Yesterday was the Montreal World Cup—and its elevated international status seemed not to matter in the high quality riding of this team!  The race was a 10km circuit with about featuring a mile climb up Mt Royal, and a hairpin turn going into the finish, during which we rode on the wrong side of the road.  We hoped that the expertise of Helen and Rachel could help us in that section.

Everyone claimed that this was a race of attrition—that on the tenth or eleventh time up Mt Royal, it might not be the same players who were there on the first.  We would see.  We lined up on the start line… or actually pretty far behind the start line, nearly at the back of the pack.  We didn’t know where Helen was.  Finally, we spotted her.  She was on the front row—kudos to Helen—word is that she was also stretching up there while waiting for the start.  The team plan was to take it easy for the first six or so laps, and cover any dangerous attacks.  Helen, Rachel, Amber and Kathryn were on patrol through these laps.  This they did to perfection, Helen even having a chance to chat to me in her promising Spanish (she can say “how are you?”.  In French, I can say “I’m hungry”.)  Rachel took advantage of her pack moving skills to sneak up behind me and yell at me to get out of the wind.  As I didn’t know it was my teammate yelling at me, this was an effective intimidation technique.

As we came into lap 8, Kathryn attacked at the base of the climb, taking with her about 5 riders.   As others started to bridge up to her, I grabbed a wheel and took a free ride… at which point I saw a rider in suspiciously Italian looking colors (I was later informed that this was because she was Fabiana Luperini who might perhaps be the Italian national champ) a little way off the front of the group.  This was obviously an unacceptable situation, so I chased onto her wheel.  At the top of the hill, there was a group of three of us.  We worked through the first descent together, and as we got to the second climb (or the ninth, depending on how you are counting), I decided to go to the front of our trio and drill it up the climb—I knew that I was anonymous to many riders in the main pack, and that I wanted to exploit that opportunity to get a gap while I had a chance.  By the top of the climb, only Luperini and I were left, and we had a gap of 1:26, which I was rather stoked with.

Behind me, Christine remained in the ever-dwindling main pack, which was now down to about 10 or 15 riders, covering the attack of the usual suspects quite well.  Luperini and I began to work together more smoothly after getting word about this large gap, although after trying to adapt her elbow-twitch “move-through” signal, I determined that in my excitement, I was executing the maneuver far too enthusiastically and was going to severely damage my shoulder if I continued.   We maintained about the same gap to the last lap, where I attacked several times in an effort to escape from my companion, but to no avail.  She snuck to the outside corner going into the finishing straight and I found myself in front.  Shoot.  I tried to make the best of my situation by taking the last 180 degree corner fast and hopefully holding it to the line, but despite the peerless cheering of Amber on the sidelines, this was not to be, and I finished second on the day.

Christine was close behind, just narrowly snuck around by for 10^th place, holding onto eleventh.  Despite a crash on the final corner, Kathryn “rubber side down” Curi roared across the line with Rachel for 45 and 46.  Apparently, Montreal isn’t such a bad place.  If I stay here long enough, I might even add “Where is the bathroom?” to my language repertoire.