Tour de Bemus - Team MVP Health Care on fire with 1st, 2nd and 5th
What a great weekend of racing for our team at the Tour de Bemus. I pulled off my first road race win for the season, Natalie came in 2nd, Todd won the men's elite race and Jeff rolled in 5th - there was definitely something good in the air on Saturday...
It was a last minute decision to do this race and if I had known about it earlier I probably would not of stacked on two back to back days totally 10 hours of riding. My legs were so tired on Thursday and I had to do a massive taper down in preparation for the race but it probably wasn't quite long enough - ohwell, my legs seemed to be behaving anyway - whew.
The women were slotted in with the men riding masters, which initially looked to be an advantage (more shelter in the crosswinds), but the men set off such a rocketing pace in the first lap, that only 8 riders were left approaching lap 2, including Natalie, myself and one other female rider (Jennifer Martin).
In the second lap attacks were flying all over the show and with the course being so hilly more and more riders dropped off. By the last lap there were only 4 of us left, one master rider and 3 women. 2km from the end we let the top guy ride away. There was no point in wasting energy chasing him down as his placing had no affect on our race. Going into the last 500 metres Natalie launched an explosive attack, which I think caught Jennifer off guard and basically worked as my lead out for the sprint - thanks Natalie.
Next weekend our team is taking part in the Tour of Catskills. I am definitely feeling a little intimidated by what I have heard about this tour. Apparently it is absurdly hilly. Time to get those mountain goat legs out of the cupboard and hope they are up to the challenge..
