Little 500 Women's Race 2009

•    What is the Little 500 race? Check out the comprehensive description in the Wikipedia article.
  
  
•    Great video documentary done by Smithville Telephone (?) describing the race preparations.  Caitlin's team, Teter, are the girls in the black and lime green jersey's with the yellow front sprocket on the front. Lots of shots of Caitlin.
  
  
•    Start of race. Coming off of the pace lap, Caitlin is in green on front row, inside (pole position):

•    She pulled the first 20 laps (see caption).  Textbook "burn out" just before her exchange, i.e., you sprint hard to get off the front of the pack before you exchange so the next rider is comfortably get back into the head of the pack without having to play "catch up".  Check out how far ahead of the pack she is when she comes out of the final turn.

•    Beginning of the end...  Caitlin is coming in after another long set of laps.  Very good, clean exchange.  Next rider has problems and falls over. She gets up and goes, but drops more time as there are mechanical problems with bike.  Caitlin too tired at that point to go immediately back in, some slower riders back on, they are about 1.5 laps back.

•  Caitlin back in, catches back to the lead pack, but a lap behind, but about 15 laps to go.  Can never get off the front to catch back a whole lap.

•   Disappointed, but Caitlin really happy with her riding.  She rode 65 of the 100 laps for Teter and got a lot of experience.  She won Rookie of the Year (she did not ride the actual race last year, just Spring Events).

•  Ah, well. Always next year and we had a great Little 5 party at our house afterwards.