Feeling Sequimy

If you asked anybody who showed up in Sequim today, the most exciting thing about the race was the weather. Twelve hours ago it had been snowing fat flakes in Seattle and pissing rain and 35F in the rain shadow of Sequim, but we woke up in our hotel this morning to find clear skies and dry roads! Race on, baby!

So five of us from our team spent the morning rolling 36 miles along Kitchen Dick and Woodcock Road with about 35 other women, about half of whom wore that ubiquitous shade of turquoise known so well around the Puget Sound area. It was a good fast pace, much faster than last time, with lots of attacks that went no where, yet par for the Cat - all too much braking for no damn reason. They brake at the bridge crossing, they brake going up hill, they brake going downhill, they brake in the middle of no where. And what results from all this needless braking? Why wheel overlap and reckless swerving, dontcha know!

By the last few miles I was ready to leave the braking behind and take this pack home, but after an attempt at pushing the pace up front, I pulled off and watched the pack zip by me, quickly getting boxed in towards the back. Frustrated that I wasn't up front to help my teammates for obvious sprint finish that would be forming, I wanted to get around the mass of turquoise ass around me, but riders started braking, wheels and bikes started wobbling, and right in front of my eyes we went down like a herd of alloy elephants under a poacher's rifle. Luckily it was one of those slow motion events, but completely unavoidable from my doomed position. I landed on one piece of turquoise, but quickly got up and remounted my bike, knowing that it was a fine piece of Columbus tubing and didn't have to worry about catastrophic failure. My brake levers were bent, but I pushed off in time to see the pack a good 1/4 mile ahead. With less than 2 km to go I knew there was no time to catch them, although I did have a superhero headline flash in my mind: "Downed rider with heart of lion catches up to pack at the finish and zooms past to take the win". Yeah right. Don't waste your energy! Save it for another day.

Turns out that 1 other teammate went down in the pile up, but 3 of our team made it out front to continue our consistent placing. I have no doubt if I hadn't gone down that I could have led them out for an even better placing. But that's racing. I can't complain - we had amazing weather and dry roads! Our new girls also did a great job and everyone finished safely. That's all I ask for. Staying healthy and trying again another day.