SAnta Cruz Crit Race Report-Lauren Liscinski

Who: Lauren Liscinski

What: Santa Cruz Criterium

Where: Santa Cruz...duh

When: Sun April 18th

Why: Because I didn't suffer enough at Sea Otter

The morning of the Santa Cruz Crit was filled with quite a bit of doubt. The past three days had been brutal; physically and mentally, over at the Sea Otter Classic and my body yearned for a rest day. However, in my mind I had not earned a rest day. In a weird way I wanted to punish myself for my previous poor results. It went without saying; though it had been said out loud as well, that I needed to learn to suffer, and suffer I did.

After registering and getting dressed I got on the rollers determined to get in a good warm-up. If I learned one thing at Sea Otter it was to never underestimate my warm up. I needed to be ready to go from the gun, there would be no “first five lap warm up.” My hamstring was acting up as it had cramped in the circuit race at Sea Otter causing me to quit the race the day prior. I told myself it would be fine and to just ignore it. Rolled to the start line a bit too late and got stuck on the back row. Looking around I realized most of the same women from Sea Otter were present; yep, this is really going to hurt.

The course was technical and challenging. Uphill from Start/Finish to a downhill u-turn, fast descent, sharp right turn over a river with two little pitches, right turn to a power climb then flattened out but still climbing to the finish line. While racing collegiate this would have been my type of course. But I was with the big dogs now, and it was all I could do to hang in. We were sent off with 30 laps in our race and after 4 times up that climb I thought my hamstring was going to tear in two. I’m going to get dropped from this race too. I can’t even last ten laps with these girls. The negative thoughts started to take over in my head. I wanted to be positive so much but my body was feeling terrible and this turned everything around in my head. Then I told myself the advice another racer had told me going into this race, “the first five laps will be the hardest, just hang in till then.” It’s going to get easier, just stay with them one more lap. Just one more time up the climb. Its going to get easier. It never got easier I just kept tricking myself that it would.

The fatigue from the previous races really set in when I saw 13 to go. We’re only halfway done?! Each lap I would get over that steep hill as fast as I could, move up on the u-turn and descent, fight for position going into the final right hand turn and then drift back up the climb again only to repeat. This was getting mentally taxing. Kurt told us the analogy of your energy being money in the bank and that however much money you start with you need to ration out because you need to have some left at the end. Previously I would have thought this “money” was purely physical, but he was right when he said that when you’re making a conscious effort throughout the whole race it wears you down. Telling myself “move up move up move up” was losing its effect. Thank goodness Kurt was there to yell it at me too! I suffered a lot throughout the race, and at times felt as though I would cry because my legs were burning so badly, but this was my punishment.

A group of three had gone up the road and after a few hard laps when I thought we would catch them the field sort of decided it was happy to sprint for fourth and stopped chasing. I definitely did not have enough energy to attempt to bridge across myself so I simply did what I needed to do to stay in the group. Nothing eventful happened the last few laps except I realized that I am not capable of counting to three. I looked at the lap cards when there were 3 to go and then when I looked up at 2 to go I was utterly confused that the lap cards read 1. Well, with some awful planning on my part and not much left in the bank I did what I could to move up on the back side of the course. Didn’t have much of anything for the sprint but passed a few people to finish in the middle of the group somewhere. It felt good to be done; and to have finished with the group. I am very happy that I decided to race even though my legs were feeling terrible and my self confidence had been stomped all over all weekend. I had a short lesson in suffering that Sunday afternoon. My self induced punishment turned out to be a positive experience, more of a reward than anything else. This sport is crazy.