Ritas Report from Wente Criterium

Another large field, 61 starters. Again it was windy, so that pretty much guaranteed no break-away would stick. Some of the big guns were out there, including Brenda Lyons of Victory Cycling, Cindy Mommsen from Olympic Club and Christine Thorburn and her Webcor squad. And in addition to Webcor crew, the strong teams we all know and love were well represented -- PABW had a � dozen or so girls, Proman had at least 7 and McGuire had 5 or 6. So this guaranteed a fast race. It was actually fairly manageable for me in the first half of our 50 minutes out there, although with such a big field there was all manner of riding (can you say Really Sketchy?!) going on. Too many close calls for my taste, and a few times I heard a couple of the more experienced women scolding some of the less experienced girls. There was one crash in the race, right next to me -- an Alto Velo girl clipped Cindy Mommsens rear wheel -- and as she went down, one of her wheels hit my leg. Luckily I didnt go down with her. Even the winner the race, a Belarussian woman, was quite dangerous, taking the turns without any regard to who was next to her. (Afterwards, I heard some talk about trying to get her DQed but that didnt end up happening.) Anyhow, in the second half of the race the speed definitely picked up. It got pretty strung out, and there were even a couple times where I found myself dangling at the back. No, no, no, cant let this happen. Start working my way back up inside of five laps to go. It comes down to a bunch sprint, and of course everyone knows my sprinting skills need work. But I go as hard as I can... and surprise, surprise, I placed 5th in my category and managed a top 25 finish overall (3s were picked separately again today). So for my efforts, a bottle of wine, some granola and a too large t-shirt. Sweet!

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