Headed to downtown Augusta for my crit on Friday afternoon. My race went off at 1:45pm and with each passing minute things only were getting warmer. We parked right before the first turn on the course near the sidewalk and set up shop in right under several huge trees for shade. After sitting around doing nothing and sweating, I finally popped my bike on the trainer, slipped into my skin suit and started blasting my 'warm-up' playlist on my ancient iPod (having a broken back-light on that baby makes things interesting...). After doing some openers I headed to the start line, where they had us complete rollout. The top 5 girls were called up to the front row, and the rest of us filed in behind them. I somehow managed to sneak my way to the front row on the right side, right next to the barriers.
Our race was a total of 12 laps on the 1-mile course, and it started out pretty mellow. The field isn't big to begin with (23 riders total!), but the course has a lot of turns on it and boy were they skeetchyyyy with some of those riders. I tried my best to stay up near the front marking any moves from the more important riders, but the only attack that went successfully was with 1 lap to go! The 7 of us made it through the back stretch (I was on the back, holding on for dear life) and I was still on the back coming into the homestretch. I moved up from 7th to 6th, but my sprint was so stale compared to the other girls, and I missed 5th (and the podium) by half a wheel.
Anyways, we got these new skin suits just in time for Nationals with our new sponsors, but since I am headed off to college in about a month I only got a long sleeve – that's right, I raced long sleeve in the 95º heat! I felt like I absorbed enough radiation from the sun to become a swamp thing!
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