There is no "i" in team

But there sure is a lot of F-U-N! Wow, what a great weekend of racing in PA this weekend, and even better, I don't have to write race reports because my lovely teammates already took care of that.

In summary, Di Diesel soloed in for the win at Saturday's Hammer Creek Road Race. Her report is here. I will add some of my perspective from the pack as Di was hammering off the front.

• At one point, Loraine and I were on the front when Michele from HPC went blasting by with Sonja on her wheel. Loraine's initial reaction was to go with them but I told her to let them go. My thinking was that if Michele wanted to drag Sonja up to Diane, well, I'd take that. A couple of more riders went by and still I told Loraine to let them go. Now we had a mini-break of about 4 riders chasing Di, but the pack was not going to have it. They started to chase down the break and when they were reeled in, everyone sat up, and in a moment of confusion, I guess they forgot Di was up the road. A bit later a Sturdy Girl asked Sonja if there was still someone up the road. Sonja said nothing, but another rider piped in.. "Yeah, one of theirs." Ha, Di had pulled off the perfect Houdini... out of sight, out of mind. The chase began in earnest, but with Di's time trialing skills, not a lot of time was taken out of her lead.
• Beth's crash was awful. I had moved up to the front, hugging the yellow line as I saw Sonja moving up on the inside. I had a feeling she was getting ready to launch so I wanted to be on the front protecting the yellow line and forcing potential chasers to move up on the inside/middle. About this same time Heidi was also thinking of attacking and was moving up in the middle. Poor Beth was taking a drink of water. Next thing I know, Heidi is teetering like a weeble-wobble and saying "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." She managed to stay upright (weebles wobble but they don't fall down), but Beth could not. Now, I've heard a lot of crashes but I've actually never heard the sound of carbon breaking. It freaked me out. I wanted to stop, but I'm glad I didn't. The Major said she would have kicked my ass if I had.
• Racing carbon wheels in the rain with 120 psi in your tires is not fun. Once the rain began I could not seem to hold a straight line as my tires had lost all grip, and worse my braking power was down to about 10%. I eased up and let the pack go approaching the "llama turn" but then chased back on. I had a Tri-State Velo girl with me and helped her reconnect with the pack. On the final lap approaching the "llama turn", I once again let off the gas early in order to take the turn easy. The Tri-State Velo girl did not feel comfortable taking the turn with the group either, but I told her to stay on my wheel after the turn and I'd get us back on, which I did. (I only mention this because she returned the favor Sunday when I was caught out of the draft and looking to move back in.) At the finish I was feeling strong but had lost all confidence in my tires/wheels so I just rolled in towards the back of the pack for 11th. Didn't matter much, my teammate had won.

Sunday's race, the Cycle Sports Circuit Race, if possible, was an even better display of team tactics than Saturday. I won't repeat what's already been said on Sonja's blog and Beth's blog, but have I told you lately how much I love my team? And in addition to all the love going around, there's been a lot of mention of C3 on other blogs so now I have new friends and blogs to read and links to add. Check them out.

Sara Iepson
Lenore Pipes
Davina Summers