Sneak Peak #2

Here's another sneak peak to a certain Denver newspaper's athlete diary entry.

(Yes, you are not dreaming, it is again your lucky day)

After four days of racing, one word can describe the Giro. That one word is surprise.

The 3 km prologue attracted a surprising amount of spectators. Racing in the US doesn’t seem to attract the hordes of fans that other sports do, so it was refreshing to see so many people excited about the race. I was happy with my performance. I gave everything I had and rode very strongly. However, after the race, I was a surprised and disappointed to learn my effort was only good for 16th place, 7 seconds slower than the leader.

The second stage brought a surprise to the entire race. The race was supposed to be 150km long. After 145 km of racing everyone thought we were racing for 3rd place as two girls had broken away from the field and it didn’t look like they were going to get caught. That’s why it came as a shock when we passed the 20 km to go sign. With the extra kilometers added to the race, the two riders were caught and the sprinters battled it out for the top of the podium.

The morning of the third stage brought the third surprise of the race. At 7:15am there was a loud pounding on the hotel room door. It was our team director waking us up for drug testing. He had received a call from the UCI (International Cycling Association) saying that 3 of us had blood testing in 10 minutes. We hurried, got dressed and went to the designated spot. Each of us had 2 small vials of blood taken for testing purposes. They tested our hematocrit and checked for any foreign substances. We later found out that we were lucky to sleep until 7:15, some teams got the call at 6:00 am.

Monday brought the decisive time trial up a 10 km climb. It was surprising how fast some of the girls went up the climb. I felt really strong, rode well, and am happy with how I did; though I was beaten by almost 4.5 minutes.

After a four hour drive to our hotel, the team is ready for the next 5 days of racing. And now instead of being on the receiving end of the surprises, we hope to create some surprises. So far in the racing, we have ridden very smartly and saved our energy as much as possible while the bigger teams have fought and ridden hard thus tiring out some of their riders. We’ll now be racing our bikes in the hopes of getting on the podium in one of the remaining 5 stages.