Wenatchee recap

The racing in Wenatchee was good for me. I felt the best I've felt on the bike this year, so that was very encouraging. With all the forced time off I've had this year, it's exciting to finally be coming around.

Boy, was it a windy weekend. I think most peoples' time trial times were about 1.5 minutes slower than in years past. It was just a horrible headwind on the way back, making you feel like you were crawling home. I had my best time trial of the year, coming in first. Unfortunately, Tricia Bailey missed her start time by a large margin, so I don't feel that I can honestly say I beat everyone - you cannot ever count Tricia out. Still, it was a good TT for me, in any case.

I did not manage to get a single point in the crit, so it was tough going into the road race. One woman was in first place with 17 points, while 3 of us were tied for 2nd with 15, leaving the road race to decide the overall placings. This road race is totally centered around its 10+ mile climb, as the fields shatter every year on the climb. Sure enough, as soon as we started going up, some of the women started pushing it hard. I hung with them for a while, but realized quickly that I would not be able to maintain their pace on such a long climb. I backed off and watched a group of about 10 leave me behind. I thought to myself, "Well, the points are all up the road. Hopefully I can pick off at least a couple people before the top."

I was shocked when I began passing woman after woman. I got in my rhythm and just kept it steady. I caught the two leaders right at the top of the climb, and then we started the long descent. I started out leading, and turned around to see that I had a gap over the other women, so I just decided to attempt to increase my lead. I time trialed down the descent (very windy!) and was told I had over a minute when I reached the bottom. Thankfully, it was a fast tailwind for the last section to the finish, so I was able to fend off the chasers and take the win. I truly thought I had lost the overall after the crit, and then surely when I backed off on the climb. Who knew?

A friend of Ted's is kindly helping me to design my company logo, so I am very excited about that. He works for a major company in Chicago that works on designs for major national companies, and here he is helping out little ol' me. This part should be fun!