Friday – Stage 4 – Martinsburg Circuit Race – 128km

Today, my body felt generally tired but my legs were pretty good.  I can thoroughly recommend Eric Carlson (our masseur) who does an awesome job at repairing my tired body.

The Martinsburg circuit race consisted of 4 laps of a 32km loop with sprint points at the start/finish line on laps 1, 2 and 3.  We started at 10.30am today, but it was just as hot and humid as every other day this week.  The peloton was feeling the heat and we started out slowly.  In fact, we were so slow that the category 3 & 4 men caught us, so the commissaire neutralised us for 10 minutes whilst they went past.  Our peloton took this opportunity to have a ‘group pee’ and refill our water bottles.

I was still keen to get another top 10 result and so I hovered around the front of the peloton and got into a few breaks, but nothing substantiated.  At the end of each lap, the peloton was strung out as we came into town for the sprint.  The course turned into a technical criterium course, weaving left and right through a number of streets.

Julia crashed heavily and bent her back derailleur of her Cervello on the 3^rd lap.  She decided against taking one of Pedro’s spare bike and pulled out of the tour, reducing our team to 3 riders.

I finished 11^th in the bunch sprint, while Laura Van Gilder (Trek) won the stage.  There was no change to my GC position.