Well, our little team-that-could certainly had a breakthrough weekend here in Georgia! We raced the single biggest criterium in the country, the Athens Twilight on sat. in Athens, GA. followed the next day by the Roswell criterium in Roswell, GA. The competition was top notch and the racing was fast and furious from the word go.
Some of our newer pro riders were caught out by the crazy pace off of the line and found themselves gapped by the second corner! I was able to secure my start position with a call-up so that helped a lot. We started eight girls and we all worked really well together, covering all the moves and scoring lots of primes. with 10 to go and 5 to go, Holli took flyers that strung out the field single file in chase mode so I was able to get good position and then Charm went on the attack with 3 to go and almost held on for the win.
In the end it was a field sprint and Jen McRae got the jump on all of us into the second to last corner but I had a good wheel and sprinted to fourth – one step off the podium – but a great result for the team and me. We beat the likes of victory brewing and lipton so I can’t complain too much.
The next day an early breakaway with all the major players – lipton, colavita, aarons, victory and cheerwine was established early and stayed away until the end. there were eight of us but all the good sprinters were in there so it was a finicky situation with no one wanting to work too hard for fear of a late attack. In the end we held off a hard charging field and I took third behind Van Gilder and Pic. Pretty good company on the podium if I do say so myself.
The team and I are super happy with our efforts and the races were great training – very hard and fast – so I am feeling good at this point in my season.
I am racing in Aabama on Sat. at the Sunny King Criterium and then I will be home for a couple of days before heading down to Joe Martin. We also had two girls racing at Bisbee last weekend and they both scored top tens so when we all get together in Arkansas we should be flying!!
see you there,
kb