Tour of the Gila Stage 4

Today was an awesome day for Team LipSmacker. We lined up for our 2:00 start time of the criterium. The course looked like this:

Add some wind to this picture, and walla...that's the race! It was a 1.74km loop. We did 25 laps. The wind was brutal during our race. After the long finishing straight-away, we made a left hand turn into the block of wind. After that, was the uphill. From then on, it was downhill and pretty fast. But the wind was a killer!

Anne took several primes throughout the race. Carla snagged one. We all did our fair share of attacking. With 4 laps to go, Toni took a flier and stuck it for the next 2 laps. Mad props to her because the wind was miserable! We caught her on the backside of the course up the hill. I attacked coming into the bottom corner and stuck it until the back side again. By this time, things were getting pretty split apart, which is what we wanted. Carla maintained a good position near the front and hopped on to the sprinters wheels. On the last lap, I tried to make my way towards the front with Anne. Carla came around for the win!!! Sweet!!! I pulled off 7th, Anne was 13th, Hillary 14th, and Toni 20th. We were all stoked. Everyone did an awesome job in the race.

Afterwards, we watched the men's pro/1 race. It was cool to see Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Taylor Phinney, etc. racing.

Ok that's all for now. Once again, congrats to Carla and the entire team. You gals are awesome!!
-A