Sunday, April 3

WWU race weekend-a trek up to Bellingham

Bellingham is one of my favorite race weekends because it’s so beautiful and I love their courses, but it’s also one of our longer drives at 7ish hours each way. To make matters more complicated people have to be certified by the college to be able to haul our trailer and there’s a different certification that people can get to be able to drive our small busses that we call ‘Turtle tops’. Since we have a large team but not very many certified drivers, we end up with a minimal percentage of our team serving as drivers to cover all the shifts...which is especially rough on the way back from race weekends when everyone is tired and nobody wants to drive… (no endless varsity budget=no paid drivers) But you know, building character and good life learning experiences and all that…

We lucked out with beautiful weather over the weekend. It’s always hit or miss with Bellingham. Some years it’s raining and at least one team gets stuck in the bog that serves as a parking lot on Saturday and other years we get blessed with sunshine and dandelions.

The wind on Saturday caused the false flat in the road racecourse to be even worse than usual, but the occasional direct beam of sunshine still made it better than pouring rain for sure. I rediscovered the joys of soloing off the back while cramping up and mentally kicking myself for forgetting to bring any food along. Shout out to Sam Waples for hanging out next to me for a bit and keeping my spirits up! A former NWCCC member and one time race accomplice from back in freshman year when they raced the Men’s B and Women’s A together, it was nice to see him return to cheer all of us on. It was also nice to see so many other conference members and supporters out on course cheering me on: without it I’m pretty sure I would have bailed a good two laps earlier. This is something I love love love about our conference! The support, goofiness and openness throughout the conference is truly amazing and something I learn to re-appreciate weekend after weekend.

The TTT was predictably difficult (imagine legs on verge of cramping and giving out as soon as I start pedaling). They evened out a little through the TTT and I managed to keep with the group at the very least to complete our first race TTT. It felt good to work altogether and I think we are only going to improve from here! Congrats to all the TTT teams out there, this is the heart of collegiate cycling: working together as a group to achieve something more. We must remember to wear funny socks in the future tho!

Saturday night it was truly wonderful to be done with dinner by a little after 7pm. This gave us plenty of time to do homework or chill on the back deck next to the fire pit our homestay had set up for us. Big thanks to our homestay folks (Richard and Coqui)!! It was so wonderful to let us invade your house for the weekend and your hospitality was amazing. Thank you Thank you!!!

Sunday was crit day and there was no pouring rain! Yay! The course is flat and doesn’t have any sharp corners so it’s great for pack tactics and sprinters. Our team is fortunate to have three women’s A riders which meant we made up half the peloton during the crit (any potential women racers out there, please join with a whole bunch of your friends bc we really need more women in the sport!). We were able to control the race the entire time, take first place in all the primes and deliver Dessie to the finish line first, so I’d call it a great success. Plus I was actually in the pack the entire time and had so much fun participating in the race, feeling pretty good in the sprints and contributing to our overall team success. One thing I especially love in the crits is that everything is compressed into a fairly short period of time and, if I’m with a pack, it’s constantly engaging because I’m on high alert the whole time for when people might make a move, how to protect and work with my teammates, when to make a move, reading the field and the other riders’ intentions, etc. There is hardly every a dull moment. It’s like a chess game with adrenaline, and higher stakes. And with teammates to work with, I have even more to think about and a greater goal to work for than just myself. Overall it was just a fantastic way to end the weekend and the most fun I’ve had racing in a long time.

Results can be found here.

Next up is our home race!!! Lots of work ahead of us, but also lots of fun and no travel! Our Criterium will be on-campus again which is super exciting. Hope to see some of you there and maybe see some of you helping out in volunteer positions (see the facebook event page for more details).

-Mackinzie

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." 
– Ernest Hemingway

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