Penn State “Black Mo”
3/31-4/1/12
Shaena Berlin
Penn State contains perhaps the only real mountain in an ECCC race; Black Moshannon, which rises ~1800 ft over ~6 mi. It was a long drive to get there (~7 hrs) but a great weekend.
TTT: 9.5 mi/27:20 I competed in the TTT with Yuri, Katie, and Jen; I was really nervous, since we had to finish 3 riders and Jen is still a C woman, so it would fall on me to keep up (particularly on the uphills). It went well, though; we took the first hill easy to try to keep Jen with us, then accelerated on the way back and down through the second half of the course. I actually pulled a good deal on the flats/downhills and felt pretty good. The pace slowed a bit on the steep uphill at the start of a triangle, as expected, but I did OK and we finished strong, passing several other teams along the way and placing 1st in the A women by almost 1:00 (without aero helmets/equipment).
Road Race: This year, the road race consisted of 2 21-mile laps, each of which included >2000 ft of climbing. I was dropped from the lead pack by the start of the first hill (unfortunately dropped my chain, and by the time I recovered they were gone on the flats right before the hill), but still stayed ahead of the second pack (which contained most of the B women). I slowly, steadily climbed the hill, trying to keep my average power around 200W, which I knew I could maintain. Doing this, I passed two other girls and gained much on the next group in front of me, which contained the first 3 B women and 2nd group of A’s. I couldn’t catch them on the rolling hills at the top, even TT-ing quite hard, so resigned myself to riding the entire second lap by myself (hopefully – assuming a group from behind didn’t catch me with less fatigue than I had). Luckily, coming past the starting line at the start of the second lap, the group in front slowed down a fair bit, so I caught back on and happily traded off pulls throughout the rest of the flat and downhill section. Starting the second climb, I fell behind the three top B women, who were pretty clearly better climbers than me, but stayed ahead of the other A. Thus I crossed the finish line in 4th for B’s, only ~1 min behind the leaders. This was very successful for me, considering last year in the same race I did terribly.
Crit: This crit was pretty scary, though not as sketchy as last year. It contained a couple of fairly sharp turns, with a chicane in the middle. At the start, they asked us to all move over to our left so the pace car could get through, and we must have repositioned badly because I locked handlebars with someone and almost went down at the start. A bit shaky, I struggled to catch back on to the front group but did make it there. Then, a couple of laps in, I clipped my pedal on the road on the left turn into the chicane. I should have gone down and am shocked that I didn’t; however, the girl behind me did crash (luckily, she was OK and went on to take 2nd in the race). After this, I really didn’t trust myself or my cornering abilities and took the rest of the race overly-cautiously. I won 2 primes and got points in the other 2, and ended up 4th in B’s (one group behind the lead group of A’s+B’s).
Overall, very successful weekend for me, and I ended up first in the B’s omnium by a fair margin. However, I still don’t seem to have any upgrade points, and besides I would rather actually podium in some mass-start races before trying to upgrade; I know I’m strong, but I’m still getting dropped by the main group in many races, and since we get to race the same distance as the A women anyway and I don’t have time to go to Nationals this year, I don’t see any particular rush to upgrade. It’s nice to be near the front of the B’s, an OK to be in the middle of the B’s, but it would be embarrassing to be dropped/near the back of the A’s.
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