Aaron's Katharine Carroll Wins Big in Athens

The South East Criterium Championship Series kicked off tonight in Athens, GA with the Athens Twilight Criterium. Katharine Carroll got the first NRC victory of her career as well as receiving an award for leading the most laps.

Report by Kat:
8 crits in 9 days. I had never done a stage race of crits before, but I looked forward to the opportunity to race this USA Crit Series with my team in my territory. After moving out to CA last year, I was very much looking forward to racing in the south for a couple weeks. Two years ago I got thrown into the fire of NRC crit racing when I naively agreed to race "Twilight" with my BMW-Bianchi team. At that time I couldn't have told you what NRC actually stood for. The race that year was in the rain and crashes instantly broke up the field. I chased for most of the race and finally made on to the front group. My current teammate, Shannon Hutchison-Krupat, grabbed the victory that year and I finished a decent 11th. There was nothing like that baptism by fire to get me hooked.

Fast forward to 2007. Our team has such a dynamic group that we knew we had several shots at winning the race. Once again proving her specialty, Catherine Powers won the race to the staging area, the call-up area and finally the starting line, as we all knew positioning was key. As we staged the officials announced that turn 1 was "skinnier" this year, making it all the more critical that we were in front on that first lap. Athens is notorious for calling out prime after prime in the beginning of the race, causing the field to string out from the gun, and sure enough they were ringing the bell almost every time we came through. If money was on the line, there was a good chance someone named katharine/catherine in an Aaron's kit was winning it during the first half of the race.

I kept the pressure on a couple times after winning some primes but Kele Murdin from Ultralink was the only one who was interested in working a break and eventually things would come back together. Two-thirds into the race there were back to back primes, and I looked back and saw we had a gap. Chrissy Ruiter and Iona Wynter bridged up from the pack and it was clear the pack was going to let five of us stay out front for a while (Kele Murdin, Ally Brandt were also in the break).

The setting for this race is crazy. Athens is a college town, home to the University of Georgia, and its students and citizens know about the party-on-the-streets that surrounds the night time crits. There really are thousands and thousands of screaming fans that get louder as the night goes on. We distributed radios before the race, but I did not know how useless mine would prove to be during the race because of the crowd noise. Let's just say that factored into a little bit of stress for Carmen throughout the evening, but no doubt it added to the high drama of the evening.

I felt good about the break because I knew if we got brought back we had two sprinters who were very capable of winning the race in a field sprint. If we stayed away, I was ready to do my best imitation of a sprinter and go for it. As we rolled there were only three of us working, as Cheerwine and Colavita sat on. When we got to 8 laps to go, I thought we might just be able to stay away. With 4 to go I thought it was going to be close. When we crested the hill on the backside with 2 to go and I saw the field coming around turn 2, I knew we would probably make it as long as we didn't start playing too much cat-and-mouse. Ally Brandt did a monster pull until we got to the hill on the last lap when Chrissy Ruiter launched an attack. Iona followed her and I hopped on Kele's wheel who was 3rd in line. We came around turn 4 and the drag race to the line was on. I came around Iona in the last couple meters to become the second Aaron's rider in three years to win Athen's Twilight. . Shannon rolled in 3rd in the field sprint for 8th overall to give us two in the top 10.

The Vice-President and President of Aaron's, Don and Ed, were in attendance and I am glad we were able to put on a good show for them in order to say thanks for all their support. Aaron's has been a fabulous sponsor this year and there is no better way to show them what a difference that support makes than by winning a race. On a whole the team raced great and we're looking forward to the rest of the Southeast Crit Series.