72... redlands recap

so this is s little late on the posting. this last week has been very very hectic. we finished redlands on sunday- drove the 7-8 hours back that night to los altos (andrew came with me- he decided to stay out here for another week!!!)... then monday and tuesday were spent trying to get ready to go to europe and meet with my committee members. i had to run around like a chicken sans-head trying to get signatures on forms and whatnot. since wednesday- we got BACK into the car and drove 8 hours back down to indio... so that we could get up at 5AM and do a TV interview thing for the local news channels... it was fun, but holy cow! non-stop! next up--- we race in indio on saturday, then stay the night here. then sunday, we get up at, oh, maybe 4AM to drive to ojai (3-4 hours) and race there on sunday. THEN... i drive back down to my parents house to catch a plane for europe on tuesday morning at 6AM.

i will sleep on the plane.

but i did want to do a bit of a write up about redlands. i have not been posting race reports on my website since we have been posting them on the team website. www.teamtibco.com. i think that they should all be up there now. the recap? the team did great! this was the biggest race that we have raced all season, and i was really happy with how the team raced. we had 3 top ten finishes and stacy and marissa finished 11th and 12th in the gc. not bad for a team that is new on the block!

i did have a couple things to share from my own personal experience this weekend... the first was the prologue time trial. now, time trialing is VERY hard for me. i am a sprinter in that when you tell me to go as hard as i can- it is a sprint. pacing myself is not easy. it never has been. anyway, so this one was short- only 5K and finished on a hill that i could normally do well on. a power climb. so, there was a bit of expectation that i COUD do well on this course.

well- last year... i had thought that i had done well only to realize that i finished 71st. i was SO bummed. there were only 80-something riders and i had gone as hard as i could. it made me feel like i just sucked and was a hopeless case! so this year, i jokingly said, “well, as long as i beat 71st it will all be good!”...

starting this time trial- linda had told us that on a 5k tt, you can’t hold back and have to go as hard as you can and not hold back at all. 20/20 hindsight now tells me that as a sprinter... that rule does not apply for me. not holding back is for 30 seconds. longer than that, i HAVE to moderate my effort. at the time though- i didn’t. i went as hard as i could and, not surprisingly, i blew up before i even got to the hill. when i hit the hill, i was barely able to turn over the pedals. i had people telling me that i was totally overgeared on the climb, but when i told them that i was in my 39:26.... they just didn’t know how to react. i was blown. that is all there i to it. i was blown.

despite knowing that i blew myself and was barely able to finish the small hill- i was still feeling good about my effort. i was in a good mood... then i heard from linda how i did. she was not quite sure how to break it to me... “brooke, you, uh, finished 72nd”. of ALL the numbers that i COULD have finished! 72?! was she kidding? sadly no. i cried and then proceeded to laugh, although the laughter at the situation was not exactly quick to flow forth! but it was too funny... a healthy heaping dose of humble pie served up with the special number 72. the silly thing is that there were 120+ riders this year, but that did not matter. i was fixated on a number, and i drew the wrong number on my not exactly stellar time trial. i won’t lie though- it was hard to take. it really was.

afterward though- we realized what had happened. linda asked me what my max power was on the TT.. 831 watts. that was not at the finish line either! i am a sprinter. when she says go as hard as you can- i do. it is just not sustainable. 800 w is not a sprint for me, but it is certainly a LOT more than i can put out for more than a few seconds, for sure. lesson learned... i have to learn to moderate my efforts no matter HOW long the tt is.

fortunately- that evening i was distracted as yukie and the team made me a surprise brownie birthday cake! they decorated it with candles and powdered sugar and gave me a tiara and a balloon! i needed it too! a good stuffing of browning helped alleviate the trauma of a bad time trial for sure.

the oak glen road race was me getting dropped on the final climb- as expected. i had a job of moving my climbers up into position and had a lot of fun working on doing it. i moved vic, stacy and marissa up before the final climb as best i could and then blew from the effort (i had also made a REALLY stupid move of bridging up to a break about 30 minutes earlier that ended up popping me, so i was spent before hitting the climb anyway). our girls did great with marissa taking 10th. i was totally fried on the climb and just went as hard as i could, giving it everything i had, just for my own personal training and mental sanity. i will never get to be the climber i want to be if i don’t take opportunities to push myself. so, i pushed. with 5K to go, i was barely able to turn the cranks. linda was on the radio giving direction to our riders up ahead and encouraging me to keep going. with 3K to go, i was not sure i could finish. linda was telling me that i was doing a great job and that i could just soft pedal on in. instead, i radioed back, “linda (voice breaking as i was on the verge of cracking), tell me to go harder. tell me to go.... harder”. she did not get that radio transmission and did not know that i needed someone to push me. i was cracking. i was closing my eyes for short stretches to try and tune out the pain as i pushed on. this all sounds so dramatic for someone climbing at more than 10 minutes down the road from the race winners and so far out of contention that it was laughable. just as i was cracking, i was starting to sway and could not hold my line and my throat was closing as i fought back tears- katie lambden came up behind me and encouraged me on. she broke me through my rough spot and helped me push on. she used a combination of positive encouragement with a dose of bootcamp... i needed both. i hung with her for a while before i got dropped, but still managed to limp across the line. it felt great. i LOVE to push hard and burry myself- even if it is frustrating that right now... i can’t be a climbing force. i want to get there. this is how i see it happening. that race was not against anyone for me- it was against myself. and i am glad that i did as well as i could.

the next day- we had the crit. i will leave it to the race report for the details, but i definitely had a lot of learning occurring out there. long story short- i read the race well and got into the right move. i knew that it was the right move the second it happened... a rare break with two of the race favorite sprinters and a top GC contender and top time trialist. ina teutenberg, laura van guilder and christine thornburn. and me. man- i felt like SUCH a rookie out there in that group of world class riders! i have never been in a break like that in a big race. i have nothing to compare it to. but i can tell you this- i have learned a lot. not just at the moment, but in the days that followed as i reflected back on what happened and how i rode.

from the moment the break formed, i knew that it had the very strong potential to stick and did not wait to be told by linda that i could work. i pulled through as hard as i could and worked as hard as i could. i was afraid that i would not be able to hang on... when the break was establishing, i had to just focus on the wheel in front of me and do everything in my power just to hang on. the whole time we were in the break (over a half an hour), i didn’t see my heart less than 178- and that was only once... other than that little hiatus from the pain, i was pegged at over 180.

those women probably have close to 40 years of race experience on me. they had done this before and been in a break like that. for me? this is my second year of really racing and i had not been in anything even close to that before. when it was clear that the break would stay, i knew that i had to watch ina and laura. i knew that christine would not be contending the sprint, but would be likely to jump with a few laps to go. she didn’t, so i was watching ina and laura. laura attacked and ina followed with me on their wheel. the final corner lead into a short, fast sprint and in my hindsight, i learned that the sprint was to that corner. i lost focus and as we went into the corner, i was thinking about the line. my minor mental laps allowed me to get gapped and the race was over for me with laura and ina taking the top spots. i don’t know if with my legs and my positioning, i would have been able to beat either laura or ina at that moment, but i know with certainty that by not focusing on that corner, i did not give myself the chance to try. i was really happy with how that race went and i was SO glad to have made that critical break. it reinforced to me that i AM learning. i AM getting better at reading the races and knowing what to react to and what to not react to. but still- there is a lot to learn ahead!

the following day was the sunset circuit race. i had some high hope in this race in terms of wanting to hang on for the first of the 9 laps! but my legs did not show up that day- not after what i had done the previous two days. my job was, once again, to move my girls up to the front before the first climb. i did my best and then it was up to them. they did great!!!! but, just taking a little bit of wind- combined with the fact that they threw a QOM on lap one, making it a fierce all out battle from the gun, i was spent and unable to hang on. i got dropped. i was SO frustrated that i could not hang on. it was a hard one for me. i really wanted to show that i CAN climb. that i CAN hang on. but, that day- it was simple... i could not do it.

going up that climb, it was interesting that my heart would not get above 165-170, but i just could NOT go any harder. my legs would not respond at all! they were totally shot. i shifted my focus from racing to turning it into a hard training ride. it was. at one point, i was whining into the radio as i passed linda at the top of the climb and she radioed back, “suck it up! it is good training for europe!”. i laughed SO hard! she knows me well... it was just what i needed to hear and it got me up another couple of painful laps! in the end, i was only able to do 8 before our group was pulled- but i got a good workout in... or at least it felt like it. i was absolutely dead tired afterward.

then we got into the car and drove 8 hours. it was insanity. but a great weekend for the team.