Liberty Classic

I flew from Denver to Philadelphia Saturday morning. We arrived in Philly late afternoon. Toni and I went for a short spin before heading out for dinner. The next morning, we arrived at the course plenty early. With Philly being 2 hours ahead in time zones, I was dragging. Nothing like starting a race when your body thinks it's 7:10am.

There were 120ish starters. I was pretty nervous. The field was stacked. The biggest race I've ever been in. Here's just a few of the names I was in the presence of.
Ina Teutenberg (Columbia-High Road)
Trixi Worrack (Equipe Nurnberger Versicherung)
Amber Neben (Equipe Nurnberger Versicherung)
Mara Abbott (Columbia-High Road)
Judith Arndt (Columbia-High Road)
Not too mention, there were the usual US top contenders that I've been racing with at the rest of the NRC races. It was pretty amazing to be racing amongst them.

The course:
There were a lot of flat sections of the course. It started off with a tricky construction zone. Lots of man hole and drain covers and some road-narrowing. The first major climb (Manayunk Hill) is where things started to break apart. Apparently by the end of the first lap there were a large number of riders off the pack. After Manayunk Hill we went over two smaller hills (Strawberry Hill and Lemon Hill). At the top of Manayunk and Lemon there were Queen of the Mountain points. The pace stayed pretty high. We actually caught and passed the men's field pretty early in our race. It was a pretty big deal and very cool. The last lap Columbia-High Road showed why they are the power house to reckon with. They controlled the entire lap. Heading up Manayunk for the last time, they lit it up. It was the fastest time we went up it. Unfortunately, I had poor positioning going into the hill and had to navigate my way through slowing riders. By the time I had made it to the top, I was off the back of the lead group by about 50 meters. I couldn't close the gap. The leaders were drilling the pace as we went down the hill into a headwind. I sat up and started rotating with the girls in my pack (about 20 of us). Two of my teammates - Anne and Toni - made the front spilt, thankfully! The other 3 of us (Kacey, our guest rider Jessica Phillips, and myself) were in the 2nd group. Of the front of the lead group were 12 very strong riders. It made it very hard for us to catch the 1st group. The first group was trying to catch the break as we were trying to catch them. Needless to say, we never caught the group. Ina Teutenburg took the win, Joanne Kiesanowski (TIBCO) was 2nd, and Shelley Olds (PROMAN) was 3rd. Anne was our top finisher in 19th place, Toni was 28th, Kacey was 53rd, I was 65th, and Jessica was 67th. It was a super fun race, actually. According to VeloNews, this race was the fastest it's ever been in the race history. The field was pretty stacked, so that makes complete sense. I was happy to finish the race, and of course happy to not have crashed. Like I said before, it was just an honor being in the field with those types of riders.

We flew to Minneapolis Monday morning for the Nature Valley Grand Prix. Racing starts tomorrw (Wednesday). More updates to come as possible :)
-A