I was really excited after several weeks of not being around on Tuesday night to finally return to Floyd. Even better, it was Athletic night—our team’s night to sponsor the event and bring out a bunch of our favorite non-alcoholic beer to share with the group (adult version of orange slices at soccer practice, I suppose).

Of course, the hardest part about bringing anything extra to Floyd is you have to drive it there. The driving—an arduous journey through the parking lots that we call the BQE and the Belt Parkway on weekday evenings—seems so frustrating I’ve never even attempted it. Most people, even those that live 15-20 miles away, choose to ride instead because it’s faster and more pleasant, even weaving in and out of cars, buses, and vans on a busy Flatbush Avenue. So the heroes of the night were those who drove coolers and boxes of Athletic to the race so that all could enjoy it.

But I did as I always do and rolled out from my house a little over an hour before the race start, met up with friends and teammates at Eastern Parkway, and made my way down through the heat of the city toward the beach. One of the best Floyd feelings is when you get to the high alphabet Avenues, Avenue U, etc, and feel the cool ocean breeze.

Because it was our night to sponsor the event, tons of teammates came out. Maybe even better than the first feel of the ocean breeze on a stifling July day is rolling up to a race and seeing everyone you know. Teammates, friends, frenemies, I love the sense of familiarity that comes with rolling up to the dusty old airstrip at what seems like the end of the world.

While the guys who had a later start set up our after-race Athletic coolers, the women’s race went off. It was threatening to storm the whole time, high humidity and a decent amount of our favorite Floyd wind.

Personally, after going after intermediate sprint points the whole first series, I decided I was finally going to make the final sprint a goal, so spent a lot of the race reminding myself my job was to save as much energy as possible. I tailgunned a lot of it because the draft was much better back there. The first few laps were just the usual suspects pulling at the front, and I assumed (I always assume) they didn't need my help with that.

Floyd, being flat and windy and a thing that comes around every week, is a place to practice bike racing skills, particularly the one that so few of us are good at: patience. The course makes the race extremely boring if no one works to make the race dynamic. Depending on your personal goals, your team goals, and what the field make up looks like that night, maybe it’s in your interest to be the one making the race dynamic. But a lot of times people just attack because they’re bored, and Floyd is a great (hard) place to practice the mental fortitude of simply not doing that. This is especially hard in the women’s field, which can be kind of small and it really does take every person putting in some work to make sure that the field keeps moving. But—I like to remind myself that not putting in the work is the harder, better way to race a bike. I digress (and don’t listen to me I podium all the time but I’ve literally never won a Floyd, it’s my albatross).

Anyway, what happened on the night in question is that the only time I did work was when I tried to get Leah in a good position for the intermediate sprints, which I think mostly worked, although more because Leah is strong and talented than because I put her in the correct place. Everyone on the team put in some extremely good attacks, one right after the other that made it a dynamic race and did in fact work toward a team goal.

There was a crash close to the end and the weather was getting dark and ominous and I started to get some anxiety, I thought about not going for the sprint for a minute. I have PTSD from a very bad crash a very long time ago, and sometimes this happens to me. But I took a breath and pulled myself together and got on Lucia's wheel through the last lap. She pulled me to the finishing straight, and then it came time for the sprint. I was a little too far back, and Lucie from Veselka jumped. I was gaining on her, then I tried to shift and my di2 didn't shift, and I stopped gaining, and I got 2nd. I definitely lost the sprint because of my mis-shift and not because Lucie is simply much better at Floyd finishes than I am and has the timing down to a science and gets the jump on me every single time.

So in the end, I woulda won but Shimano something something. However, second was my best finish of the year, and it was great to be able to celebrate with a cold Athletic at the end—one of the last before the coolers were declared empty.

Photos by Elizabeth Marcello and Scott Rettino.