Race For Sight – Windsor, NY – July 19

Saturday was a hot and humid one, but NY Bellas Kate and Melissa seemed to handle the heat just fine, finishing the A and B races with 1st and 2nd place women results respectively.  This race is one to generate funds for resources for the seeing-impaired in the area and and the course has been in existence for years.  I raced it the last time in 1994, where I touched wheels with another racer and went down, getting stitches in the back of my hand and swearing to never race there again.  Why I tried it again this year, I’m not exactly sure.  The A course was 38 and the Bs did 27 mostly flat miles.

Melissa and I warmed up with another teacher friend of hers and talked teaching as well as a little about racing strategies.  Melissa also expressed that she was just racing for the idea of fun with no expectations as she is in the middle of her baby-making project this summer and was feeling pretty full of fluids in her gut.  Good to get a little intense exercise in before the next stage of this particular summer event!  

Citizens’ races are such great fun, since there’s plenty of people to work with, you can tuck into the pack of men, and suck wheel if you’re so inclined.  Much more exciting than racing with a handful of women in a licensed upstate NY race.  Both Melissa and I were able to race with others rather than just dangling off the back somewhere alone.

My race with the As was fast and at one moment quite scary, as there was a crash right in front of me – I felt the guy’s drink splashing on my legs as I missed riding over his bouncing bike by a fraction of an inch.  Scheiße!  That’s EXACTLY why I had sworn off this flat race all these years!  There aren’t enough hills to break up the pack.  In any event, once I got over my shot nerves, I was pleased to find that the pace was quite doable for me, and that I saw only once another woman in the front with me, and as soon as we hit the small hills, I never saw her again.  

As in the Owasco Flyer, I rode with the big man, Glen Swan again (and his other homies, Jack R. and Mark S. who are bigshots in their own way…) and this time I made him rub knuckles with me while standing in the street, so that we could get that out of the way ahead of the race and he wouldn’t think I would take him out.  I tried to stay in the top 10-15 people for the whole race and did find myself having to pull now and then, which made the second lap a little less easy for me.  The chase group in which I found myself worked pretty hard until the very last bit – when I asked where exactly the finish was, I was surprised that many of them just seemed to stop pushing as we approached the final climb.  That puzzled me.  I ended up beating a bunch of studs who really should have been ahead of me.  Granted, I could hardly walk when I got off my bike, but that was weird.

My speedskating friend Marcia was there to spectate, and she did a great job cheering Melissa on when she came through the corner in town – naturally the VB jersey made her easy to find.  (Me not so, however.  Marcia thought I might have been in the crash, because she missed me coming by twice – so well tucked in the men’s pack I was!)

Two very sweaty women:

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