Race: Rock Hill, SC, Women's 1/2/3
by Cathy Connell (RBM)

Date: April 2-3, 2005

For those of you not familiar with the Rock Hill RR course, it is a 38 mile loop made up of gently rolling terrain with very bumpy roads. When I say bumpy, I mean there are times you wish you had a full suspension mountain bike. This weekend had the added bonus of 20 mph winds. The women 1/2/3 field lined up to start about 8:30ish (late of course). We would do the course twice for a total of 76 miles. We had about 40 women of various teams: The Forum, Diet Cheerwine, Fuji, Travel Girl (TG), BMW-Bianchi and my team RBM to name a few. I felt like I was the only one without a teammate. Gulp.

In typical fashion, we started off at our social pace. This suited me fine. After the delayed start, my previously warmed up legs had turned to ice. I'm not sure if the cold weather or the bumpy roads were causing me to shake so much, but I felt like I would go down any minute. Where the heck was spring? Not long after we got the chit chat out of the way, the attacks started by the Forum
and TG. I moved up to the front to chase anything down that looked like it would stick. My bet was on a break with TG and the Forum, especially with Leigh (TG) sitting in first place for the omnium. Finally, an attack went at mile 25 with Iona (Forum) and Leigh. I knew this one had potential. I used my mountain biking skills to off road it to get around the pack to latch on. I brought one
girl from BMW (Patty) with me. The four of us kept hammering. We continued to pull away and got out of sight in no time. It's always great to have a course with multiple turns. Our goal was to put as much time as possible between us and the pack until the feedzone. As we got to the feedzone, we put on our smiles so no one would report back we were suffering. Well, I was suffering even if the others weren't. Maybe they were smiling because they felt good. With 38 miles down, and another 38 to go we had a long day ahead of us. The feedzone had added extra excitement when an idiot in a car got in our way. As we started screaming at the moron to move, he turned into us. I ended up in a ditch to miss his hood. The other 3 waited on me to shake off the mud, put my figure down and rejoin them to start lap two. We bounced around on the roads, fought awful headwinds, and rode along equally sharing work. This lap felt like a different course. As the fatigue set in, the rollers felt like mountains. Small chain
rings were needed for slight inclines. Now, I knew why it is called Rock Hill. As the road smoothed out and the winds swirled, we settled into a nice rhythm motoring along until the last 1 km. Our agreement was to work together until then. It was too windy to be alone. The other three girls were battling out omnium points. I just wanted off the bike. I pulled the group though the last
stretch and watched them sprint around me at 200 m. My legs were on fire. I had NOTHING left. Where were those Denny's pancakes I had for breakfast? I was so happy to soft pedal over the line for an exhausting fourth. The group rolled in at various times behind us. Even though I didn't win, it was a very satisfying race to know I stayed in a break for 50 miles and I gave it all I had. I can't wait to race again!


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