Nationals

Well let me just say....if I weren't living in Colorado...Bend, OR would be my home. It is beautiful, clean, fun, great weather, great people, great food, shopping.....and of course, my new favorite place to eat-Cuppa Yo! I was there for a full week and I think I ate there 6 of the 7 days! The owner(Keith) knows where I'm from, why I was there and he met my teammates! hahaha!!! We were GREAT customers;)

My host house was a friend of ex pro Chrissy Ruiter(she's from Bend-lucky), Heidi and her house was so cute!!! She had a sweet black pup named Beta and a huge cat named Otis:) It was nice to care for some animals, making it feel that much more like home.....Heidi is super cute and has great taste and she was a blast to hang out with...THANKS HEIDI:)

So racing.....the first race was the time trail, not a lot of gals signed up because there are only a select few that had a true shot at it and I enjoyed cheering on my teammies:) Alison was fourth and even if she wasn't totally thrilled with it, I was really proud to see her step on the podium and take her medal.

After the awards ceremony, the team went back to one of the host family's house and had an awesome cookout! It was so cute, everything was labeled and the food was wonderful! I think I tweeted the photo:) They also had to big dogs, one was a yellow lab....awwww, I miss my Miller!

Next up was the criterium, this was Erica's race(another teammy)! She was ready, excited, focused and knew exactly what she had to do to get to the finish line first. It felt good executing a team plan and having total success in the end-Erica took 2nd! What a closer!:)

After the crit, we ate some awesome Thai food and then called it a day:) Whew, I was tired.....

Saturday was an off day, the road race was on Sunday. So we had a nice, easy ride and chill day lots of rest b/c Sunday was gonna come fast and early.

So alarm goes off at 6am, eat, coffee, dress, head to the start of the race. We discuss team tactics and off we went:) 113k of fun! 4 laps, with a nasty climb each time....it was totally hard but again, I enjoyed it! This was my second time to do road nationals and my first time to finish....in my mind, it was a successful day and my teammate was in the top 10!! Good job Sanders!

So back home on Monday and Andrea Wilson from TN is in town for a couple of days for some acclimation, she is headed to do some 100mile mtn bike race....she is HARD CORE!!!! Glad she is here and I'm enjoying showing her the sites of the big city:)

So the next 3 weeks will be training and then see where I'm going from there! I'm sure some interesting things will happen b/t now and then:) I shall blog......

Until then, check out this video..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LoeAar4gxY