Thursday, April 19, 2012

Are You Ready for the Country, Because It's Time to Go

"ORIGINAL PHOTO COPYRIGHT JUSTIN TORNER CREATIVE STUDIO, http://justintorner.photoshelter.com" S



What is up with Blogger now? Posting is all weird and I can't get it to work like it used to. Grrrr. Apparently I'm too old to deal with change.

Anyway, I did a race yesterday. My goal all season is to stay with the pack for an entire bike race. Usually, there aren't enough women, so even though we might be different classes, they throw us all together for one race. Which means, The pack goes the speed of the fastest riders - some of the fastest riders in the state. Since I'm one of the slowest riders in the state, I get shot out the back of the pack, and have never had the experience of riding with a group and using any kind of race tactics.

That all changed in the race I did last night. They finally had a B race for us newer, weaker riders and it was so great. It was only a 13 mile course, and I was able to stay with the pack the entire race. This being Iowa and the race being deep in the heart of the Amish and Mennonite community, we had to race past horse and buggies and tractors and huge pick-up trucks, with little girls in long dresses and bonnets, waving at us from the side of the road. At the end of my race when three girls started to sprint, I was lagging behind, but a  huge tractor was coming up on the other side of the lane and they had to slow down, to make sure he saw them and had enough control of whatever gigantic thin, which gave me time to catch up to them. By then we had about 200 yards to go and we all sprinted as hard as we could. I ended up getting third. It may never happen again, but I'll take it and hopefully, it will help with  my confidence level in future races.



4 comments:

laura b. said...

Sounds like a great experience! I can see where it would be frustrating to have to compete with much more experienced riders at most events. But you are getting there!

Tara said...

I love Amish country; especially when I see the families dressed up. The last time we visited a town in Ohio, we went to a shop and I saw an Amish girl cleaning the appliances and wearing tennis shoes with her dress.

rel said...

Curlita,
Yay!! way to go.

NoRegrets said...

GReat! And at least you can get paragaphs in the new blogger. I can't even do that.