Glencoe Grand Prix blog by Kaytie Scott
Primal Pro women continue our racing calendar with a stop in
Glencoe IL for the Glencoe Grand Prix race number 6 of the USA Crits series.
The Prof (Nicky) and I arrived late Thursday night. Like 3am
late maybe you can call that got in really early? We quickly got some shut eye
and heading to local school visit with the kids of West School. They were an
awesome group of kids that have many hopes and dreams for the future hopefully
we were able to give them some good advice and help them on their way to future
success. We also talked them into cheering their guts out for us on Saturday.
We then headed to Wayne Simon’s house. He was to be our host
house for the weekend and he is one of our team’s greatest supporters. He owns
and runs the company ENZOs they make amazing products that keep us Primal Pro
women flying. Without ENZOs button hole we could not keep the training schedule
we do. But I digress; Wayne is also an avid cyclist and so shortly after we
arrived he took us out for a little spin. We had to quickly build our bikes so
we could head out. Well everyone but me can build their bikes quickly, being
that I am new to this traveling cycling world I’m still working on that skill.
So after everyone waited for me to be ready we headed out on a ride around Wayne’s house.
He was an awesome tour guide and took us on some beautiful roads. He also did
openers with us because he would be racing the following day.
After our ride we headed to the GEF/GGP community Dinner it was
an awesome event we were given trading cards with our pictures and team names and
we handed them out to all the little kids there. It was great to meet so many
people of the community. We felt like rock starts having cards with our pictures
on them and the kids believed we were.
Race day!!!
We arrived early to meet the women in the 3 4 field to start
our Primal Pro women Clinic part 1. The Prof gave them all of the pre race
advice and her personal secretes they would need to be successful. We planned to
meet for part 2 of the clinic after our race to go over skills on the bike.
The Glencoe Grand Prix did something totally new to me that
I absolutely loved. They assigned you a start number according to you overall
standing in USA crits and NCC races and that was your start in the pack. I got
19. That means I didn’t have to stand for at least a half hour just to get a
good starting position. I was able to just roll out with everyone and start on
the second line. Score!! It took a lot of stress off the field we are always
racing before the race actually starts just to get a good starting spot.
So as we are standing on the starting line it starts to drizzle
we had been warming up in the sun but true to this year theme of course it had
to start raining. Everyone was trying to let air out of our tires before we
started the race. I pulled a rookie move and didn’t let enough out and spend
the whole day slipping around corners.
So the gun goes off
and at this point it is raining for REAL it feels like someone is dumping
buckets of water right on your head. There were some pretty bad crashed earlier
in the armature categories so the Pro women were taking it pretty easy in the
corners but once you are past the corner you are up and sprinting to the next
corner to hit your breaks and do it again. We had a relatively safe race and
there were only a few minor crashes most just sliding out in a corner. After a
little over half the race was complete the field was whittled down to about 20
riders out of the 60 that started. We had Tiff, Joanie, Mel, and awesome gust
rider Kelly still left. Joanie attacked the field trying to get an advantage but
was brought back and then there was a counter attacked by Laura van Gilder,
Erica Allar, and Samantha Schneider.
That move stuck… we raced a good race just missed the break
but in the conditions we held our own really well. Some of the corners you were
pedaling and your foot would go in the water it was so deep! We ended up with
two of our riders in the top 10. We maintained our 1st overall team
standing and Joanie is ranked 4th overall and Tiff is holding strong
to 5th. Nice work ladies!
Special thanks to Nicky Cyp for putting on such an awesome
event.
We are looking forward to racing Tulsa Tough this weekend.
Joanie and I are already in Tulsa enjoying the sun and hoping the rain stayed
in Glencoe.
Cheers!
