King's Valley Bike Race Report

Just West and North of Corvallis there is a tiny town called King's Valley. Tiny in the sense that there is a general store there and that's it. I mean, not even a stop sign. So, on an unusually warm and sunny Saturday in Central Oregon I found myself driving the Dean to King's Valley for a 56 mile road bike race attended by pretty much the entire state of Oregon and some from as far afield as Colorado, Washington, and Idaho.
I am still a Cat 4 racer (someone please write OBRA and tell them I should be classed up!), but at this particular event the race director decided to combine the Cat 1/2/3/4 women and eliminate the Masters category. We started the three lap race at the sound of the tractor horn with 50+ women on a narrow country road. Big mistake starting in the back as I spent the first 10 miles alternatively breaking and sprinting and avoiding a couple of women who were having trouble riding their bikes in a straight line. Once we hit the hills though, it was cake! Even with all the categories combined, I was able to stay on the front pack among the 30+ Cat 1/2/3 riders in the field, as weaker riders fell off the back. I even pulled the main field back to a dangerous break around 20 miles.
The course was mostly rolling hills with one mile-long hill per lap that came right at the finish line on the third lap. I was feeling so good that 2/3 of the way through the 2nd lap I had decided to start hammering that hill about a third of the way up and to see who came with me. My three other teammates on Pacific Power Blue Sky at that point were still in the main field and we had decided that Sarah W. and I would together try to make that push as she is a really strong climber (very small and lots of power in her legs).
But the race gods conspired against my plan and our field was neutralized for the entirety of the hill to let the Cat 4 men pass (they had started 5 minutes behind us). Bollox!!! That ruined my plan. On to Plan B. There were a series of rollers from mile 40 to 48 and I though if I was ready to go hard on these I could push the pace on the field and spread it out for the final straight away that was flat and fast and into the wind, leaving only a few riders to make that last uphill sprint to the finish.
We get to the first hill and I started to move into position to really push on the second (there were like 7 hills all together broken by a mile or so straightaway in the middle and lots of curvy forest road). I was sitting around 10-15th at this point. Then, on the second hill I shift up a gear to hammer and instead drop my freakin' chain completely off of the chain ring on the inside!!! ARGHHH! I saw my team start to stay back for me, but I roared for them to keep going.
I had to wait until I could safely dismount before fixing it and in the less than 20 seconds it took for me to get-off, fix it and remount, the peleton was gone up the hill and out of sight. I got back on the bike and started hammering up the hill. Seeing the field ahead, I realized that someone else had been thinking the same thing as I and had split the racers and in the words of Emerill "Bam, kicked it up a notch!" I could already see riders getting dropped off the back including two of my teammates. At this point, my thoughts turned to other goals, and I got down on my bars in aero position (yes my forearms are a little sore today) and decided to time-trial to the finish as there was no way with the twisty roads, wind, and final finish, that I was getting back in the race. Along the way, I must have repassed almost the entire Cat 4 women's field, because after all that, I still finished 5th overall. Can you believe it?
Stay-tuned for pics of me in my new race gear. :-)