Post-Toona High

WOW! I have been a bit AWOL with my blog since I spent the last week racing at Altoona. I am still on a high! It was a great week! Our team had hoped to end up placing better- but the racing was so great, that it is hard to feel bad.

There is so much that I want to write about this week, but my head is still swirling and a bit foggy after staying up waaaay to late last night with some friends and driving too long this AM. Quickly- the week was great. This is such a fun race since the profiles are hard, the money is good and so the competition is fantastic!

The races started out with a team time trial which we were really excited for and had never done before. We had some great TTT practices the day before (!) and were feeling optimistic that we could get in a good race and were shooting to land on the podium. Somehow, it was a total disaster in terms of that and we had a horrible showing. It was a big disappointment to everyone on our team and basically it was bad communication and not lack of horsepower. But that is just one day. There were days ahead and we could only let it pass. We did.

The exciting thing was that Webcor won, putting Lipton on the offensive, which I was happy about since I know that Kristin races her team aggressively and I wanted to see what would pan out over the course of the week. They did not disappoint and ended up driving some of the hardest racing we have done all year and aggressively took the yellow jersey, the climber jersey and landed third in the GC as well... to get there? They threw it down... hard.

Keeping it a BIT short... it turned into a great week. Our team had been gunning for a stage win and I had 4 shots at it... unfortunately, I did not manage to deliver. But I was happy with how the team raced and happy with how I raced, so that is good. I was happy to make it over the hills on stage 2 and just had bad position on the finish, landing 7th. In my two other bunch finishes, I took 5th and 4th. Both of them came after some seriously hard racing where legs were being torn off and races in which I would not have seen the finish line the year before. So, I was happy that I am racing strong and have my fitness back... my sprint is still not quite as snappy as I want, but I can feel it coming along. I am feeling ready for Europe again and very very very eager to get over there and race some more!

My head is swimming with sleep deprivation so I can’t write much or well. But I just wanted to post that it was a great week of such hard racing and I am proud to be a member of our peloton. My hat is off to so many strong riders who really showed some great grit this week. Thanks for making it such a fun week guys! It was a great week for women’s racing.