Finchford-Roubaix

So, Kyle and I rolled up to Finchford, IA this weekend for a circuit race put on by Bike Tech Racing Club. We have not previously done this race because it has been up against Iowa Cup mountain bike races. Kyle had originally wanted to go to Omaha for a mountain bike race, but when my fork broke, that pretty much dictated where we were going.

We got up there with plenty of time to do a lap around the course. It was 5.5 miles and I was scheduled to do 6 laps while Kyle in the Cat 4s race had 7 laps. The wind of course hit you on the back side, so you had to battle it for like 2 miles right before the finish. There were 6 women in our field, but filled with heavy hitters. Julie from Des Moines with a teammate, Kelli from PRC, and my teammate from last year Anne who now rides for BH. Kathleen also joined us as well even though she had just done the Women's 4 race!

The first 2 laps we just spun. We all took turns at the front...most notable was Julie, who pulled us through the wind section on both those laps. Then, with the start of the 3rd lap, I kinda sped things up a bit. Around the first corner, then with the tail wind, and finally I hit it really hard as we turned the 2nd corner and started up a hill. At this point it was only Kelli, Anne, and me. We decided to start a rotation and that's how we rode for the next 3.5 laps.

Something kinda cooky happened toward the end of our 5th lap. I should say 1st that we were lapped by the lead pack in the cat 4 men's race. They came around us right at the start of the 5th lap. The 3 of us had a short discussion about the fact that they had 7 laps and we had 6, so them lapping us shouldn't change the number of laps that we have. We continued on rotating not thinking much about it. As we made the final turn I could see that the lap counter said 1 so we kept rotating. Then, as we hit the last little hill before the finish, the officials changed the lap counter to say 0, so without saying anything I took off. As I crossed the finish line, I yelled out "are we done?" and one of the officials yelled yes while the other one yelled one more. I held up for the other 2 since they didn't know what the hell I was doing and we eventually decided that they had just made a mistake and we need to do another lap. After about 3 miles into this last lap, a car came around to tell us this was definitely the last lap.

We maintained our rotation until about the 200 meter mark on the hill. I jumped before the other 2 and got the win. I had a lot of fun working with and racing these ladies! I look forward to racing with them again in 2 weeks at the Memorial Weekend Races :)

Next up...you guessed it Iola! Won't hear about the fork until Tuesday, but I am hopeful it will be back before Friday! I also have 3 finals this week, 1st up is Path at 8am tomorrow :( Wish me luck, I would hate to have to repeat my 2nd year!