11 mile Time Trial
20 mile Criterium
62 mile Road Race
Wow. What a weekend. For those that did not attend, they sure missed out on a great Stage Race. I heard many saying that the road race was more difficult than GMSR, Killington, and Battenkill combined. Well, it sure was!
For the women, Amy Miner and myself represented NorEast, and we did so very well. There were 16 P/1/2 Women to start on Saturday, which started off with a 11 mile Time Trial. This was not your typical TT...with much more climbing, descending, and turning involved. It was a very hard course to get a rhythm going. I had taken off my aero bars, considering the amount of climbing that I was going to encounter. Bad choice. I was wishing I had those bars on the flats and descents! But still, I kept a good tempo going and did not over exert myself. I placed 4th (1st place woman was former professional triathlete) and Amy placed 9th. Both of us had enough juice left in our legs for the Crit. in the afternoon. The Crit. was a bit of a disaster though...considering the fact that the officials and race promoter decided to combine the 3/4 field with our P/1/2 field...WHAT???? Thirty 3/4 women in with our field made no sense and it created a lot of confusion and chaos. There was a crash due to their mixing in with us. Luckily Amy and I both were on the right side of it and ended up carrying on. Our tactics were to do lead-outs and get me some GC sprints and Amy some Points sprints. With having all this mess in the field, it was difficult to do so, but we still managed a few good tries that were successful. Amy got a 3rd on the 1st points sprint, then we did not get to do the 1st GC sprint-due to the crash-I got 1st on the next GC sprint, and then on the last points sprint Amy got 3rd and I got 4th. On the last lap, two Kenda riders got a few bike length gap and I closed in on it to 3rd wheel, I was ready to pull around them, but the finish was a disaster! There were 3/4's sprawled all over the road like moving cones. I had to pull hard right and ended up getting 5th by less than 1/2 a wheel length to 3rd place. Amy placed 8th.
That night we had a NorEast team dinner, with a some good laughs. However, I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible upset stomach! I felt like I was going to throw up...a very restless rest of the night. Note to self: do not eat alfredo sauce before a race. It took 2 hours to just eat my peanut butter and jelly bagel in the morning...I was concerned about even rolling off the start line...but it was a good thing that I did! Our road race got underway and moving instantly started to make me feel better. My stomach felt like it was going to rip through my skin until after the 2nd climb, but I was still able to stick with it. At mile 12 in the race, there was a hot spot sprint. I moved up to the front around mile 9, with Amy on my wheel. Without even talking, she could sense my plan. As soon as we saw the 200 meters to go mark, I took off with her on my wheel and placed 1st and 2nd (respectively). We were really pleased with that and it kept us fueled for the remainder of the race. The first 3 mile dirt climb was brutal. It kicked right up and just kept going. 5 riders went on ahead and I lost contact with their wheels. I had a group of 6 other riders and we tried to hammer down the decent. We could still see how close the group up ahead was, but never made it on before the next insanely steep climb. For the rest of the race I pace lined it with these 6 other riders. One girl in our group had the leader up ahead and did not want to work with us. It was a pretty annoying because she would just sit on the back. Anyway, we all kept in good spirits through the rest of the climbs and when we entered Manchester for the last few miles I moved to the front and as we turned the corner to the finish I took off and won the group sprint, placing 6th overall in the race. Amy finished in the group behind us in 11th place. Due to the fact that 3 of the riders that were behind me in the GC standings after Saturday got in the first group on the RR, it put myself into 7th GC. Amy came in 10th GC. I placed 3rd in the overall points results and Amy 4th.
We both had a solid weekend of racing and were happy to work together. Good thing my flat tire did not appear until I took the bike off the race at home Sunday!!!
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