Just race

Mothers Day

I wanna do a race that's just a bike race. Not part of a series or an omnium or the Washington Cup. I'm tired of races where nobody's racing for that event but for some grander prize. Last week it was a two-race omnium. Nobody on Sunday knew anything about the prize list for that day's race, they could only focus on who had how many points in the omnium and who was most likely to win the trip to Minnesota. Thanks to the strangeness induced by the omnium format, another rider said that race featured "the most negative racing" she had seen in a while.

Yesterday's race at Ravensdale was part of the Washington Cup series and it featured some of the dumbest racing I've seen in a while. It was all about securing more WA Cup points and not about racing the best race on the day. Sure, it's great for team tactics, until the wrong teammate is up the road in a break. I watched someone chase down a break, but then stop her chase 25 feet from the break and sit up and no one else closed the gap or countered. Huh? It was weird racing all day, and once the right split occurred, the "pack" had to work harder at not catching the break than the break could organize itself to work to pull away from the pack.

It seems we get no races for the sake of racing. Good road races are all part of the Washington Cup, so good racing goes out the window for the sake of making sure the right riders get more points. The LWV series is just that, a series, so by race #2, it won't be about racing but about manipulating the racing. I guess there's a reason that no one says road races or crits are the races of truth.