Hilly Billy and Tour of Lawrence

The last two weekends in June both had very fun race, Hilly Billy and Tour of Lawrence. The Hilly Billy was a blast but only because I did the co-ed duo with Billy Slutz. He motivated me to keep riding even though I just wanted to walk a lot since sitting on the bike hurt after a couple of hours. I learned that 6-7 hours on my cross bike hurts my back a lot so I am going to look into how the bike is fit. Going downhill on the gravel roads was so much fun. I had some very skinny cross tires on but I flew by people who were riding their brakes down the hill. The disc brakes on my Cannondale SuperX really helped me feel like I was in control on the downhills. But for the uphills I decided about halfway up the second hill that I wish I had a lower gear ratio, so I had to do a lot of out of the saddle climbing and very slow pedaling to get up the hills rather than spinning up hills like I usually do. With all of Billy's motivation we got 4th in the co-ed duo!

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The last weekend of June I traveled back home to Kansas to race the Tour of Lawrence. Friday night was the street sprints where there are multiple heats each with about four racers who sprint for about 200 meters. I got 9th out of about 25 women. My old teammate Vanessa won, she is a really strong sprinter. I thought she would win so when we were getting in line for the heats I tried to stay far away from her so I wouldn't have to race against her until the end. Saturday was the circuit race, the course was a lot of fun but I got dropped from the lead group early on a very bumpy downhill that a lot of the women around me seemed like they were braking on while the lead pack was pushing it down the hill. Sunday was the criterium which was a 1 miles figure 8 shaped course. This race was so much fun because there were 23 women in the race. Until one woman crashed in the last lap I think the entire field stayed together. The Trek Midwest Team (also called Midwest Cycling Community NE) had seven women in the race and they were using a lot of team tactics during the race. It was interesting to watch the tactics because most teams do not have enough women to use tactics like that. The only bad thing about this weekend is that I left almost all of my ProGold products in Kansas so my I still need to clean my cross bike after the Hilly Billy. I can't wait til mid-August when my mom is coming to visit and bringing my ProGold stuff with her.