Getting "Girled"

This weekend had a lot of tough racing. I forgot how difficult the Sunshine Canyon climb is, especially at 8:00 when the body is still trying to wake up. I actually went a minute faster this year than last, but placed significantly worse thanks to a deeper field this year. I attribute the improvement in time to racing with an 11-23 instead of having the bailout gears on an 11-26. The highlights of the race were teammate Zac Davies putting in a solid ride and finishing 15th, not too far off the pace, and teammate Chuck Coyle riding a wheelie the entire climb. I have picture proof to post . . . I swear. One of the more impressive rides of the day and I'm not ashamed to admit that I got "girled", was Mara Abbot's 47:31. We commented on the way down the hill on how far ahead she was of everybody else in her field.


In other racing, a bunch of boy horses got beat by a girl horse. I watched the coverage of the Preakness just because I happened to be lying motionless on the couch at that time. Amazing how much controversy there was surrounding the entry into this race by the new owner of Rachel Alexandra, Jess Jackson of Kendall Jackson wine fame. The "old" owner of the horse (up through the Kentucky Oaks) felt that horses should race with their own gender, gasp, the sexism! After some wheeling and dealing and $100,000 later, they bought the horse a spot in the race. Incidentally, sale price of the horse was reported to be in the $3-4 million range. I'd like to see the math behind all of that. I'm curious if that is a winning proposition for Mr. Jackson.

Back to bike racing on Sunday, we headed out to North Boulder Park for a crit that had a ridiculously stacked field. It is bad when they start doing call ups at a local race and you hear some of the names being called out. I'm comfortable calling it a who's who of North American cycling, but we had Baldwin, Zajicek, Wherry, Moninger, Frischkorn, Garcia, Coyle, and then all of the local guys who go fast. I lasted longer than I thought I would, but killed myself staying at the back too long and having to accelerate coming out of every corner towards the end of my "visit" with the race. Chuck and Zac both had a good race, finishing the day in 8th and 9th. My crit riding skills are still lacking but improving. There's always next weekend except Louisville doesn't really have a single corner.