Okay, so Karol - Ann, my super awesome leadout teammate show'd me these pics on the weekend and I had to put them on the blog. Okay so she didn't lead me out here, but when I ask her to do things for me like set tempo up a climb or catch someone, I have faith. I basically just have to get on her wheel and close my eyes and the next minute I know we are there.
The sprint above is only a two up sprint from two weeks ago, but I did spend half of the race away and did the majority of the work in the break.
This weekend at Bear Mountain I was little disappointed with how I road as a team with my two of my teammates. I feel like even though Karol Ann and I have a language barrier we connect and get things. But at Bear Mountain everything team wise went wrong. The race was down to 15 girls the third of four times up a long 10 minute climb and we had 3 girls in it (me, Karol-Ann and Mary). It was perfect so I started lighting it up a bit, I attacked on the climb got caught and then followed two more attacks. Mary was climbing well and at the front of the group, Karol Ann was digging to stay on each lap. I figured I covered two things and just finished telling Mary who to watch out for (2 girls). 1 goes and I tell her to go, she does and I hesitate but get on it. 3rd response to an attack in a row now. Okay, the other girl goes and the other responds again, this time again I wait to see if Mary goes. She doesn't and I watch the two roll away as Mary kind of slow's down the pace. After the race she told me she couldn't and I guess it was bad on my half to think everyone was okay to cover things.
I thought as a team we could still bring the break back on the downhill and flats, but nothing is organized well and as a team we were doing everything as the other girls in the group sat on. What to do now, the best was just to attack and get one of us off for 3rd place or can try and bridge across. Everytime I attack, nobody went after I got caught, I think everyone is exhausted on my team and the other girls in the group just want to keep everything together for the finish.
So last time up the climb, I tell Karol Ann to set tempo for 10 minutes to try and shed a couple girls, doesn't work and I think we are going harder on the front as 1-2 up the climb than those on the back. I tell Mary and Karol Ann that we need to just keep on attacking to the finish about 10 km out until one of us gets free. Mary goes up a false flat and a girl goes with her, and then the girls rides right through her and Mary gets dropped. I see this all happen about 100m up the road and just want to shut my eyes.
I wait to see if some left in the group wants to chase, no not really, the gap gets bigger and the finish is 5km away. So then Karol - Ann chases the girl in 3rd back. She goes so hard and I'm right on her wheel with 5 girls on me. We catch the girl in 3rd at 1 km from the finish as it starts to go down hill. As we catch her, Karol Ann is done and now I can't lead her out and she can't finish leading me out. She peels off and the girl caught is also in the way. One of the girls behind attacks and I see sideways and almost black out to get on her wheel. I get on and 5 us are left coming to the finish line at 72 km/hour. I try to go to the left but have a wheel in my way and can't go. Emma from Ultra Link gets the 3rd spot at the line. Really bummed out and really hard on myself and probably a bit on my team. For me, Derrick keeps on saying your sick, you have Strep throat. But I can't except that as an excuse. I'm not even half way through my anti-biotics, but really I don't look sick, I'm fine, but I was second guessing my efforts in the race a bit. I didn't want to really fully commit to my attacks or solo attempts as I just didn't want to be sick again this week. It was really frustrating to race how I did on the weekend. I couldn't help being hard on myself though, I saw the race dynamics and I thought I could communicate things well. Because of misscommunication on my part, I guess I failed to realized how much the team was suffering and if they could respond. The positive thing was that we are always having atleast 3 girls in the moves of the races, now if only we can all get together and work together I think we are going to have some fantastic results.
NCE
No comments:
Post a Comment