I realized that I never finished my Nature Valley update, so here's a brief synopsis. I felt okay with my TT, though I certainly wasn't thrilled with it. The second stage was brutal because of severe crosswinds of about 25 mph, which entirely splintered our field. It was also filled with crashes, taking out several of the top contenders. Thankfully, no one from our team was hurt. I ended up finishing in the 2nd chase group, which included 3 of my teammates and had about 40 women total. I was pretty frustrated at the end of that stage, but then I discovered that pretty much everyone was frustrated with it, so I tried to just move on.
Rainy crits are not among my favorite things, so I was not thrilled when the streets of downtown Minneapolis were soaked. I admittedly set myself up for a bad crit when a huge thunderstorm hit, complete with lightning, severe wind, and marble-sized hail. The streets were flooding and hail was piled up in the gutters. Everyone seemed to think the race would not happen, which I was honestly pretty happy about. I pretty much got my hopes up that I wouldn't have to do the crit (it scares me), and then let my fear get the best of me when I actually had to race. It was not a good night for me.
The 4th stage was awful for me. I just couldn't get my legs to move. My heart rate was elevated and I was working hard, but I just couldn't turn over the pedals. Not sure why. I felt awful and was struggling to just hang on, as it was another super windy day. Eventually, I couldn't do it and got popped, which made me really unhappy. I packed it in at the feed zone. Demoralizing day, but I think something must be going on with me and making me feel bad on the bike. Hopefully I'm not getting sick.
So... that's it for me at NV. My teammate, Carmen, had a fantastic performance in her first NRC race, but she ended up crashing in the final stage, breaking her clavicle.
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