opus #1

Yay, another race report. Tonight began the six-week OPUS crit series, which is supposed to go every Tuesday night until the end of May. Due to the fuzz, the po-po, the (mmmm, I smell bacon!) boyz in blue getting a little crabby about some alleged traffic violations, there are rumors afoot that the series may get shut down. Just rumors though. Tonight's shut-down, just after my race finished, coincided neatly with the onset of some serious thunder and lightning, so I am suspicious of the rumors. We shall see.

Anyway, the women's open field tonight may have been a new record, either 21 or 22 racers. Last year we had between 10 and 15 most nights. I was hoping it would be hard from the gun so the pack would get strung out a bit, seeing as probably half the women there had never raced before, but I was toward the back and didn't have much say in that. And it didn't go that way. For the first three laps the pace was pretty moderate, but OPUS is a points race with sprints every three laps, and the first sprint usually breaks the pack up pretty well. I'm not sure what happened at the back, but from where I sat it went like this: the first three girls across the line, including both Belgian Bella and my illustrious teammate Paula, got a good gap on the rest of the field. I tried briefly to bridge to them but quickly realized that a) I was towing the field behind me, and b) we weren't going to regroup, it was an honest-to-god break, and my teammate was in it. So I sat up.

Nobody organized any real chase, so the break stayed away for the rest of the race. And since the three in the break automatically got all the points in the second sprint, we didn't have a second points sprint. The group stretched and bunched and stretched and bunched and did the usual inchworm thing for the next five or so laps, while I primarily occupied myself with avoiding one particularly sketchy girl whose team shall remain nameless, but she wasn't one of ours. Thank goodness for that. At one point I heard the terrifying sound of wheels rubbing together very near me, but nobody went down (again, thank goodness for that). And then, because there are only nine laps in the women's race, the bell was ringing and it was time to get my sorry ass off the back of the pack and into a workable position. I used the downhill to scoot up to about midpack on the outside edge, then moved up more gradually as we approached the finish, and waited for somebody to jump. The girl who finally did jump went way too soon if you ask me, but too late, game on, so I went after her and so did everybody else. I didn't have a wheel to lead me out, though, so I just had to try and hold it for as long as I could, which wasn't quite long enough -- I held second for a long time but it was a long long sprint and I started to fade, at which point two other girls came around me, and I crossed the line in fourth position for seventh overall.

During our race, thunder had started to rumble and a few fat raindrops were falling, but within a couple minutes of the finish, we ran out of luck. Between that and whatever had transpired with the cops, there didn't end up being any more races, so we went home.

Here are some pictures of the pack sprint (remember the three-woman break had already finished, so this was a sprint for fourth). I am on the left, blue helmet & armwarmers. (Shawn, as promised, I am on my bike yet not smiling. Those races, I tell ya. Something about the burning throat and the tunnel vision kind of wipes the smile right off.)



The pictures were taken by photographer extraordinaire Bruce Adelsman, and there are many more available on his page. Go check 'em out.