What a weekend!!!

Last weekend JR and I went to Tucson for the Tucson Bicycle Classic. Thursday afternoon we picked up my sweet Parkpre TT bike at AZ Bikes. Then we were off to Tucson. The TT on Friday was very uneventful, only a 3 mile effort, so everyone came in very close to each other. I ended up 10th, 2 of my teammates came in 4th and 5th.

Saturday morning was EARLY...just like in a triathlon. Carrie and I had to leave the house at 5 am, because the race started at 6:50 am. It was 105 km. Our strategy was to do the least amount of work but if someone is trying to get away, bring them back. I was the workhorse at the front, protecting the 2 girls that were higher in GC. My AVIA teammate Melanie McQuaid was in the race as well, but in Cycling we are racing for different teams, that meant that I had to bring back every attack she threw out there, and she threw out MANY!!! What a strong cyclist, well she isn't a 3 time World Champion for nothing:-) I held onto my handlebars so tight, and gave 110%, pulling super hard on the handlebars, so that this happened:






The skin got rubbed off my finger from pulling so hard by my shifter!!! (gross, the skin was still on the shifter after the race...but this is a sign of giving everything, no matter what YEAH!!!)


So the race ended up in a field sprint. I definately got a great workout in, with tons of hard efforts.

Sunday was the Circuit race of around 70 km. Here our plan was attacking attacking attacking-we did that but couldn't get away as the other teams were working hard to get the field back together. The efforts today were even harder than on Saturday. It was again a great training day and since our race started at 6:40 am, we were done before breakfast, yeah.



I had a great race with my teammates, BUT EVEN BETTER:


JR won the overall even though he had NO teammates!!! He had the yellow jersey going into the last stage, and held it despite all the attempts of all the other teams trying to take the jersey from him!!!


Staying with our friends Carrie and Todd was great, they are such nice and FUNNY people:-) Carrie made me smile and laugh the entire time, even at 4:30 am, where I am usualy very grumpy!!! It was so much fun and so many funny things happened: sitting in a cactus, gels exploding in the jersey, ...:-) AND Carrie made her first money racing a bike!!! Yeah, who needs a job, we will just race:-)

We drove back to Flag on Sunday evening...mhhh...we tried to drive back. The car decided to stop in Phoenix and we had to get towed back to Flag...

At least we made it back to Flag at 11 pm. We stopped 3 times on the way up, because our driver needed breaks:-) During our stop in Camp Verde I saw this:

See the Genuine Innovations sticker there!!! Wasn't me, but someone is a Genuine Innovations fan as well!!!

This weekend is no race, just many hours in the pool, saddle and running shoes.

Angi