Murrysville Cycling Classic - PA Road Race Championship

Nothing is more intimidating than standing at the start line hearing the announcer recognize by name five or six current and former national champion road and crit racers who were in our women's race!

The good news was that they created a separate race for the Cat 4 women! Whew. We had about 15 women in our field, compared to about 25 in the Cat 123 race. It was the biggest race start I've been in.

The course was quite hilly, but not nearly as difficult as I had remembered from the year before. At the base of the first hill the super stars took off. I ended up catching a group of seven women who I rode with the remainder of the ride. Six of them were Cat 3 and one was a Cat 4. Half way through the third and final lap for the Cat 4s (Cat 123 did four laps), the Cat 3s we were riding with backed off and let me and the other Cat 4 take off. The last climb she put a pretty good lead on me. I chased her hard, nearly catching her on the down hill, then almost getting her at the finish. But not quite. Another fourth place finish.

Yep, an official 20'th place, and I won it in a two man sprint.

Like Steve, I was looking for a reason to drop out of this race everytime we hit the climbs. The race was nearly a mirror image of last year for me with slight differences. After two laps of the short three lap race I was still with the lead group, but the group was still about 22 strong. Last year it was only around 16 strong. Last year I burned a lot of energy catching the tail of the group on the descents, this year my descending is about my only improvement and I was able to use it to my advantage to catch and recover.

Still the climbs on the last lap were too much and instead of blowing up like I did last year I just had to let the group get away from me. One other straggler caught up to me and we worked the downhill and duked it out for the sprint. I thanked him afterward for at least making the finish fun.

Being only two hours from Pittsburg, I decided last minute to race. I had no experience with this course, but I realized driving there, that it was going to be as hilly as rumored. Like most of this season, I felt outmatched and that I was only racing to get more experience. During the second lap of climbs, I decided I would have to back off the pace to avoid blowing up and at this point I was looking for any reason to quit racing (Ryan if you were in my sights, I would have given you my wheel or forced you to take it). On the descent, I caught the wheel of two riders and recovered without losing much time going into the third and fourth laps of climbing where I actually began to get a second wind. I didn’t stay for the final results, but I think finished somewhere in the middle of the field. In my opinion for anyone considering this race in the future, it well organized and executed.