i'm so tired it's hard to write.

today was the road race.  hard.  starts off with a mean descent, very
bumpy but still fast.  i was worried because brad had crashed really hard
on it earlier (not his fault).  luckily he was okay but his front wheel
was destroyed and it looked like he might have to get a new bike, but we
took it down to ace and it's fine.

so my race started off okay.  just having trouble moving around in the
pack as usual.  i was feeling okay on the climbs, but the sprint/QOM was
badly marked and i missed it.

that was the first lap (11 miles).  second lap, nothing too
eventful. couldn't get into position, missed the sprint again.  third lap,
we got passed by the men pro-1-2s, a bit sketchy because people wouldn't
move to the right and maintain a slow speed.  but it was kind of awesome
to see the whole men's field of 150 or so spread up the climb with all the
team cars following.                   

tried to get with the BAM/Komen girls to help out yvonne, who crashed
yesterday.  she was working hard at the front and kicking ass in the
sprints, but she was doing way too much work.  they didn't want to help
her, i tried to move up before the sprint but again no dice.  with such a
big team, you'd think they'd work together more.  on the fourth lap they
let her pull basically all the way to the climb, at least 5 or 6 miles.

i tried to get near the front on the climb, went through the feed zone in
4th place.  i was able to maintain this position, with a little bumping,
all the way to the base of the final climb (off the course) up wachusett
mt.  it's something like 5 or 600 feet in 2-3 miles (this is on top of the
600 ft we were climbing on all 4 laps, or something like that).  i was
pretty wasted and fell back on the climb.  but i recovered a bit and
passed some people.  i tried to think of zion and how awesome that climb
was, and actually sort of joked with myself that there would be two vans
from bob jones university at the top.          

managed to finish 10th, which i think is good for one upgrade point.

this race was really, really tough for me.  i've kind of psyched myself
out about road races and climbing, and i haven't done a road race since
collegiate natz (except for the one where i was late and raced against the
cat 3 men).  so i was really really happy to be close to the front
people.  but it was really hard.  i wanted to quit over and over again but
that wouldn't have made a very good e-mail.

the pedro's guy took off with all the cat 3 women's wheels and jumped in
with the pros.  so they've still got my wheels, which means i'll have to
get them to switch my cassettes back tomorrow (today i ran my 12-25 with
my 11 from the 11-23 subbed in for the 12 for the descent).

betty's all better after having her front wheel trued and her handlebars
checked out (they're not bent) and adjusted.  jane is quite happy too with
the new brakes and i am SO THRILLED to be able to get myself to and from     
races (THANKS DAD).

tomorrow's the crit.  i don't think my teammate made the time cut today so
i might be the only  IF girl.  we'll see how it goes.

thanks to AL at wheelworks for working on betty, and esp to CARL for
fixing brad's bike, which was in BAD shape.  (brad, carl likes miller
lite.)

michele, betty, jane