Jamie, Raegan, and I (Carole) arrived around 5:45a Sunday morning to prepare for our 7am start….first race of the morning at the 2nd Annual Brentwood Grand Prix! This race is truly becoming an EVENT with such an outpouring of community and enthusiasm. This year offered a new course along San Vicente Blvd, with off-camber u-turns on each end, a few bends in between, and a 450 meter curved line to the finish coming out of the last u-turn……just enough to make it semi-techinical and keep the surges up. The Fast Friday girls kept the pace up and the NOW girls threw in few attempts with us IE girls staying on every move. Everyone had to work to keep up the accelerations out of the turns. Preems were offered almost every lap which also kept things moving. As the pace really picked up on the last lap, Raegan smartly maneuvered around a girl that went down at the 2nd to last u-turn and stayed with the front group as we’re all trying to move up and position around the final u-turn. I could see Leah from Fog Racing powering through for her ultimate solo victory with the field about 4 bike lengths behind. The rest of us pushed it hard for the field sprint and I held on for 6th and Raegan in 8th. Awesome job sprinting two weeks in a row, Raegan!
August 5, 2009:
Jamie and Raegan at the Northern CA District Championship Road Race!
Race report by Raegan L
Jamie and I headed up to Northern CA for their district championships at Fort Ord road race . It was a 42 mile race, 10.2 miles per lap with rollers and and one mile-long climb. As we drove in, we noticed a distinct marine layer and strong winds. We were thinking, “what did we get ourselves into?” Or I was thinking that. I am not a fan of strong wind gusts. So we get there and the weather was cool enough, that we raced with arm warmers. Can You believe it? It’s August! What a special treat to have nice cool weather to race in. And the winds, they were there but not too bad. Our field was small. So we knew that it was going to be hard to “just sit in”. On the first lap, I attacked on the climb just to see who would go with me. Nobody did, so for the rest of the climbs I was sure to be second wheel. There were not any attacks the entire race, everyone was saving up for the uphill finish. So it came down to the final lap with 1k to go and we all pretty much sat up waiting to see who was going to pull. I kept looking back, waiting for the attack to take a wheel. Nobody was going. We came to 200m. Finally someone went. I took the wheel. It was so close. The girl who took my wheel sprinted past me. I ended up with a 3rd place finish. And Jamie finished in the top 10! It was a great day for the I.E. Girls!
August 5, 2009:
Raegan, Jamie, and Carole at Dominguez Hills! :)
Raegan won her first race at the Dominguez Hills Criterium! Way to go Raegan!
We rolled up to race the crit with a plan in place. Originally we had planned on attacking on the second lap and trying to hold a break until the end. After chasing down a couple attacks we realized it was a pretty strong field and we wouldn’t be able to hold a two lap break. I rolled up next to Raegan (who was going stir crazy sitting in) and explained the new plan, essentially a super hard attack on the last lap, or alternatively speaking, a really long lead out (and a really long sprint). With three laps to go the two strongest riders in the field dropped back to sit on Raegan’s wheel. Well, this just wasn’t happening on my watch. Rolling up next to her again, new instructions were to fake an attack out of the third corner up the hill, then sit up and drift to the back. Sure enough it worked. Everyone jumped to follow the attack (they’d never just let our Raegan go!) and once they’d built up the momentum to chase we sat up and they flew right past. Going into the last lap now Raegan was getting antsy. “Should I go?! Should I go?!” she was edging up next to me around the first corner. “Not yet!” I positively hissed and pointing to my back tire, “get back on my wheel!” She was so ready to go and relegated to sit in the back! We’d need the space to get the jump on them… but I could literally feel the frustration emenating from behind me. On the back stright away I slowly shifted down and got ready for the jump. We’re in the back, hey why not, I actually gave her a count down off low to the left. 3-2-1. With Raegan solidly on my wheel I jumped and sprinted towards the third corner. We took it at 28mph, and I jumped again and sprinted halfway up the hill until I gave out and with my last breath shouted, “Raegan go!” I watched in relief as she sprinted around towards the last corner with no one on her wheel, but knew I had left her high and dry for a very long finishing straight. The gamble was she could hold it longer than everyone else. Around the corner a few bike lengths in front of the field she not only held it, but increased the gap! Raegan not only won her first crit, she totally blew the field away! I coasted through the finish and found Raegan to celebrate and to cheer on Carole who was still racing the 1/2/3 race which was on the course at the same time. The 1/2/3 race we heard was intense with Helen’s out in force driving the pace and making everyone pay. Carole finished a solid 12th place. Good job Carole!
August 3, 2009:
Raegan at the San Marcos Crit
August 3, 2009:
Jamie at the Pacific Coast tri
Another weekend of racing in the books! Race report courtesy of Jamie Taylor.
I “raced” the Pacific Coast Triathlon last weekend. Racing was really relative this weekend I guess. The surf was so big that they cancelled the swim! That pretty much ended my “race” right there. Before cycling I was a swimmer. So my only hope in a triathlon is to gap the runners on the swim and the bike and try to hold them off on the run. Well, they added a run before the bike so this time all the runners got a head start! I decided since I wasn’t going to be all too competitive I might as well have lots of fun. I did hammer the bike and put in a decent split, but then cruised the run because, why not? Part of the run was actually on the beach so I had fun jogging along, watching the waves, and picking out the photographers to smile and wave at.
Then it was off to San Marcos to cheer Raegan L. on in the crit! While it was mostly cool and a bit muggy in Newport Beach for the triathlon, by the time I got to San Marcos it was hot! Raegan hammered that hill in that terrible heat as girls were dropping off left and right until she finally decided she’d had enough of that! We met up and were out of there before the race ended sipping iced drinks at Starbucks… and later on to brunch at an Italian place on restaurant row… and so on and so forth.
All in all, we did agree that we were glad we had Rae M. around, killing it at Super Week to represent for us so we could hang out smiling at photographers and sipping cool drinks.
July 29, 2009:
Rae and Chad, Superweek 2009!
Race report by Rae M.
On July 15th Chad and I made a trip to Milwaukee, WI for the 41st Superweek Pro Series…17 days of racing around Chicago and Milwaukee areas!! Yes, that is 17 days which I raced 9 of…9 was plenty! As many of you may know, traveling with a bike is a bit of an expensive hassle but we “tried” using United/USA Cycling vouchers and are proud to say they honored them both ways; however, they forgot our other luggage so our arrival was a bit unnerving. I had planned to race with the Pro 1/2 women the day after we arrived but I don’t think they would have appreciated me showing up to race in jeans and a T-shirt! We did get our luggage after all and I did race but WOW, a 16 hour flight the day before takes alot out of you. Regardless, it was good to do and set the precident for the rest of the series.
I am not going to review each race because, well that would be boring. I will say that this year compared to past years was a pretty tough group of women 3/4 racers, on a scale of 1-10 this group was a 9 (only a few young juniors this year to kick my butt..one of which just got 2nd at RR nationals!)!! Overall, we had about 50 competitors not all of which showed for EVERY race. This made it even tougher considering they had fresh legs and would try to break those of us who signed up for the whole thing. The group was much more experienced than past years, too. This was evident because they could handle a bike and we had NO crashes in the 8 series races….YES!!!
We began racing in Evanston, IL which is a GREAT way to start because the energy of the city is amazing. From there, we were all around Milwaukee and we had a few road races/circuits this year. With the changes in location and the changes in a few of the courses (MANY more corners rather than the traditional 4-corner crits), the series was hard. Evanston and Whitefish Bay (the final day) were the only courses that were truly flat, everything else had power climbs or a good rise or two that took you to your limit each time. This was tough since my plan each race was to stick with the GC leader and make her do the work to bridge anything and everything…the GC leader is Florida’s State TT Champion and she was tough to say the least! But, I did my job in every race 99% … I made mistakes in the final lap to make up the 1% and the gaps that resulted in a consistant 6th place finish. The great thing about Superweek is you pick yourself back up and get back on the bike to do it all over again the next day which is exactly what I did. My consistancy and willingness to do all 8 series races is what kept me in the overall GC and landed me on the podium after Whitefish Bay!!! I was proud to stand up there with my IE Bikes jersey, proud to represent a GREAT group of ladies from SoCal (yes men too, but I love my girls!).
All in all, the series was amazing. I want to send a HUGE thank you to my husband Chad who supported me and put up with the cranky moments (there were a few of those) and I also want to thank Victor, my coach, who actually stayed with us in the hotel after his host housing got messed up. I was able to spend the final 4 races with him on the sidelines watching, yelling, and teaching me so much about cycling. His knowledge and insight into racing is amazing and I am excited to share it with my team which was the only thing missing from the experience…..GIRLS, next year let’s do this one TOGETHER!
July 23, 2009:
Joel DeLaPaz and Geoff Eyer representing I.E. Bikes in France! Wish we were there with you!
July 20, 2009:
Jamie, Carole, Angela, and Raegan - we rock! :)
Race report by Jamie
So, this race report really must start the night before when Raegan and I were trying to figure out what time to get there and I said, “well, we’ve got to get there early because I need to get a really good warmup.” Her jaw just about hit the floor as she was trying to work out whether I was joking or not. Let me explain something about me and warming up. I don’t. Or at least, I try not to. But Raegan generally makes me anyway. But you see, Raegan had been given specific instructions to sit in whereas she usually does a lot of attacking and who wants to race a slow crit? So I had taken it in my head to attack on the first lap. Hence the warm up.
We met Carole and Angela at the race and filled them in on the plans. Angela rolled up to our race after duking it out with the guys for the primes in the master’s race right before ours. “I’m tired,” she says… then proceeds to drive the pace for much of the women’s race.
True to my word, I took off hard on the first lap. I had never raced Ontario before though and as I approached the second corner on the front of the field I was mentally flipping a coin over whether I should go right or left. The street T’d and I really couldn’t tell… left, right, left, right. “Do I go left or right?!” I shouted to Carole on my wheel, “you’re doing great!” she responded. Hmm. Not quite the answer I was looking for, but it would do. Splitting the street down the center, ready for any eventuality, I finally saw the barriers to the right, and left it was!
We drove the pace for much of the race. Angela led Carole out for an Ontario series points prime and she took it! Carole is now the new points leader in the Ontario series! Yeah Carole! We had a few more attacks and did a lot of pulling. We were having a great time until along with the announcement of a mini-pump prime I heard the announcer say something about three laps to go. Really?!
With a little convincing (and a turn past the start finish to check the posted laps to go), I got Angela and Raegan to come to terms with the fact that the race was almost over, “no really! I swear, there are only two laps left!” I cried. Carole joined us and we started our lead out train at the beginning of the last lap.
I pulled through the start finish up to the front with the IE girls lined up behind me. A little longer and I swung off just after the first corner. Angela took over the leadout from there. I was off the back and didn’t see but I heard it turned into last lap chaos. The girls did great though, all top ten finishes! Carole took 5th, Raegan 8th and Angela 10th. We got a ton of compliments after the race on keeping it fast and working well together as a team. Great job ladies!
Race Report from Raegan: I did the Women’s Cat 4 CBR in Long Beach on Sunday. It ended up being a big field of 29 starters. Which is great, more women are racing!I started out attacking off the start line. That set the tone for the race, we had an average speed of 23 mph. Much faster than any Cat 4 race this season. It was fun, I did a couple more of attacks. Then on the final, we hit it at an average of 26 mph for the entire lap. What a fun race! My finish was 12th.
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