Fitchburg

It's been a couple of weeks since Fitchburg and I'm just now getting around to writing about it. Given that this is my first season of road racing, I'm sure some people probably thought I was crazy to do Fitchburg, especially since I'm a cat 4 and the race is a 3/4 race. Seeing as I get dropped on the first hill of every cat 4 race, it was sure to happen in a 3/4 race. But I didnt' get cut & finished! I was 49 out of 57 starters and 49 finishers - so I wasn't really last - just last out of those people who finished. Pretty good for my first stage race. Special thanks to Bill and to Scott for giving me great advice on what to expect and how to race each race - all the tips were great! Thanks to Sol, Sean, Keith and George for being so supportive, Darcy and Hannah for cheering me on, and Julie for feeding me a bottle and finding the one I tossed!

Quick summary of lessons learned:

1. Warming up on the trainer before the race works. Wish I had known that before the time trial and before the circuit race - maybe my legs wouldn't have felt like lead weights and might have actually functioned.
2. Having to drive back and forth to Boston each day is a real drag - especially when you're in a car with broken A/C. Best to stay in Fitchburg and lounge by the pool after racing.
3. Stay in the front. Let me repeat that, stay in the front. Getting to the front is not really a problem for me. It's managing to stay there. This is especially important in the crit and the circuit race.
4. Stay away from the sketchy girls. Hopefully I'm not one of them, but there are really a lot of sketchy girls in the pack - either they're aggressive but lack bike handling or they just lack bike handling. I'm not sure why people slam on their brakes in the pack for no apparent reason, spin really fast then coast only to spin really fast and then coast over and over again, or try to squeeze into spots too small for them causing other people who are already overlapping someone else's wheel to come close to crashing much too close to me.
5. Fellow biker friends are super! I was so, so lucky that I ran into Julie Lockhart and she offered (ok insisted) to take a bottle for me - she was so right that I would need it & was so nice to offer to help me out! I was also so, so lucky to have Darcy and Hannah to cheer for me and give me pointers - they were both too awesome for words.
6. Going back to work on Thursday and Friday after racing was stupid. Especially since I ended up working until 7:30 pm both days, doing conference calls in the car on the way back while trying to stuff food and water down my throat. Not to mention getting up each day at 5 am to crank out work for an hour or so before leaving for the race. Everyone else was warming up to their iPod, while I warmed up my thumbs with my Blackberry. Next year I'll take both days off and throw my blackberry into a river so no one can reach me.
7. Working until 9 pm Mon, Tues and Weds - and not really eating anything for lunch or dinner was probably not a good way to prep for 4 days of racing.