Beth Practices Patience at Canatua

By Beth Welliver
Pacific Grove, California

My race at Canatua was 51.5 miles of sitting in the pack in zone 2 followed by an all out zone 5 surge up the last climb. I didn’t have any teammies. In fact, besides the 7 Velo Girls in the field, no one else had any teammies, so no one really tried anything. I thought about getting a little more active after the overpass on the last stretch, but it was so windy by that time that I didn’t want to be anywhere near the front. So I sat in at the back of the pack until we started up the climb.

At the 1km sign one girl jumped so I grabbed on her wheel and stuck to it like glue. She slowed a bit over the 2nd to last climb, then surged just before the last uphill to the finish. I ramped up and jumped a little after the 200m sign with a SugarCRM girl right next to me. We pulled away a bit, but I was actually blocking the wind for the SurgarCRM rider beside me, so she was able to pull ahead just at the finish. It was a drag race for the last 50m and she nipped me by maybe an inch at the finish line. So second place an a t-shirt for me!

I loved when my big ol’ group of 4’s would meet the little group of 3’s each time out on the road. There would be Soni, crushing it just ahead of the the struggling pack, with Suenami comfortably sitting in the back. And I also got to see Ryan out there mixing it up with a group of men, who all looked a little tired.

This fabulous post was written by one of our awesome bella volunteers ~ To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box.