Cougar Mountain Classic
September 10, 2005
Webcor Builders Team: Karen Brems, Cat Malone, Betina Hold, Stefanie Graeter
Report by Karen Brems

Saturday was the final NRC race of the season for the Webcor Women's team: the Cougar Mountain Classic on the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. This is a really good race and it is a shame that more people don't show up! It baffles me that racers will get up at 4:30am to drive to the middle of nowhere to race for a T-Shirt, but when there is an NRC race in our own backyard with good organization, good prize money, good courses and even Shimano Neutral Support, the fields are pretty small. I guess the season is over for a lot of folks after Labor Day.

The Webcor women had a relatively small team of 4 riders: myself, Cat, Betina and Stefanie. The women's field was only 19 riders though, so we had pretty good odds. Touchstone had 3 riders (Penny, Sarah and Patt) and Vello Bella has 2 (Melody and Barbara). McGuire and LGBRC had a few riders as well. Sprint Ace Brenda Lyons from Victory Brewing made her first appearance of the year in a NorCal race as well. Carmen and Andy Ball came out to cheer us on and support us in the feed zone.

Our race was 1 hr 45 min. which worked out to something like 15 laps. The course was pretty windy and the toughest part was the minute or so steep climb shortly after the start/finish. The plan was to race the first half pretty conservatively and let the course itself tire the field and then start attacks until we got a group away. We did not really want a sprint finish with Brenda there. The first 45 min or so were quite uneventful. Cat covered a couple of minor attacks, but the first real move came from Helene Drumm (Morgan Stanley). She attacked just after the descent and Alto Velo's Carola Berger and Cat went after her. They sort of dangled in front for a while, but nobody in the field was chasing, so the gap grew. Carola got dropped on the next lap up the climb, but she was still ahead of the field. Cat is only just coming back from 6 weeks off with the broken rib she suffered at Cascade, so she rode conservatively and let Helene do the loin's share of the work, which Helena was willing to do as she had no teammates in the field.

Vella Bella and Touchstone made a few half-hearted chase attempts and Pat Ross tried to bridge but took Betina, Melody and Brenda with her and the group didn't work very well together and came back to the field in a lap or 2. With about 5 laps to go, Cat and Helene's gap was around 50 sec. and Carola was still in between them and the field in no-woman's land. Now Touchstone and Vello Bella started getting a bit more serious about chasing. Sarah and Barbara did the bulk of the work with some help from Pat and Penny. First the field caught Carola with 3 or 4 laps to go and with 2 laps to go, Cat and Helene were caught at the top of the climb.

We then went down the descent and Stefanie made a great counter-attack on the false flat after the descent. Nobody went with her and she had probably 100m on the field going into the headwind back straight. Barbara went to the front again and Stefanie's gap started shrinking pretty fast. Melody told Barb to "let her dangle bit" knowing there would be another Webcor counter attack.

At this point, it was 1 lap to go, the group was down to maybe 10 riders, but Brenda was still there. Stefanie's move was not looking likely to succeed and I wasn't certain I could beat Brenda in a sprint. I had seen Brenda doing a little "sag climbing" earlier and I figured that the stronger climbers would probably have tried to bridge to Cat and Helene on the climb if they could have, or at least put in more of their chase efforts on the climb where drafting was minimal. I figured they had likely been going somewhat close to as fast as they could go on the climb earlier. I had yet to go into the red zone on the climb and was feeling pretty good at that point as I had done very little work the whole race with Cat and Stefanie being OTF. I decided I would try to at least thin the group (ie. get rid of Brenda) on the climb and see just how much everyone else had left.

Vello Bella brought Stefanie back to within about 3 bike lengths at the start of the steep climb, which set me up just perfectly. I upshifted a gear and accelerated as hard as I could. I then upshifed once more and went again. By the top of the climb, I heard Carmen say "You have a huge gap!". Over the top, I could not see the field behind me, so I just put my head down and decided to try to make it all the way around to the finish. It was pretty windy and at the hairpin, I could see 2 riders split from the group chasing me, but they were still pretty far back.

I stayed off for the solo win and Sarah Bramberger and Tait Saito were the 2 chasers with Sarah taking 2nd. Helene Drumm won the fied sprint for 4th, with Betina in 5th after a leadout from Cat. Brenda was 6th and Stefanie was 9th and Cat 10th.

All in all, a good team race and a fun course! Now half the team is off to Bermuda in a week for the final of the Women's Prestige Series. Once there we will be anxiously looking for Internet connections to see how the other half of the team fares in Madrid at Worlds!

Return to Webcor Cycling Women's News