well the good news is that my dad figured out my car problem the day
before the crit so i wasn't worried going up to concord.

quite simply put, this was a case of operator error, rtfm, etc.  i gave my
car a psychosomatic disorder.

my old car, angus, had a carburetor, and as he was quite old and basic, i
had to floor the gas to get him to start.  jane is my first fuel-injected
car, and basically i was flooding her in my panic... so the more i
worried, the worse the problem was.  isn't that funny?  yes, i'm a
moron.  fortunately my dad diagnosed the problem for me while on his cell
phone in utah i think?   

so jane is fine now.

i went up to concord, nh, with my sister, kris, who had never seen me race
before, and my tufts teammate karina.  kris slept the whole way, of
course, and i was forced to conduct a conversation with karina in the back
(difficult at best).  also my attempt to re-glue my rearview mirror the
night before had failed.

as soon as i got there, i ran into tom vinson, who told me he approved my
upgrade to 2. =)  i was really really excited about that.  all of a sudden
i felt like the pressure was off.  i was happy about that because i was
feeling a bit sick.

again, i'm not making excuses.  decisions about sleep, food, etc are all
part of racing.  but the fact is i'd been eating badly for a couple days,
hadn't slept all week, and made the poor decision to have a hot damn coke
(oh how girly) with my sister the night before.  i was feeling slightly       
off in the stomach region.  but not too bad.

got an okay warm-up, got on the line.  it was a 33-girl field
(1-2-3).  got a good start.  it was fast from the gun.  a bunch of 2s were
there, and lenora felker, who i think used to have a pro contract, was
being pretty fast and aggressive.

the pace was very high.  we lapped the 4s, who started a few seconds
behind us, twice.  the first time it was quite sketchy, as the course had
a fairly narrow turn just a lane wide (downhill!) and we passed them right
there.

it was at this corner specifically that i did really badly.  i think i'm
okay at cornering, but i get pretty scared in a pack in tight handling
situations.  guess i should spend more time at wells ave (local training
crit).  so i was constantly losing position in the turns, but with effort
i stayed in a really good position in the first third of the pack for most
of the race.

but then just like last week, i didn't have any power left when 
everyone started to move up with 2 to go.  i had a good view though as
the racing got rough, with some shoving (not even elbowing) going on at
the front of the pack.  geez.

then the aforementioned ms felker, having no doubt heard a cowbell in the
crowd, mistook the penultimate lap for the final one and sprinted,
crossing the line with her hands in the air.  it took her quite some time
to realize we were still racing behind her.  she ended up finishing 6th i
think, with yvonne taking the win.  (i heard yvonne upgraded.)

i lost position in the narrow turn and in the final corner, too scared to
move up on the inside.  oh well.  finished lucky 13.  my teammate, liz
campbell, dnf'd (did not finish).     

kris enjoyed the actual race, but was annoyed by the endless
waiting/trainer-riding/socializing pre- and post-race.  understandably so.

i was so wasted by the time we got home that i slept for 3 hours, waking
up to grab some dinner before we went out on the town.

i'm getting a little tired of racing.  i've been going every single
weekend practically since mid-March.  only 2 months left...  hopefully i
can get some rest this week and do some mt biking (so much fun, so
different, yet still a great workout) to get a little more mentally fresh
before tokeneke rr next sunday.