YOU GUYS.
Stage Racing is the best. Here's the recap nobody cares about:
Stage 1 - Friday morning - 40 mi road race - They raced the cat 4 ladies (me) with the pro/1/2/3 ladies and that did some funny things to the field; I ended up in a group off the back of the main 1/2/3 peloton, but with all of my other Cat 4 ladies (and a few Cat 3 women) - with the exception of one Cat 4 lady who should be a Cat 2, but doesn't have the races under her belt to request an upgrade yet. I pretty much wrote her off as a sure win for our category and had a goal for myself to get second to her for the weekend. Had a good time putting some hurt on the other ladies on the big climb of the day, knowing I could wear down their legs for the rest of the weekend and still be fine for myself.
Stage 2 - Friday evening - 1 mi uphill TT - put in a good warm-up on the trainer for this one, and then just embraced the suck. Put down a respectable 5:38 for the mile, which was an average grade of 6% with some solid little kickers in there as the road snaked up to the finish. I have never been so close to vomiting at the end of an effort.
Stage 3 - Saturday morning - 11mi standard TT - crushed it. I started next-to-last in my category based on the finish of the uphill TT from the night before, and I passed every woman who started in front of me (and we go off at 30" intervals). I gained a couple seconds back on the first place lady in the division for the General Classification (GC) placing, which is your cumulative time for the weekend's events. Since everyone basically finishes road races at the same time (unless there's a break off the front or you find yourself off the back), there is no time gained/lost there. You make up time on your competitors for the GC in the events like time trials. So yeah, between the uphill an standard TTs, I put 2 minutes and 3 minutes over my next two closest competitors. This was very important.
Stage 4 - Saturday afternoon - criterium race. I *hate* crits. I did fine, arguably put in too much work, but no time lost so whatever.
Stage 5 - the queen stage. Sunday. 85 mile road race, with the last 10 miles being a long slog up to the Anthony Lakes ski resort area. The average grade of the climb is 6%. FOR TEN MILES. To add insult to injury, the last two miles of the climb are closer to a 9-10% grade.
https://www.strava.com/activities/622575364 Again, like the first day, they raced all the women together. The top five Cat 4 racers made the selection into the main peloton, so really for the first 70ish miles of the race, it was a pretty chill/moderately-paced group ride of some STRONG women. I sat in and nothing too crazy happened, since all the riders were steeling themselves for the final ten miles, which is where the real race happened. Again, I knew I was 2 and 3 minutes over my next closest competitors, so my whole goal in the climb was to stay in front of those ladies, or at least keep them in my sights if they happened to get in front of me (which I was doubting would happen). Once we started going up, I had a good gap on both of them. 3rd place dropped off (I ended up beating her up the hill by 10 minutes, so apparently her legs were cooked from the efforts of the weekend - totally respectable). 4th place was still in sight behind me for the entirety of the climb, but I was sitting pretty in 2nd place on the stage (again, the 1st place girl was so far up she was not even on my mind). I crushed the climb, and then coming into the finish line the 4th place girl who'd been behind me all climb was suddenly RIGHT THERE. That crazy girl put in some massively strong effort over the last bit of the climb to actually catch me at the line; she took 2nd for the stage, beating me by a second (literally), but since I was still 3 minutes over her for the GC, I still ended up with 2nd place in the General Classification for the weekend.
That 10 mile climb at the end of yesterday was arguably the hardest thing I've ever done on a bike. Physically, it felt harder than the Ironman last year. Racing up a hill like that is no joke, especially at the end of 5 races in 3 days. I am STOKED about finishing 2nd in the GC, and still totally just reveling in the weekend as a whole. Hooray bikes!
