Friday, April 4, 2008

Redlands so far...

Wednesday: 4am wake-up, fly to CA, preview the course, move into the host house (check it!), procure some food etc, and then it is 10pm Pacific time and I am dead. But I raced up that hill, obsessing about wheel choice, opting for two deep-dish Carbones on a road bike with clip-ons. Ideal would be light TT bike with proper climbing gearing and deep dish front plus non-tank rear disc - that is my take. But I rode hard and finished 25th and given this winter and three days of racing training crits, I was pleased. Today I got a flat 3 miles into the new circuit race, exploded tube wrapped around my cassette and brakes, resulting in a painfully slow wheel change that had me out of sight of the caravan. My chase basically killed me, and my teammate Kele who dropped back to help. I was dying after that. I love bumper-hopping in the caravan but not that much. The tube yanked the brakes off-center and I ended up getting off the bike before the second QOM for some bike wrestling. So a 40mile tt with two others to make the time cut. I'm exhausted, sunburned, and disappointed. Betina and Kirsten led the Advil charge, finishing in the second group. Kele had a race-ending mechanical, Brenda and Megan will live to fight another day. It's awesome to be racing, even though today was so short-lived and painful.

2 comments:

X Bunny said...

ouch!

good luck with the rest of the stages

tell betina that we found her secret girl scout cookie stash and ate them all while she was gone

Anna Milkowski said...

Excellent! The message about the cookies has been passed on. We were lamenting the lack of these last night... Now that I know someone is reading, I'll try to get some photos up!