Stage 2 – 10 May 2003 – 110km (69 miles) road race

Conditions: overcast, humid – 80F

Today’s road stage started at 8am and after finishing yesterday’s race at 6pm we didn’t get a lot of recovery time.  However, I woke up feeling fresh and ready for two hard stages.

The 110km road course started and finished in Fayetteville.  We headed 18km out of town on old highway 71 into a block headwind before turning left onto a 37km circuit.  We rode two laps of this circuit, which included 1,500ft of climbing per lap, and then returned to Fayetteville on highway 71 again.

Lynn Gaggioli (USA) Velo Bella attacked hard up the feed zone climb and 8 of us went with her.  A number of counter attacks caused our overall pace to slow down and shortly most of the peloton had weaved through the cars and were back on.

On the 2nd lap up this same climb, Gaggioli attacked again.  Amy Moore (USA) Saturn jumped on Susan Palmer-Komer (Can) Genesis Scuba / FFCC and together they got onto Gaggioli’s wheel by the top of the climb.  I was riding behind Joan and erroneously I grabbed a neutral water bottle just as Gaggioli was driving hard over the top.  Joan and I were only 40m off the back of the break but on a false flat and into headwind we weren’t able close the gap.  As the road descended I drove it hard but the 10sec gap was established and with 7 riders in our group initially happy to let TDS chase, the gap quickly opened up to 45 seconds.

Our group soon got organised and starting working well together.  I was annoyed at having missed the break because I felt great.  I realised now that it was more important to get across to Gaggioli’s wheel than take a feed.  That decision to grab a bottle effectively cost us the 3rd GC position.  Each time I pulled through in our chase group I was soft pedalling to avoid pulling a harder than anyone else.  The only fresh person in our group was Fleury, a Genesis rider who for the 2nd stage in a row was sitting on our group with her team-mate in the break.

At 5km to go I attacked up a climb but the chase group immediately closed the gap and sat on me.  I waited until 2km to go and then dropped off the back of our group to wind it up.  I attacked up the left side of the road as hard as I could.  I had a gap but hoped I could hold it for 2km.  The Genesis rider took off after me and the group caught me with 500m to go.  I jumped back in but had nothing left for the sprint.  I concentrated on holding a wheel as we came in to avoid any time gaps opening up and had to settle with 11th place.

My team-mate Emily finished just over 6mins down, while the other TDS riders, Shawn and Christine were 12mins and 19mins down, respectively.

1 Lynn Gaggioli (USA) Velo Bella                                                       3.11.40

2 Amy Moore (USA) Saturn

3 Susan Palmer-Komer (Can) Genesis Scuba / FFCC

11 Helen Kelly (Aus) TDS                                                                   2.17

12 Joan Wilson (USA) TDS