whew!

So, after stage 3, which was a bit of a hilly affair up Cooper Spur Mountain, the entire peloton was shocked from the sudden spike in temperature. We went from cool and grayish with rain to smoking hot and humid. Many girls were dehydrated and cramping, and almost everyone pitched themselves into the freezing river for an ice bath afterwards in their shammies!


The next day was an individual time trial, which ALSO contained climbs, happily, there were some decent descents to go with it. Tina said Jeannie Longo blew by her so fast that she was positive she had won it. Turns out there was some kind of holdup at the start with Jeannie's tt bars and she started over a minute late and still got third!!!!

Well, lets just say, that the rest of us did not fly like Jeannie in this particular venture....our little Tiffy put in a solid ride to score a top ten place, moving her up into 8th on GC. We went to dinner that evening at a spectacular house (friend's of Dotsie and Kirk) with a view and tried not to think about the suffer-fest that was to come with the next day's stage.




So, the famous Mt. Hood Meadow's stage was indeed filled with climbing.....over 9000 feet of climbing. The heat wave in Oregon continued and our plan was to keep our climbers as fresh as possible until the business end of the race when the climbing turned steeper. Dotsie, Tina and Iona covered moves during the race. When the climbing pace finally got harder and harder, Tiffany managed to come in with the first set of girls after Mara Abbott and Jeannie Longo, holding on for 8th. Our next best climbers were Kristin and Andrea a few places back. There was snow on the top, which Tiffy and Tina sat in to cool their aching muscles!!
The final stage was a criterium and we were stoked at the chance to get another stage win. We thought it would be aggressive with other teams also looking for the same thing, as well as some of the GC people were separated by seconds, so getting up the road would translate into time and therefore a move up in overall classification. We had to be alert. Right off the bat, there was bad luck - Andrea came down in the last corner and had to retire from the race with a pro-rated time. We also lost Dotsie to that crash. Both girls are alright. We were now down to 4. The way it worked out was that Tiff found herself covering moves at the beginning, then Kristin and Iona were taking care of the middle portion of the race, and then by the end, Tiff was recovered to be able to get up front to give Tina a lead-out. Tina took it 3rd out from the last corner and never looked back. We finished this very tough stage race with 2 wins, a podium, and a top 10 on GC. All in all, we were pretty satisfied, and now go home for a bit of a rest before the next races.