TOKENEKE From Elena’s saddle 8/10/08

Tokenke was fun. It turned out to be a pretty good sized field. About 50 girls started, plus about 25 of the 55+ men (we had a combined field). Radical brought 7 girls to the race!
The race started pretty fast as the 55+ men were pushing things. When we hit the hill at the end of the first lap, Evie and I got a nice gap on the field and I picked up the QOM. We kept going over the top of the hill and picked up a 55+ guy. The 3 of us worked together and stayed away for about 20 minutes before getting caught. Evie was taking some nice hard pulls and looked super strong!!! Ashley put in a nice counter attack when we were caught. I was pretty cooked from all that time off the front and was just trying to recover.

As we finishing the second lap, Maggie attacked really hard and got a huge gap on the field on the downhill. I was pretty excited as I thought it could have been a race winning move. It was not to be as Silke, a 55+ guy, and a few others masters chased her down.

We all drilled it up the hill and Ann Marie, Silke and I were bunched
as we approached the line. At about 200 meters from the line, I was trying to get my chain into the big ring, but it wouldn't move up. Damn! Ann Marie jumped first and took the win by about a 1/2 a bike length. I was closing fast on Silke but spinning out and she beat me by a couple of inches. An NEBC girl took 4th and Evie was just behind at 5th. I think we had something like 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 15th, and 23rd plus the Queen of the Mountains. Nice racing everyone!