Heather takes the Idaho state criterium championship! Heather took out her frustration after yesterday’s flat and rode a brilliant race today. Since I was corner-marshaling, I was able to watch it all unfold. The women’s field was small as usual, I think they only started with 8 women. The pace looked tame for the first few laps then BO of Tamarack attacked and went off the front solo. She got a good gap quickly and with a bunch of other Tamaracks in the “pack”, it was up to Heather and LR (TEAm Lipton) to chase. Heather decided the only way to win this was to get up there by herself. So she launched an attack and started to bridge. It took a few laps — BO is no slouch in time-trial mode — but Heather finally did catch her and they started to work together.
With a few laps remaining, they were getting close to lapping the field, which Heather was reluctant to do, for fear of Tamarack ganging up on her. But Tamarack put on the brakes in the pack so Heather and BO did catch and they were all together with two laps to go. Tamarack was setting up the lead-out train for BO, but then with three corners to go, LR attacked which disrupted the paceline. Heather countered with two corners, broke free of the pack and came bearing down, and passed LR on the start/finish stretch to not only win for first but win the field sprint as well. It was impressive to watch and Heather was ecstatic that she finally got a win. So it looks like Heather is rotating on a yearly cycle — last year she was road race champion, this year she’s the criterium champion. Maybe next year she’ll win both!?
My race wasn’t as exciting, but it was still a good workout…
When I first got on the trainer to warm-up, my legs felt like lead and I thought I’d have a hard time even finishing today’s race. But when it came time to race, I felt better. The first 10 minutes were fast and I just hung out at the back resting as much as I could. We were going for an hour plus 5 laps, so halfway through it a break of the strong guys had gotten off and we were pretty much racing for 4th place. I started to feel better — or maybe everyone else was tiring out — and started rolling through at the front. At times there wasn’t much organization, with the Bode guys disrupting the chase, so I ended up attacking a couple of times, but with no luck.
Then the breakaway group blew by us so fast that not one person got on their wheels! I thought at least the bigger teams would want to get on them and help with a lead-out for the sprint, but I think everyone was content with letting the three breakaway riders do their own race and we’d have our race for 4th. Coming into the last five laps I was feeling OK, but I wasn’t willing to take too many risks in the corners so I just rode safe and out of trouble. I ended up sprinting pretty well, but coming from the back you can only make up so many places so I ended up 13th. I had an average speed of 26.8 MPH, but it felt harder than that. Probably due to yesterday’s 91-mile road race. There were definitely some fresh legs who didn’t race yesterday, but it was impressive to see CA, MW and TR in the break, even though they all raced both days.
Today we both rode our race bikes since they just arrived yesterday after shipping them from Downers Grove. So I didn’t use my PowerTap today, but after estimating a TSS for today, I ended the week at 1076 TSS, the highest ever for me! Now that number may be slightly inflated as I haven’t adjusted my threshold in a while, but regardless, it was one tough week. Now for a couple days of rest before a three-day training block followed by a few more days of rest. Then it will be two weeks of taper until the Parker Mainstreet Omnium on September 15-16.