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Andrea took some photos of me at the TT start and also of the Cat 3 crit (mostly of me, but others are in as well).

Here are two galleries of photos from the Womens ProAm crit (Cat 1-2-3) at Chattanooga on Saturday (4/12/08).

Went out to my old (2nd) hometown of Chattanooga to race Georgia Cup race. The time trial was my maden voyage (in a race situation) for my Kuota Kebel (TT modified), my Zipp 900 disc, and Rudy Project aero helmet. I probably didn’t warm up enough/properly and I never really got my legs going. I ended up with a time of 13:30 (leader was 12:03). It was good enough for 35th of 49.

[getting ready]

Later on, I lined up with a pretty big Cat 3 field for the downtown criterium. Started out okay and was starting to move up when I hit a road hazard on lap 3… another Tufo bites the dust. I rode it back to the pits, changed it out and rejoined at the back….

But at least I was still in it. As the race continued, I kept moving up a few places only to find myself at the back again… people were falling off. In the end I was 39th/41 in the field. There was 52 at the start according to the results. Ben Gabardi won the crit (Andrea said he just pulled off the front and took the victory).

Sunday Road race… the weather turned south dropping down to the mid-40’s but at least it did not rain. The Cat 3 race was a good long race of 68 miles with one main hill per lap. I didn’t do a head count, but there was probably close to 60 in this race as well on narrow roads. So I was in advancing mode the whole time. The first time up the hill, there were bodies everywhere … I had to steer around about 6 riders to stay with the field. The remainder of the first lap was nervous near the back, where I was. I didn’t see them go, but over the climb the first time 3 got away (2 would stick to the end). The field wasn’t in chase mode so it was very hot/cold.

I worked hard to move up to about 2/3 position in the field and over the climb/following descent I was able to get to the front 1/3. Did some work, tried to stay out of the wind the rest of the time (which was pretty strong / gusty with most of it being a cross-wind). Over the climb the 3rd time, I hit the base at the front and drilled the lower section. In the end I was swarmed by the top, but kept most of my field position. The last 10 miles to the finish I tried to stay near the front and was mostly successful against several attacks, etc. The lead in to the finish was downhill with about 1/2 mile of flat. Once the road opened up there were people going all sorts of speeds. I felt good, so I was picking my way forward in the sprint… I got 10th overall (2 off the front). I wanted to verify that result, but even after waiting for a while they hadn’t posted anything and were breaking camp.

I plan to try to put up some galleries in a seperate post. I am traveling, so it will be the scrolling gallery embedded in the post.