the climb and noticed that I wasn't breathing nearly as hard as some of the other girls. (That didn't mean that I wasn't feeling it in the legs!) So once again when the road pointed downhill I attacked. I naively thought that I could catch Shelley and then we could work together, hold off the field and finish 1,2. I got within 1:30 of her with the field :30 behind me, i realized they weren't about to let me get any further away and i certainly didn't want to drag them any closer to Shelley. With the headwinds and my screaming legs I decided to let myself get caught and hope Shelley could hang strong and finish solo. I have no idea what mile it was when we caught Shelley but to my dismay we rode past her and she didn't get on. Oh shit I thought to myself. Now I have to race for myself and my legs are pretty toasty. I scavenged for the last bits of glop in my pockets and drank what I could to try to recover. Now here is where it is a smart thing to know where you are on a race course. The field (if you could call it that, there were only 8 of us left) had slowed to tea party pace with everyone trying to recover and no one wanting to work. The road started to tip ever so slightly downhill, then a little more so, and the turns got a bit tighter. So I attacked into a turn thinking we must have only 5 or so miles to go. Brook was the only one who went with me and she seemed willing to work. We got 50 seconds on the field but had no idea how much farther. Finally the moto told us we had 12miles and we lost some drive. She wouldn't work any more and we soon got caught. All I could remember from racing the race before was that at the end of the race/bottom of the descent it was 2k to the finish. Finally we saw a 5k to go sign and then the road got steeper (downhill) so AGAIN I attacked into a turn and pinned it. Again Brook was the only one able to respond. On the flats the moto came by saying 2k to go. Brook took one pull in the middle and then jumped around me with 200meters to go. I thought I had 2nd place in the bag and could hardly see straight with my legs pedaling herkey jerkey when Jane came by me at the finish line. Bummer, but still better than I would have forecast. My back was in spasms and my legs trashed for days, but it was cool! I hung on the climb! Shelley suffered out there solo for like 40 miles and proved that sprinters can climb! Proman got 2 podiums! - Thanks for reading -Rachel
quite possibly 8 or 9 years ago. I ended up leading out a group of 4? and got 4th? only to be disqualified for crossing the center line. I was quite upset and inwardly vowed never to race the race again. Well with time, all things are forgotten. I had only a feeling within myself that this was a very hard race and I was not planning on racing it. I had in fact told Nicky that I would race the Memorial Day crit. Well on the Wednesday ride with the Lombardi boys I ended up hangin' strong with Darin and Tyler. With Darin pulling like two horses around the lagoon and down the coast and finally up from the Pelican Inn, I had the glimpse of feeling like a climber. So I then decided to race the Ham. Barb kept telling me that the climb wasn't so bad because it was not so steep and that ended up being true! I got a ride down with Barb and her friend Ray, chugged my secret sauce (home made Kombucha) and lined up with a small field. We headed up the first of the foothills at a very gentle pace and then I can't remember a thing! No! I am just kidding. Turns out the first climb is just over a smaller hill, then you see across a valley to the observatory at the top of Mt. Hamilton. Well I love going downhill and so on this first (and delightfully unexpected) descent I just decided to let it roll and push it through the turns. I immediately dropped the field and rode out of sight. Some girl in a yellow jersey got across to me at the bottom and we crossed the valley to start climbing up the real climb to Hamilton.
I figured the field would let us go for a while until closer to the KOM, so I let the yellow jersey gal set the tempo. We got maybe a minute on the field before they started to chase and when they got back in view Shelley bridged across and then attacked. Yellow jersey started to chase and I suggested to her to "let her go" and go she did! Shelley put I think 3 minutes on us and won the Queen of the Mountain. I felt surprisingly good on the climb and noticed that I wasn't breathing nearly as hard as some of the other girls. (That didn't mean that I wasn't feeling it in the legs!) So once again when the road pointed downhill I attacked. I naively thought that I could catch Shelley and then we could work together, hold off the field and finish 1,2. I got within 1:30 of her with the field :30 behind me, i realized they weren't about to let me get any further away and i certainly didn't want to drag them any closer to Shelley. With the headwinds and my screaming legs I decided to let myself get caught and hope Shelley could hang strong and finish solo. I have no idea what mile it was when we caught Shelley but to my dismay we rode past her and she didn't get on. Oh shit I thought to myself. Now I have to race for myself and my legs are pretty toasty. I scavenged for the last bits of glop in my pockets and drank what I could to try to recover. Now here is where it is a smart thing to know where you are on a race course. The field (if you could call it that, there were only 8 of us left) had slowed to tea party pace with everyone trying to recover and no one wanting to work. The road started to tip ever so slightly downhill, then a little more so, and the turns got a bit tighter. So I attacked into a turn thinking we must have only 5 or so miles to go. Brook was the only one who went with me and she seemed willing to work. We got 50 seconds on the field but had no idea how much farther. Finally the moto told us we had 12miles and we lost some drive. She wouldn't work any more and we soon got caught. All I could remember from racing the race before was that at the end of the race/bottom of the descent it was 2k to the finish. Finally we saw a 5k to go sign and then the road got steeper (downhill) so AGAIN I attacked into a turn and pinned it. Again Brook was the only one able to respond. On the flats the moto came by saying 2k to go. Brook took one pull in the middle and then jumped around me with 200meters to go. I thought I had 2nd place in the bag and could hardly see straight with my legs pedaling herkey jerkey when Jane came by me at the finish line. Bummer, but still better than I would have forecast. My back was in spasms and my legs trashed for days, but it was cool! I hung on the climb! Shelley suffered out there solo for like 40 miles and proved that sprinters can climb! Proman got 2 podiums! - Thanks for reading -Rachel
1 comment:
Nice write-up. I love reading these.
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