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.