Wente Road Race 09 from Ruth

Summary: Stayed in the front group or bridged back to it all race, made a couple of mental miscalculations and didn't finish as well as I might have liked, but still got a top-10 finish. Long version: We had only two loops. The first of three times over the hill, on the way to the start/finish, was a KOM. I succeeded in my goal of being in the front group. The KOM winner was out in front, and my group of 8 was behind. We let her work for awhile before becoming a larger group. The group I was in splintered on the second time on the climb. I thought Iwas just behind the back of the lead pack, then I realized I was just behind some others who were gapped. I caught the two just ahead of me, and after a couple of miles we managed to bridge to the front. I tried to plan an attack with Nicole to gain some ground before the climb. Note to self: don't attack on a downward-sloping false flat in a headwind. "You're a great puller!" exclaimed an impressed Nicole. I looked back and saw that she was right - I was pulling everyone right along. I didn't attack again,but it might have been a good idea. Our group miscalculated and a chase group caught us going into the last climb - bad timing for me. They started to out-climb me...I managed to get back ahead of a couple of them who weredying on the climb and ended up in 7th place. Almost halfway to a 3 upgradeby 10 top-10s. Looking forward to joining Trudy, Anna, Marianne and Larissain the 1-2-3 races! Happy cycling, Ruth
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PS: Thanks to the DBC folks who did the feed. It was great to see the orange and blue coming up the climb. Thank you to Parker for finding me to get my bottles before the race, and to those who collected all the ones Idropped and gave them to me post-race. And to everyone for putting up withmy little "I want water" temper tantrum. I see it made the feed funnies -glad you got a laugh out of it. :)