Womens Bicycle Racing

Since we didn’t know how many team members were going to show up, the original plan was to send Kate and Holly Forsyth out to attack with around five laps to go, leaving Lauren and myself to try an attack with two laps to go. But since so many SCE ladies showed up, we changed it up at Suzanne’s suggestion and were going to try to send out one teammate at a time to attack throughout the race. Once the race started, ProGraphics took the lead immediately and the SCE ladies did not do much pulling (if any) for the first fifteen laps. ProGraphics rotated the pulling duties between their teammates and stayed on the front.

Gudrun and Kate attacked individually with less than ten laps to go, forcing the ProGrahics team (now three strong with the addition of Grey) to give chase. Kate, riding her strongest race this season, put the hurt on ProGraphics by attacking with five laps to go and they gave chase. Kate fell back a bit after her attack.

I tried to force a chase with three laps to go but I could not get a breakaway. I pulled off on the last lap. Kate was able to rejoin the group and help Lauren, who was staying put behind ProGraphics in the last few laps, sprint to a second place finish. Way to go Lauren!

Overall, I think our strategy worked well. Attacks by individual teammates always resulted in a response by ProGraphics. Who attacks and when we attack is going to depend on who has the “legs” that week (Holly F. no more hill repeats on Mondays!) and how many SCE ladies show up.

Suzanne suggested and I agree, we should take turns on who is the “protected” teammate for the race. We can discuss it ahead of time as to who is feeling good and who is tired and go from there.

We certainly have an advantage with our sheer number of teammates. We can afford to attack more than any other team or group on the track and make the others work to catch up and hopefully tiring them out in the process!