Today's race made me much happier than yesterday's. Mostly because I got in a break with two other women who also wanted to work hard. A lap and a half after we established a gap, the race was nuetralized for ten minutes so an ambulance could come onto the course to pick up a crashed rider (it sounded like she would be fine). When we restarted with four laps to go, the three of us decided to work together to make the break stick. We started with the pack breathing down our necks, but we were motivated and the teams in the pack couldn't get organized to chase us down. There was also a strong wind so I think people were unwilling to be on the front. We widened our gap and worked together until the last four hundred meters when we all sprinted. My sprint is shabby right now, so I came in third. I was happy to get the chance to work hard and have it be useful, I didn't care too much what place I was. And I am making more money than registration cost; here's the breakdown so far:
7/18: -32 (registration) +20 (prime) +20 (12th place)
7/19: -32 (registration) +17 ($50 prime split three ways) +60 (3rd place)
net total: +53

I have come to the conclusion that cyclists do not adequately warmup/cooldown. Most of my fellow racers were gone before I even started my cooldown. I've found a good warmup/cooldown routine that I like for crits: warmup: stretch, 20 min easy, 5 minutes of 30 seconds accelerating to as fast as possible while shifting up so the last ten seconds are in the biggest gear then deccelerating for 30 seconds, 10-20 min of easy-medium riding. Cooldown: 20 min easy, 5 min of 5 seconds all out then 55 seconds easy again, 5-15 min easy. The hard efforts in the warmup are to get your body ready to sprint and the hard efforts in the cooldown are to squeeze the lactate out of your muscles. After my race I also had a really good lunch that Barb made for me of pasta salad with whole grain pasta and lots of vegetables, watermelon, and Great Harvest bread, yum!