Jade Wilcoxson

I’m checking out a lot of states on this tour! North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and now New Mexico. They’ve all been great! I wish I had more time in each place to check out the sites, but we’re always wither racing or driving. We have lucked out with some awesome host houses which makes all the difference in the world when you’re away from home. I even got to see a doggy diaper for the first time!

While in Little Rock, AK we got to check out the Orbea USA headquarters and see how they build up their bikes. We left there with some sweet compression socks and clothes. Thanks Orbea!

Welcoming, trip to photo booth

Racing: Sunny King Criterium – 2nd place

Foothills Road Race – we swept the podium!

JoeMartin Stage Race – 3rd on stage 1, 1st on stage 4, took the GC and sprinters jersey. Excellent teamwork!

I was just getting comfortable again back at home, enjoying time with friends and family, when my race bike started calling my name again. This time I was flying back east to North Carolina for a 3 week racing block. I’m always excited to see a new place, I had never been to the east coast, so I was excited to get a splash of the southern culture and hope I didn’t  have too much angst or uncontrollable eye rolls when encountering the stereotypically conservative American southerner. I’m happy to report Charlotte is a great city with vibrant culture and well worth visiting again.

Of course, it helped that our host family guy, Jeff, had an energetic and magnetic personality and loved to bust out his banjo and guitar for some bluegrass jam sessions any time of day. My teammate, Annie, asked “what is this? Blue what? grass?” Such a youngster .

I also realized that my style of “dressing up” which amounts to putting on a slightly tighter pair of jeans and t-shirt back home, is basically inappropriate and somewhat embarrassing by Charlotte standards. Almost every person on the street, men and women, were fully dressed up like they were going to some gala event, but I think they were just watching the bike race and enjoying walking around town struttin’ there stuff. I liked the pride they took in their style and vowed to step up my own when I get home.

On to the bike race. The Presbyterian Hospital Criterium offers the biggest prize money all year. This translates to the race being very hard, fast and aggressive. With our 2 sprinters racing in Europe, Rachel (team director) figured our best bet was to get in a break and win from the break. So we attacked our asses off to try to form breaks and we worked our asses off to reel in breaks that we weren’t in. Big money crits also mean a lot of prime laps. these are like hot laps where they ring a bell and the first across the line in the next lap wins a prize. In this case a lot of money.

In the middle of the race they rang the bell for  a $500 prime. That sounded pretty good to me and perhaps worth burning one of my matches for. So I attacked, I got a gap, I crossed under the start/finish banner first, and then realized that the actual “finish line” was another 40 feet in front of me. Why they wouldn’t put the finish line under the start/finish banner, I have no idea. I got nipped at the actual line because I had sat up all proud that I just got the $500 prime. The announcer then talked trash about that mistake for the next 2 laps and I almost stopped in front of him to punch him in the neck. Maybe all that anger gave me a little more juice for the rest of the race. I’m still pissed I lost that prime.

So, basically the entire hour of racing was attack, legs burning, lungs burning, get caught, get your shit together and attack again. Repeat until 3 laps to go. My last attack at 4 to go left me dangling off the front for a lap and ultimately didn’t work, so at that point I knew I had to prepare for a sprint (bunch sprint being my least favorite part of racing). I had to stay in the front of the pack, I had to start fighting for wheels, I had to quickly find my confidence and give myself a pep talk. The last lap was fast and sketchy, we came around the last corner for a LONG 2% uphill grind to the finish. There were no leadout trains to jump on, is was just a fight to the finish and a sprint of attrition. Halfway up the drag strip I got boxed in and started ping ponging bars from both sides. I tried to power through it, but the gap in front of me closed. I had no choice but to slow down, then sprint around the mess. By that point I had a lot of ground to make up. There was no way I was going to catch first and second, but third was within reach. I was digging deep, I was feeling like I was going to puke, I was telling myself I could do it, I was gaining on the 3rd place wheel, but I just didn’t have enough to come around her.

So, I settled for 4th. So close, but not quite. I know I gave it all I had. I’m still learning a lot from every NRC race I do. My biggest lesson from this race was to check where the damn finish line is!

It was an awesome race, I am absolutely loving being back with my teammates. They’re so much fun both on and off the bikes. Next race is the Sunny King Criterium in Alabama. Hopefully, I can put some of the lessons learned into practice.

I took a short blogging hiatus after my season was over last year. Then, when I actually had a bunch of really exciting bloggable stuff happen in my life, I forgot to get back into it. Before I knew it, many months had passed and I became consumed with other forms of social media (mainly facebook and twitter). I think my max capacity for social media updates is 2 and now I’m kind of over twitter, so I can get back into blogging. I always feel weird about posting my race results and such on Facebook, so hopefully I’ll once again keep this blog up to date and people can just come here to hear me toot my own horn.

In a nutshell, since my last blog entry, I have

• signed a pro contract with Optum Pro Cycling presented by Kelly Benefit Strategies
• quit my day job so I can focus on training
• remodeled a 300 square foot dingy old shop space in my backyard and moved into it full time to cut down on costs
• started racing with my new amazing team! See race results…

Now, if I could just remember how to upload pictures…

73.5 miles and roughly 5000 feet of climbing. I don’t think this race had any flat, there were two big climbs, one in the middle and a finish climb.  Both long and hard, but beautiful. I got in a break at the bottom of the first climb. At first I was the only NOW girl up there, then thankfully, my teammate Anne Samplonius showed up. I was happy to see her not only she could help me, but because she is a very experienced rider and would tell me what to do. She instructed me to sit in (yay!) while she proceeded to the front of our 11-12 rider break and pound out the miles. Anne hammered on the front for the entire climb. I couldn’t believe how strong she was climbing. I was suppose to be resting my legs sitting on for the final climb, but was burnin’  ’em up hanging on to the break.

We had an awesome fast descent down the mountain and flats to the final climb.  Then it was time to do my thing. Anne told me to mark Andrea Dvorak from Colavita, there best climber. I marked her first attack well, but popped on the second. I ended up in no mans land, riding at my own pace off the 4 girls from my group that popped me. I kept saying in my head, “come on, Anne worked her ass off for you! Don’t get dropped!!” But I just didn’t have it. Kristen, Clara Hughes and Janel Holcomb caught me, I hung on for a but with them, then they attacked and I couldn’t match it. I redlined my way to through the finish line, 10th place.

Now I’m 10th GC, 49 seconds down going into the TT tomorrow. 14 miles, with a 7 mile climb out, then descend back. It will probably be the fastest my TT bike has ever gone coming down that descent. Scary!! So much climbing here…Ugh!

Had a rainy start to the day. I didn’t think I’d be using my rain booties, arm and leg warmers again this season, but I did. Luckily, by the time the prologue rolled around the rain had stopped and it was just windy. It was a 2 mile out and back course with a short climb in the middle. It’s the kind of effort that burns a hold in your lungs, especially in this dry desert heat. Per my usual, I didn’t feel like I had a very good ride. Time trials are funny that way, they always feel terrible to me. I ended up 5 th, in good company with a world track champion, Canadian national campion, Swiss national champ, and of course Kristen Armstrong all finishing ahead of me. I guess it was a good ride.

Flying out to Pennsylvania at 5am tomorrow. Ugh. I’ll be racing for Rouse bicycles. I’m really excited to meet my new teammates. Sounds like we have a stacked team! Don’t worry, I’ll be blogging the whole experience and if you’re lucky, I may post some more sweet video footage on my You tube page. Stay tuned as the drama unfolds.

The rainy and slick stage 2 criterium didn’t do much for my confidence.  I felt slow, had a hard time hanging in there and kept dangling off the back.  I was losing wheels in corners for fear of sliding out. After stage 2 I did have some doubts about how my strength measured up with these pro women.

Then Stage 3 rolled around, the Cannon Falls Road Race. 66.5 miles with one half mile dirt road section before 5 laps of a fast rolling circuit. I try not to get too nervous before races, but my heart was pounding before this race. I just wanted to hang on and didn’t want a repeat of the previous night spent dangling off the back.

As we started racing, per usual, all the nervousness subsided and I was able to focus on the race. The weather was perfect, the roads were great (except for about a mile of dirt and bike swallowing pot holes) and I felt really good. I was able to move around, stay up towards the front and even tried going with a couple breaks.

We hit the gravel section fast, I made sure I entered that section in the top 20 of the field, we all fish tailed through it at 20+ mph. I just kept pushing my fear to the back of my mind and telling myself to keep pedaling. One thing I’ve learned from cyclocross is to keep pedaling and hope for the best in nasty terrain.

The circuits were FAST. The corners were perfect and for the first time in awhile I felt like I could rail them. The traction was good, my confidence was good, but my legs were tired. I tried to conserve as much as I could over those 5 laps.  In the end I had a little bit left for the finishing sprint and suffered my way up the steep grade to 10th place.

I was really happy with my ride and gained a lot of confidence from just feeling comfortable in the pack and in the corners. It feels really good to have my confidence back. It makes a big difference, you can’t really fake it at this level of competition.

Tonight is another crit. It’s suppose to be less technical than the last one, but once again we have rain in the forecast. Yuck! My plan is to stay safe and conserve energy for the 80 mile RR tomorrow.

6 mile TT completed in the rain. We were soaking wet and very dirty from the road when we were done. To my surprise I ended up 12 in the TT and in the amateur jersey!! The jersey is awarded to the top Category 2 racer in the GC each day. Yay for me!  Hopefully I can hold onto it.

Now we’re resting up for tonight, trying to dry out our shoes.

We got our new kits today, pre-road the TT course and sent our bikes off to the mechanic for a tune up.  The course is going to be really fast!  It’s 6 miles, 5 are relatively flat, then the last half mile is about 10-12% grade. It should be a good course for me if I can save enough in the legs for the finish. We’ll see.  I’ve never measured up with so many pro women at once.  I think there are about 100 on the start list.

The same day at 6:15pm we have our first crit.  80% chance of thunderstorms and rain.  Bugger.  Right now we’re having a big thunder storm, it’s pouring down rain.  Where is my summer!  The course will be hard enough with 100 other women on tight city streets, half of which are brick, then add rain on top of it! Are you kidding me?  I guess I’ll just suck it up and follow a wheel.  If they can stay upright, no reason I can’t too. Right?