Joe Martin, Stage 1-2

Stage 1: This was a 2.8 mile uphill time trial.  Before, Shannon and I went on an hour road ride, but on the way back through a muddy and very downhill switchback, someone was standing with their bike in the middle of the switchback, making Shannon change her line in the mud and making her go down pretty hard and me ice-skate, trying to find traction with my cleats on the mud.  She busted her chin pretty good and has lots of lovely bruises.  That little shocker made for a stressful TT.  I didn't feel too good for the TT- I'm not sure why.  Maybe it was too short, maybe my legs were rusty from not riding between Speedweek and Joe Martin, maybe it was the combined 30 hours in the car in the last three days- who knows?  I ended up 34th of 70 starters and a minute and a half back.  Injured Shannon was just behind.  We booked it out of there post-TT and went to the ER.  She ended up being there for 6 hours to get a couple measly stitches.  Lame!

Stage 2: This was a 64 mile road race with one main climb, but this climb was a good 10-miler.  I was actually feeling pretty good, but I let myself get gapped near the beginning.  It's so hard to get gapped and have to get out of your rhythm.  I was passed by the caravan.  I worked with a Webcor and a Mellow Mushroom(?) girl and we re passed the caravan.  The Webcor girl jumped across the last 50 feet when I was pulling really hard but I didn't have the strength to pull those last 50 feet myself and the other girl had dropped off.  It was disheartening to see the front group so close and yet so far.  I watched as the group slowly pulled away.  At the top of the climb I sat up and waited for the second group, which by that time was closer.  Our "chase" was anything but and the gap increased over the last 20 miles to four minutes.  We made time cut at least.