Over 70 women lined up for the start of the Women’s race at the 2006 Ontario Cup road race at Mosport race track in Bowmanville. In my 9 years of racing, this is by far the largest women’s field I have ever seen at an Ontario road race! It’s exciting to see that the sport has grown to this extent!
Mosport marked my first race with my new team, “Team R.A.C.E.”. I’m really excited to be racing for this awesome team. The women on the team come from a variety of backgrounds including triathlon and running and a few of the women do Ironman triathlons as well as road racing.
There were 6 women from my team racing at Mosport and the excitement level was high! We also had our own personal cheering squad – a couple of the guys from the men’s team cheered for us every lap around the 4km course. What a team!
I went right to the front when the starting gun went off. Since there were so many unknown faces and the winds were extremely strong and blew the group around, I decided to stay very near the front of the pack and keep out of trouble. I was grateful for this decision when I heard the sound of more than one crash behind me.
This race capped a very hard training week for me and I was feeling it in my legs less than halfway through the race. Yikes! I knew I was in trouble when the pace picked up on the climb. I went to stand up and I had to sit back down because my legs were cramping so badly. I spun my way up the climb and was yo-yoing off the back but managed to hang on to the lead group of 22 riders for the rest of the race to place 22nd.
A couple of light days of recovering are definitely in the cards for me as I look ahead to a full weekend of racing at the Ontario Track Championships in London, Ontario next weekend. I’ll be competing in the Pursuit, Match Sprints, Points Race and Scratch Race in preparation for some UCI track races in Trexlertown in June. Stay tuned for a full report from London.
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