Almost Home

The first week of summer, I went to Alabama.  The next weekend: Colorado for Collegiate Nationals.  Then Delaware and Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Idaho, Oregon, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Illinois.  I was supposed to be racing in Indiana today, but didn't because I got sick.  Tomorrow, however, I'm finally headed back to Gainesville!  

And it's a good thing, too!  I've been off my bike for a few days now, and in place of riding I've taken up eating large amounts of Wisconsin's famous custard.  Yum yum.  If I weren't flying home tomorrow, I might consider staying here longer until, perhaps, it became "too late" so to speak for my growing bottom!  

Home means it's time to start getting serious again.  Looking at my class schedule, it's hard not to slip back into serious mode.  I'm not sure how much I'll be joking around when I'm taking exams in classes called "Compressible Flow" or "Controls of Mechanical Engineering Systems."

Elite Road Nationals

Thanks to Sean Weide, I now know how to link YouTube videos to my blog. That means more blogging excitement for everyone!


The first video is from the U23 Criterium on Sunday. Sam and I broke away from the group 13 laps into the 35-lap race. And if you do the math correctly, that means 22 laps off the front by ourselves! We'd planned all along to break away together; we just didn't know that the right moment would come so early in the race. Ally and Rachel had attacked and were dangling off the front while the other girls tried to bring them back. I was itching to do something, but knew I had to save my energy for the right moment. Luckily for us, the break came back in the most technical part of the course. We were able to attack and get a gap pretty easily.

From there, it was pure pain. We held it at around 28 to 30 mph down the home stretch and 25 to 26 on the back stretch. The only place where we slowed was on the slight rise through turns 3 and 4, the corners we initially attacked through.

The pack chased surprisingly quickly. I kept waiting and waiting, hoping and hoping for the moment when they gave up, but it didn't come until 4 laps to go. Jack said he was surprised by how organize the chase was. With 10 laps to go, I began to question if we'd be able to make it. The gap was staying consistently at about 15 seconds.

Having Sam there with me really helped both mentally and physically. When we made the initial jump, she yelled at me "GO GO GO," and I knew that meant we'd made the right move. When the pack realized they weren't going to catch us, the gap went quickly from 15 seconds to 30 seconds all the way up to over a minute and a half. Crossing the finish line was the best feeling in the world. As Jack told me afterward, this was one of those races that you never forget.



And this is an interview the day after I won the U23 time trial. I was asked if the victory had sunk in yet.