Earlier in the year I strongly considered riding sportif in the good friday road race, but essentially chickened out and didn't do it. I regret that one. But I literally had no group riding experience at that point. Since then on our rides I try to spend as much time as I can drafting Chris, I've done one long group ride, and ride in a group with my triathlon training group, have had 2 metric centuries under my belt so I felt more prepared for a group ride, so when Chris suggested it I signed up almosssssst right away.
The weather could not have cooperated more, hot and sunny, no humidity, not too much wind! The course was closed so no worries about the pesky yellow line, a big plus for my first road race. The roads were nice and smooth, the course was fast with only one hill (although not a devastating one)
Mass start with all the adults and I was somewhere right in the middle. On this course there was the only hill, and a decent one (I think avg grade of about 4% but up to 20% at some spots). Here I learned it would have been better to be at the front because this is where the main group broke away, I think if I got in with this group I might have been able to stick with them on the flat, but probably would have been dropped on the hill because I'm not a strong climber.
After this first climb I was on my own for a few minutes, not where I wanted to be, but then one other girl caught my wheel and we were together, we worked together one and off and caught onto a chase pack of about 6-7. I stayed with this group for the majority of the race. A few times I tried to break off with people passing, but they all generally lost their speed or the chase group caught back up. It was a really great experience, the chase group I ended up with was a really supportive and safe group, nobody did anything stupid but they were solid riders. I even took the front a few times but usually the guys who were much stronger were in the front. Going down the hill i practiced my aerotuck and was able to pull away from the other girls on every downhill section (they inevitably caught up on the hill climb which they were stronger on). My main weakness was the corners, I was still nervous about holding my line and not sliding out so I always slowed down too much, sprinted out of the corners but still got dropped almost everytime because everyone else came into the corners with more speed than me. A few times I felt too tired to catch back on, but all I could remember was chris telling me if I get dropped, especially near the end then the race was all for nothing, so I kept managing to work my butt off and catch back on and was in a really good position coming into the end, which was right after the downhill so you had some time to recover for the sprint. My group really picked it up in the last 5km which I also wasn't prepared for but held on. Coming into the end the other two girls in my group had way more experience than me and I had no chance in the sprint finish, and came in 1 and 2 seconds behind them. Turns out the main peloton had no girls in it and we were the top three, so a little disappointed about that! Can't complain too much though as I got second in my age group (the winning rider was in my age group) and 3rd for women as there were 3 of us in the chase group. The next woman rider was almost a full minute behind us. Average speed of 34km/hr so I'm not upset about that!
Overall a great experience and I'd love to do another road race! Stayed the rest of the day and watched Chris in the 104km race, hopefully one day I'll be fit enough to ride in one of those!
2/5 for women 20-29
3/31 for women
27/108 of finishers
avg speed 34km/hr over 26 km
results
http://results.sportstats.ca/res2012/tourterracotta_ab.htm
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