As I sit here at the airport in Omaha thinking about all the ways I’d rather be spending a recovery day, I also think back with a big smile on all that the team has done over the last 2 weeks. It started with an impressive win at the Athens Twilight, the first of 5 wins in 10 races (6 Speedweek crits and 4 stages at Joe Martin), and finished with the gut busting, leg thrashing, stage 4 crit at the Joe Martin Stage Race in Fayetteville, AR, where the team notched up its 5th win and 3 podium places – 2nd, 3rd and 3rd overall.

Joe Martin was a brutal race for me – I was smoked from beginning to end. I had hoped that I would come around but in the end I DNF’d. There was just nothing left in the tank, absolutely empty. But, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good race for the team. On Stage 3, Kat took an impressive 2nd place in what was a dicey, fast, and deceptively hard finish. We helped control most of the attacks during the undulating and unrelenting stage in hopes that it would come down to a field sprint, figuring that was where we had the best chance of getting time bonus. And, in fact, it was. Kat was now just 9 seconds out of first place. All she had to do was win the last stage and hope that Alison Powers didn’t get any time at all. Easy, right? NOT! Everyone was tired on the last day and therefore our plan of attack went to shit. I was the first to pop and I exploded big time. Kat, Jo and Lauren battled it out to the very end, but in the end it was Alison who motored away from the exhausted peloton to take a very decisive and well earned stage and overall victory. Kat held on to her 3rd place overall – a hard earned 3rd place at that.

Now Emma and Lauren are off to Daytona Beach (thanks for the invitation girls), while the rest of us recover at home for the next 3 weeks. Next up for me is Quad Cities in Iowa Memorial Day Weekend (Snake Alley, here I come). Montreal is the next big team race but I’ve been there, done that…I’ve chosen to head to Tulsa Tough instead. OK vs Montreal….yep, I made the right choice.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy some down time at home where the weather seems to finally have made a turn towards summer. Yippee!!!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 9:24 am and is filed under On the bike.