Stage 1 Pre-ride
On Monday Suz, Leah, Dana and I met up in the afternoon to pre-ride the TT course for stage 1. It was great to meet Dana and Leah since we had not met before and they are AWESOME. I can't wait to race with them. After pre-riding the course on our TT bikes we jumped on the road bikes to practice taking bottle feeds from our support car that would be in the race caravan. We practiced dropping back to the car, getting rid of empty bottles and taking new bottles. When you get new bottles you get to hang on for a few seconds before Eric lets go and take a "pull" so you can get a tiny break before you have to move back up to the peleton. It was lot's of fun. Here's some pictures that Eric took on our pre-ride
Dana
Lea
Suz, Dana, Jeanie (I am the tall amazon girl) and Lea at Panorama Point
Stage 1
Since I am behind schedule on blogging (today was Stage 3 and I have yet to post on Stage 1), I will do a short synopsis with some great pictures that Eric took. Suz made us all proud and took 2nd in the stage.
Trish, Lise, Lea and Jeanie warming-up
Suz getting ready to kick some bootay!
Stage 2-Rattlesnakes, Illness and Hottness
Today was HOT! At the start of stage 2 I was excited, the finish was slightly downhill and was geared for sprinters. I am a sprinter. What I wasn't excited for was the 1 mile hill in the middle of the course that we did 3 times. That hill had queen of the mountains points on every lap so the pace was going to pick-up very quickly. Oh yeah, did I mention it was hot? I had a feeling that I might be playing catch-up on the downhill sections to get back to the main group when they ramped up the pace on the hill. After the first of 3 laps I was able to catch back on, but I never felt quite right on the 2nd lap. On the second lap, everything fell apart for me. I ended up running over a dead rattlesnake, running over road kill is something I really try to avoid. After that I got sick and had to pull over to the side of the road and, well you don't want all the details. In short, the great attention I had been paying to staying hydrated and eating all went out the window, or should I say, onto the side of the road. After this lovely event my legs decided to leave the building and I was left to suffer through the last lap with legs that had no intention of co-operating with me.. The good thing is I was able to chase back onto the main group and stay with them to the bottom of the climb, again. I also got shot of the back, again because my legs were no where to be found. I caught some girls and we worked to the finish line.
Our team did great yesterday, despite me having nothing in me to help. Suz did great on the climbs despite the fact that she had 4 mechanicals during the race. The story is really a great one and I will let her tell it. You could not believe what happened in one race. Lea had a great sprint at the end and came in 7th. Trish had a small fall in some gravel and had some great road rash (pictures to be posted soon). It was a great day for the team and I only hope that tomorrow I don't get sick and run over dead snakes!
Stage 3-More Hotness
My dream for slightly cooler weather did not come true. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, then today pretty much went like this:
Need I say more? This is pretty much how Dana and I felt after today. There were some attacks on the climb on lap 2 of 3 and the pace ramped up hard and I went out the back, then Dana and Trish. I really wish I could have caught up with them, it would have made my ride so much more enjoyable. Lea and Lisa did a great job of chasing the attacks for Suz, I could hear all of this over my race radio, I just wish I could have been there to help. I ended up finishing the race with some girls from other teams and had fun on the long descent each lap so it was a hard day, but a good one.
Tomorrow is the long time trial and I will be rolling it (not riding hard) to recover and save myself for the crit on Sunday. I am looking forward to a small break from pain of racing. Tomorrow will be a nice ride to spin the legs out and take in some food while I ride. Only 3 more days of racing.
Rolling in the Hotness
More hotness today, I am actually starting to get a really good tan and I don't look like the pale Northwest person that I am.
I really like time trials, even when they are painful. I like time trials even more when I get to "roll" them. Today was the least stressful race I have had in a long time. Rolling the TT means I get to ride the TT at a decent pace and not blow myself up in the hopes that I will have some legs left over for the massive stage on Saturday and the crit on Sunday. So basically I got to take the scenic tour of the course, which is really beautiful. It was nice to not have to stress out before the race, worry about warming up and wondering if my one inch long ponytail was "aero". I did choose to ride my TT bike because I generally believe that any time spent on the TT bike is good training and I will feel less guilty about not riding my TT bike next week considering I have been on it 3 times this week already. I had fun thanking the volunteers at the corners and telling the girls who passed me "good job" as they went by.
Later this evening Eric was looking at my road bike and discovered that my brakes were so close to my rims that the brakes were actually rubbing when I would stand up to pedal. Hmm, maybe the last two days wouldn't have been so painful if I hadn't been expending so much energy on the climbs. Maybe there is a good excuse for why I have been sucking the last two days. I can only hope that tomorrow I will be climbing like a rock star now that Eric has fixed my bike up nicely. Well, I am off to bed so I can be well rested for the 90 miles and 9200 feet of climbing that will be the hell I am in tomorrow. There will be some interesting tactics going on with the teams that are defending the leaders jersey and the teams that want control of the leaders jersey. It will be an interesting stage.
Stage 5-The Real 89 Mile Time Trial in the Hotness
It was hot, again. The absolute best part about stage 5 was the first 5 kilometers. It was a screaming fast descent down to where the first climb started. I was actually in the front on the descent, which was probably the most time I have spent on the front of the pack the whole race. One of the Aaron's girls commented to me at the bottom that we didn't need to push it on the descent since it was a long race. I don't think she could figure out that as an amazon woman I weigh 30 pounds more than she does and that I tend to go downhill really fast without any effort.
Once we started climbing I moved up to the front of the pack and was actually feeling pretty good and able to keep my position. Climbing up to the first QOM Aaron's got on the front and started to slowly ramp up the pace. I new that my time with the main group was numbered at this point and that I would eventually fall off and have to catch back on after the descent. I soon found myself out the back of the group with some girls behind me and some girls ahead of me. This is where my 80 mile individual time trial started. I caught up to two girls that were in front of me and we climbed well together. I felt great climbing, my wheel issues were worked out and I could tell that I had more power now that my wheels weren't rubbing. I can climb at a steady pace, I just can't accelerate on climbs, so I just paced myself. Jill from Bend Bike and Sport and I dropped the Velo Bella girl that was with us on the climb, I felt bad, but what can you do? I then ended up dropping Jill on the descent on the other side. I was hoping that she could stay on my wheel, but it didn't happen. I passed Nicole Evans (Lipton) towards the bottom of the hill and chatted with her a bit, she was having mechanical problems. I was hoping to have found the race caravan by now, so I was still by myself chasing the back of the caravan. Soon I could see the caravan in the distance. I pushed as hard as I could to catch on and managed to get into the caravan right after the first feed zone. As I went past Eric I grabbed a second bottle and a short rest and made my way into the field. The unfortunate thing for me was that I managed to catch on right before this short, steep climb that can be best described as a wall. I was able to move up in the field, hand my extra bottle off to a teammate and then immediately got shot off the back on the wall when Aaron's launched a monster attack. Thus began the second part of my time trial. I caught a couple more girls and rode with them to the second QOM, down the descent, but lost them when we started climbing again. I was actually feeling pretty good and they wanted to ride a bit slower and chat so I was on my own again. This lasted for a while until I ran into Sal Collura from OBRA and Laura Brown from my group. Sal eventually had to drop back because of a mechanical. So Laura and I rode together for a while. We passed some more girls that couldn't stay with us and rode with Heather Clark from Bend Bike and Sport. I stayed with them until the last push up to the ski resort. I wanted to quit, I wanted to cry, but I managed to finish. I hope that the crit goes good tomorrow. It's only 50 minutes, but it is going to hurt.
