Becca's OSU race report

The pack surged around the corner. Again.

As the pace slowed down to our normal speed, I turned to the girl next to me and said, “Well, someone’s had their coffee today.” She agreed. After every corner or at the base of every hill, someone kept attacking off the front without fail. By the third lap, it was getting slightly irritating.

Only slightly, though. I had to also remind myself that this was the first time I had ever kept up with the breakaway pack (quite by accident, actually. I managed to hold onto a choice wheel when there happened to be a breakaway of about fifteen girls from the main peloton). Maybe this was how it always was: speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, repeat. There was a certain excitement amongst all of us in the group, though, despite the irritating accelerations/decelerations. We all were itching to get towards the front, to show how strong we were… or, at least get behind that certain someone who kept making those attacks so that we could just hang in their draft (cyclists can be lazy occasionally, even during a race).

As we reached the bottom of the final hill, I felt my knee begin to burn. Uh oh. I had a feeling this would happen. I hadn’t stretched out my IT band, which meant that by now, it was probably inflamed. I turned to Fiona and laughed, “Well, my knee hurts.”
“It does?"
“Yep. This does not bode well.” Just like the good old cross-country days, I thought.

The pack spread out as we asceneded. “Low and go” I said huffed wheezed out. At least it wasn’t as long as last week’s race. Now THAT was a hill. At about 1 km left, I found myself pedaling past another girl. Under flatter circumstances, we would have said encouraging words to each other, like “You got this,” or “Look at you kick butt!” but we could only manage swift glances, curt nods, and grunts. Before I knew it, I had finally passed the finish line.

I pedaled next to my teammate Dessie, who had just won. “Do you know who kept on attacking?”
Dessie grinned. “Oh, that was me and two other girls.” I laughed. Oh, the irony.

-Becca