So the BIG dollar Tour of Elk Grove was held on a sub-par, mundane, ridiculous course in some pretty steamy hot weather today. I am amazed that there aren't more complaints about the course - it's horribly boring and really not all that fun to race on. For such a high-profile event it makes sense to me that the organizer/promoter could be a bit more creative and maybe come up with a better course - one that's worthy of such an amazing prize purse (well, for the pro men at least...). OK, I'll stop whining now - I suppose any chance to race an NRC event withing 20 miles of home is a good thing. The women's pro 1/2 field was small - I think maybe 40 - but the caliber of the riders was amazing. Cheerwine, Value-Act Capital, and Aarons had full squads and HUB, expresscopy.com, Colavita, TIBCO, Priority Health, Advil-Chapstick, Lipton, and TargetTraining also had representation. Every woman on the line was capable of winning today and the racing proved to be fast and aggressive with lots of breaks for the entire 60K.
Kenda had a strong team with Kristin W., Tamyra B., Gina V., and myself lining up in the black and red. Kristin started off with an early attack that she was able to stick for a few laps and picked up a $500 prime along the way before getting sucked back in. Gina worked her tail off to haul in a break and Tam was super aggressive - she bridged to a break and nearly won a prime too! Me? Well....I've been a bit 'off' for the last few days after some dental work and having to deal with some stress and the super hot weather. I suffered a lot in the heat, hung in and yo-yo'ed around in the group but wasn't ever able to really do anything significant until I somehow started feeling good with 2 laps to go. Weird.
On the final lap I was sitting toward the front and actually feeling confident when a little contact happened in front of me that took down Lara Kroepsch from Lipton and a few others as well. I hope Lara is OK - I had to ride over her and her bike... That crash was pretty much screwed up the end of the race for anyone in the vicinity as the peloton pulled away and the remainder of us scratched and clawed our way to a respectable finish. I think I heard 22nd from the reviewing stand. Not a great result but it's better than being road kill.
It was unfortunate but stuff like that happens all the time in racing. We had a fantastic team day and we're all looking forward to Nationals in Downers Grove next weekend. Of note is the fact that Corie, Karen, Greg and Mike were on hand to cheer for us and Paul was around to get us wired up with radios and take care of any problems - thanks so much everyone, it means so much that you took time to be there for us!
That is a pic of Izumi - she's a little devil sometimes but in this shot I caught one of her more 'mellow' moments.
