Ed. Note: Here's a great report that Stacy Appelwick filed a couple of weeks ago.
Whoo hoo!
What fun I've been missing! The ABD women's team showed up en masse (except Jeannie-she's in IA) last night for the Wednesday training crit in West Chicago at the Pelladrome! Fabulous time and great training. It's so darn hard racing with the boys. Thanks to everyone for volunteering your time and organizing this every week! I'll for sure be back! If you haven't made it out to the Pelladrome yet, give it a try!
Thanks to Kristen for her recap of the Spring Prairie RR last Sunday up in WI. http://pwppedalingwithapurpose.blogspot.com This course is 6.4 miles of rolling terrain with a 18% grade finishing straight. We had the pleasure of going up it 6 times for a total of 39 miles. After the second climb, I just rolled through the downhill section and got about a 6 bike length gap and Lindsey Durst of IS Corp attacked and I caught her wheel. We went through turn one, I looked back and we had Kelly Hess of Kenda and Holly Matthews also of IS Corp with us. It was the right combo of teams represented, so it stuck. In a nutshell, Lindsey was protecting Holly's position, so she was doing most of Holly's work, so Kelly and I set about to attempt to escape from them. We started attacking. On the 5th lap, I put in a pretty hard dig, but it was on the wrong spot of the course. Live and learn. After dangling for awhile, I got caught and Kelly attacked hard. She rode away as I was too gassed to catch her wheel. We rolled around for another lap and after the last climb, Holly and I dropped Lindsey. My goal then was to attempt to drop Holly. It didn't work. That girl is strong! Since I was attacking her, she went into defensive mode and slowed to let Lindsey catch back on. When I saw this was happening, I finally sat up and realized I'd better save something for the sprint. Sure enough once we turned the corner for the final climb, I caught Holly's wheel, but those sprinter thighs of hers dropped me after all the previous wasted effort. It really wasn't wasted though, because more lessons were learned!
Kelly won it by a large margin, Holly was 2nd, I was 3rd and Lindsey rolled in behind me after all the work she did for Holly.
There were many interesting things that went on in this break, but it would take way too long to talk about them all. All I can say is that this bike racing business is the just the coolest thing ever!
Thank you to ABD for supporting our team! We really appreciate all you do to support cycling and racing. This is such a great community of people!!
Chris, Elena and I are now off to Minneapolis to race on the track at the Fixed Gear Classic this weekend. Jeannie, Kristen and Jessi are racing the Galena stage race and Sarah's racing locally in MI. Good luck girls! We'll see you in MN for the Nature Valley Grand Prix next Wednesday.
Stacy
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