Women's Cycling is GHETO

Saturday presented the unique and rewarding opportunity of hearing and riding with several accomplished professional women cyclists. The Women's Cycling Association hosted a forum with some very well known cyclists telling their stories and offering suggestions to build equity in the sport. It was inspiring. Several had given up lucrative careers to pursue their dreams. They spanned all ages and all disciplines. After the forum the audience and the speakers rode from Winters to Davis, a beautiful, flat, country-style spin. I had the opportunity to chat up Emily Kachorek about her recent cross races and get super excited about racing at Lange Twins Winery on Sunday. She explained to me the UCI rules governing cyclocross starts. Basically you have to kick ass and get points to start without several rows of people in front of you. Tough. She also put the bug in my ear about LACX After Dark in a couple weeks. Hmmmmmm.
Then Sunday dawned clear and warm and cross ready.  I recently joined TBBCX\GHETO cross team and Sunday was the first day all cross season that I got to have a team behind my name and a matching kit. Also my first day ever wearing a skinsuit. Gulp. I almost chickened out and wore the other black kit, but I figured I'd be going so fast (yeah right) no one would care what it looked like. 
Unfortunately I was a complete mess from the moment I arrived at the course to the end of the grueling race. I knew it was going to be a difficult day when I didn't bring enough money to reg, forgot my bib number, had to go back to get pins and was debating about what kit to wear. Way too much going on. I finally got everything together and realized that pinning a number on a skinsuit is not something you can do in public. Jeez. Once I was pinned, and all happy and ready to go, my number was on upside down. All this mental distraction makes it really difficult to get prepped for a race, especially cross, where there is no time during the race to settle in. Somehow I managed to get to the start line with my shoes on the right feet and everything in order, but I had not had a good pre-ride. The course was loose, technical and there were fast women on the line, as always. Though I was intimidated and nervous, I was there to race and was going to Go Hard Every Time Out no matter what.

Post by Cycle Masters of Turlock.

Well my GHETO acronym for the race turned out to be Go Headfirst into Every Turn On-course. The swoopy, loose section turned out to be trouble the second lap in. The above photo is taken right before I went down there, I know this because I am still clean. Thankfully there were plenty of hecklers on that corner to make it worth crashing. I figure if I'm going to go down, do it in front of an audience to improve bragging rights later. Before this crash I had been holding pretty good position, about 4th with 3rd in sight, but it took me a second to get up and I lost contact. The next time I came through I could hear the guys yelling, "slower, slower" Ha! never heard that from the hecklers before, they must have felt sorry for me. My plan to catch back on was to hammer in the straightaways on the back of the course and take those loose corners way way to hot. In the dirt again. This time was hard and it hurt. Took me a while to get back up and on the bike and my shifter was bent sideways. I whacked it and it started working but my rear brake was gone. My knee was bleeding, my thumb was swollen and my bike wasn't working. Ick. Way to indoctrinate a new kit, crash and burn. I managed to get the pedals turning and headed back on course. As I was struggling up the flyover, my friend Tony Troy gave me some great advice. He said, "Find it" I took it to heart. There was a cross racer somewhere inside my bruised up self and I was going to find it and finish the race. I kept that mantra for the rest of the race and didn't let anyone else pass me. The GHETO crew kept yelling at me to smile and give high fives. So I remembered that racing was fun. These are my friends on course and supporting me. I smiled and gave high fives and felt better. And actually, riding the course with only a front brake helped because I couldn't come into the corners too fast and was forced to be smooth. I've never been so happy to finish a race and position didn't even matter. Every race out I'm trying to learn to be smooth. Next time, no crashing.
As I was doing my laundry this morning I found that even my clothes know more about cross than I do:

The last line says, "AVOID CONTACT WITH ROUGH SURFACE" Well duh. I'll try next time.
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