Today we did a 96-mile race; we did four laps of a 24-mile course. It was a beautiful day, and not quite as windy as it usually is for this race. The race started off slowly. Since I didn’t get a warm-up in, that was fine with me. After twenty minutes of easy riding, the attacks started. I covered attacks the first lap. On the second lap, I covered attacks and became more aggressive and attacked. On the third lap, Nicole, Kate, and I were attacking and counterattacking along with covering attacks. On the one hill, Lynn Bessette (Quark) attacked with Laura Van Guilder (Genesis-Scuba) on her wheel. They opened up a good gap. Nicole worked and brought them back. Then we started attacking again. The next thing I knew, a break was off. The break consisted of Tina Mayolo-Pic (Genesis-Scuba), Sandy Espeth (Victory Brewing), Amy Moore (Quark), Yuki Nakamara (Webcor), Helene Drumm (Morgan Stanley), a woman I didn’t know, and me (Basis). A few miles after the break formed, Yuki got dropped and Magali LeFloch (Quark) bridged up. The seven of us worked pretty well together. One of the women didn’t work a lot, because she was afraid of getting dropped. Because of the heat and not drinking enough, my legs and calves started cramping with 1.5 laps to go.

After the break got off, I ate three gels and drank the rest of my water to make sure I had enough energy for the finish. I had planned on attacking on the hill, but the Pro men caught us, so we were neutralized. The official made us let the men get a good gap so we didn’t catch them during our sprint; they had a really long caravan. Amy started the attacks. For some reason on all four laps I never saw the 1km to go sign, and I didn’t know exactly where the finish was. Amy attacked and we all went with her. At the top of the hill, I saw the finish line less than 200m away. I kept sprinting and was gaining on everyone, but it was too late. Tina won it with Magali 2nd and Helene 3rd; I ended up 5th. The major lesson for today was to learn where the finish line is.