The following race report was submitted by Marjo Schat, a lovely lady that rides for Team Delphine. This is just a hunch, but I’m sure she will jump to BMV as soon as she has a little more silver in her hair. -alp
Cow Country has a few quirks to it. First of all the flier says the race is 54 miles long, when it is actually closer to 50 miles. This always catches a few riders out (moral of the story, know where the finish is!). The other thing about this race is that there is only one spot where the riding is flat – and that is the 500 or so meters where we ride through the town of Wolf Creek. Apart from that short bit the course feels like it is 80% uphill and 20% downhill. Also, even though the course is almost a closed circle, there is ALWAYS a head wind with random gusts from the side.
There were 14 women at the start, including eight in the 1-2-3 category and six in the 4 category. The race included a number of very strong riders: NRO’s Tamara Bessette, Jenny Leubke, Geraldine Carter and Lindsey Campbell and pro triathlete Lindsey Corbin. For Team Delphine, we had Amy Frykman, Mel Melendrez, Anna Dingman and myself.
We started at a reasonable pace, with Anna Dingman and Amy Frykman in front. Almost immediately Tamara and a teammate pulled around Amy and Anna and picked up the pace. The front 6 or 8 riders switched off regularly with the pace slowing and speeding up again with the different leaders. One of the times Tamara took the lead from me and picked up the pace she told me: “we have to warm up before the climb!” The pack was chatting along the river and across the tracks and over our only flat section of the course. Shortly after turning the corner onto the loop with longest climb (3 miles) just up ahead, the chatter died down abruptly.
I had been watching my odometer and made sure I was not on the front when we started the climb. Amy had the same plan and we were the 4th or 5th pair on the road when the climbing started. Amy set a steady pace that she knew she could hold to the top and although she did not start out at the front or accelerate, the rest of the riders dropped back around her leaving her up front with a 2 – 3 bike length gap. I was keeping pace with the second wheel on the road, not setting the speed, not pulling, but not letting that rider get ahead of me either. When Amy looked back and realized she was alone, she let up knowing she would not fare well by herself in the stiff crosswinds once at the top. Eventually Lindsey bridged up to Amy. I hopped on her wheel and got a pull up. The three of us were side by side for a few pedal strokes and then Lindsey disappeared from between me and Amy. The two of us continued to climb at Amy’s pace. At the top I looked back and was surprised to see Amy and I had a good sized gap on the rest of the field. I guess both of us had packed our climbing legs, because neither of us were all that labored at the top.
Over the top though, that changed. We really turned on the gas and traded off short pulls to try to increase that gap and stay away. For several miles, the gap grew. At one point when I looked back down one of the never ending hills there was a string of small groups trailing back down behind us, but they were far enough away to give us confidence. The key for those 8 miles that Amy and I were off the front was communication. I had to let Amy know if I couldn’t grab her wheel and Amy had to do the same if I pulled through too strong. Amy also reminded me to drink and eat (Thank you Amy!!!). With the crosswinds and gusts, it was sometimes hard to figure out where the draft was, and getting in the draft was essential to get a little break.
At around mile 18 we saw that a small group was closing the gap and we took that opportunity to rest up a bit and let them catch us. No one else was in sight behind that group of three (Geraldine Carter, Lindsey Corbin, and Jenny Leubke). We worked together as a group pretty well, although Lindsey kept pulling through really hard when we were trying to get a pace line going. That made it a tough paceline to ride in, but it also burned some matches for the ladies chasing. Amy and I tried really hard not to do too much work and to let Jenny and Lindsey do as much of it as they wanted to. Geraldine was also saving some of her energy. As we hit the hills on Rt. 200 we started to fall into a pattern: I struggled to hang on when we weren’t going uphill and then rolled to the front on the climbs. I focused on climbing steady and not digging too deep. On several of the climbs, Lindsey accelerated past at some point, and one of the remaining four of us would slowly reel her back in.
We turned at Bowman’s corner and there was Jared Nelson at the top of the hill encouraging us on. On one of the other hills just past that I abandoned my “keep it steady” approach and accelerated up – trying to keep increasing my speed all the way to the top. I wanted to see how the other ladies were feeling. It looked like Geraldine was hurting a little and Jenny was struggling a little too. I did not get a gap and I did burn a match, but I also gained some information that I hoped would be helpful.
Lindsey kept putting in accelerations, but I noticed that she did not carry through with them and would slow again even if she had a gap, so immediately answering an acceleration was not necessary so long as we kept the leash fairly short. On one of those accelerations she got a decent gap and Jenny started to bridge. I got on Jenny’s wheel and when she realized she wasn’t going to make it, I looked back and noticed that Geraldine and Amy were not right with us, so I pulled around Jenny and closed the gap. With me up the road a little with Jenny and Lindsey, Amy opted not to bridge in order to not pull Geraldine along with her. That is lucky for me, because Geraldine has a decent sprint.
Thus, with six miles to go, there were three of us in the lead group. We worked together pretty well, but I noticed that Jenny was not working and was struggling to stay in contact on a few of the climbs. Lindsey kept accelerating and then slowing and kept encouraging Jenny to stick with us. At one point Lindsey got another decent gap, and if she had gone with it she probably would have had a good chance to stay away, but she slowed again and Jenny and I caught back on without burning our own matches. I realized later that one reason Lindsey might have slowed up was that she did not know the course was 4 miles shorter than advertised. At the 1km mark, I was leading and that was not a position I wanted to be in on the final push so I pulled off and Lindsey took the lead. Jenny stayed glued to my wheel. We were in that order when we passed the 200 meter mark and Lindsey accelerated again and I matched her and rolled by her. It looked like Jenny was still on my wheel so I kept my head down and tried to keep accelerating up the hill and feeling like I was moving backwards down the hill due to the gusting headwind. When I crossed the line I had no idea how close the other two were. It was not a sprint finish, just a steady acceleration.
It was darned hard work, but eating and drinking, and making a concerted effort not to let my impatience get the best of me made a huge difference. Watching the other riders did as well. Paying attention to how they were riding and what they were saying (“come on ladies just 8 miles to go” at the 4 miles to go point) gave me the confidence that I could hold on to Jenny and Lindsey those final miles to the finish and the guts to try to pull away from them on the finish climb.
Amy and Geraldine rolled in a minute or so later, with Geraldine taking the sprint for 3rd in the Cat 3 field. Amy took 4th for the 1-2-3s, and fifth overall.
