ESG Qualifier, Prospect Park

Twelve laps of Prospect Park, winner takes all. Or to be exact, the top three women in this race qualify for the Empire State Games.

At the start of the third lap, the pack brought back the first major break, and a counter initiated by Frances Harrison (Sanchez-Metro) succeeded wildly. It was made up of Frances, Ellen Moses (Foundation), Lori Romano (Axis), Becky Koh (Radical Media) and me. We established a good rotation and until an incident at four laps to go, it was all excellent. Painful and hard, sure, but excellent. Back in the pack, Nancy & Andrea chased down pretty much everything they could to make sure the break wasn’t endangered.

Just after four to go, two pedestrians and a dog tried to cross the road in front of the break, leading to swerving, yelling and my chin hitting the pavement. I’m fine now, but my race was over.

Lori took the win, followed by Frances, Ellen & Becky. Sarah Sauveyre (Sanchez-Metro) won the field sprint and 5th overall. Nan and Andrea experienced the bane of all racers—working hard the entire race only to get boxed in at the end.

There were definitely some disappointments for all of us by the end of the race, but we are also awfully proud of this race. We all gave it our best effort, and played to win, and had fun doing it.

So, to steal a bit from Dan Schmalz, our level of suck (on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most), we rate this race a 2.