Altoona Stage Race
Stage 3, Altoona Road Race
July 27, 2005
Report by Christine Thorburn

This is one of the near 100-mile hilly stages in this race. We wanted to use our climbing strength to move up in individual and team GC – both goals were met!

The first 35 miles were rather slow and uneventful, but the terrain was always rolling so it wasn't a total leisurely ride. The first QOM came at 38 miles and just before that it started downpouring – the kind of rain that really hurts once you start going downhill at 50mph. The field split with Erinne Willock, Christine Thorburn, and Katheryn Curi in the front group, but there wasn't much motivation to keep this break off, so the field came back together before feedzone at mile 54. Around this point, Magalie Le Floch (Honey Stinger) attacked, probably through boredom. T-Mobile brought her back and her teammate countered her. She stayed away until just before the final turn to the real climb of the day up Blue Nob.

This climb is about 5km long and shallow for the first 2km and gradually gets steeper to the QOM mark. Then there are a painful 8km of rollers over the top before the fast, twisty descent and then another 15-20km of large rollers to the finish. Our plan was to set a fast tempo from the bottom with Betina Hold and Stefanie Graeter, and then send attacks by Felicia Greer and , and then have Erinne and Christine try to finish off the job to drop as many sprinter types as possible. With the finish so far from the top of the climb, we didn't expect to lose the climbers, but we wanted as good a chance at the 20sec, 15sec, and 10sec finishing bonuses for 1st through 3rd. Well, Ina of T-Mobile started the hard tempo for over 1km of false flat, so Betina was spared a bit (good because she's a little under the weather today). Stef then went to the front to pick up the tempo as it got steeper. Then Katheryn launched a great attack that made Kim Baldwin (T-Mobile) chase. Next Christine picked up the tempo driving, and Erinne attackek – to be covered by Kristin. After a bit a tempo, Christine attacked and Kristin couldn't keep the pace. By the top of the QOM it was just Genevieve and Lynne Bessette who battled for the points followed by Christine, Annette, Erinne, and Kim. Kristin was gapped so Erinne got us to start trading pulls to make sure she didn't get back on through the false flat. By the time we got to the real descent, the other 3 (not Kim, of course) started working well with us. We put time on Kristin to the finish.

At this point, Erinne and Christine had to figure out how to get the time bonuses. We waited until the end of the hard rollers before starting our attacks, with Christine launching at about 3km to go. She caught them off guard, so had a healthy gap that was eventually bridged by Genevieve, who worked with Christine. The chase was first by Kim and Annette, but Lynne tried to bridge too, which brought the rest up to Christine and Gen. Then Erinne launched, but this was expected at this point so her gap was brought back faster by Kim mostly. Christine got to the back and launched the finishing sprint just inside of 300m to hit the final left turn first and held off a chasing Annette and Genevieve, who took the other two time bonuses.

Now Christine has the yellow jersey by three seconds over Genevieve, and Annette and Kim are tied at 11 seconds down. Erinne is next 26seconds and Lynne at 29 seconds. Kristin rolled in with a French Honey Stinger rider 3:16 back. A group of about 35, including Katheryn, Felicia, and Stef finished another 30 seconds back. We also overtook team GC by 2:34 by having both Erinne and Christine in that first group.

Well, the next several days will be quite difficult, but we hope to prevail with another stage race win. Keep cheering us on!

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