2009 Blogs
Here is Gina's report:
"I write this as I recover from my pollo horny that I had at our team dinner tonight. A nice chicken meal at a mexican restaurant. A few others also had horny chicken. We went out to dinner tonight because… WEBCOR won the stage today!
The day started out with a nice 5-mile leg-opener climb, well, leg-opener for some, and locker of pain for others. Not too much happened on the climb until near the top when yours truly, WEBCOR, was firmly represented in the straw that broke the camel's back break. Super leader Katheryn and Alexis were amongst the 15 women whose legs and/or lungs didn't implode.
And so it was. A chase group of about 20 or so including Nikki, Amy, and me worked the descent and got within about 200m of the lead group when the next little hill came, which wasn't so little; so we lost them to about a minute and 30 seconds by after the rippin technical descent. Somewhere in between the two descents we see a struggling soldier up ahead; Rebecca's astounding climbing efforts yesterday on the final 7-mile climb battling with one of the best climbers in the world caught up to her a bit today and so she got stuck between the two groups and waited for our group.
The caveat in the whole chase group was the 3rd place rider on GC was with us, meaning that the two other major player teams in the chase group, Colavita and Value Act, DIDN'T want to catch the lead group because that would put their team GC riders higher on team GC and onto a podium position. So, yep you got it, WEBCOR and a few other random riders at times were the ones to chase. With stellar efforts from everybody, we caught the lead group and the game was on, or the bar was open for business (as Dave asked in the radio at about 10 miles to go! "Gina, is the bar open for business, i.e., ready to sprint.?" I said "the bar is open and has an open tab," others said it was happy hour and ladies night. You see race radios are helpful!)
Well before this happened, a ValueAct girl, Nicole Evan, managed to get away after Webcor was aggressive with attacks. She got about 2 minute 50 seconds at one point. But was this enough to stop WEBCOR from a sprint finish and possible stage win? NO. WEBCOR AGAIN went to the front, this time with help from Colavita and Kristen Armstrong to chase her back. We caught her at about 1 mile to go (I say WE, but I was actually in the pack saving the sprinting trunks), so by the time WEBCOR caught Nicole, their trunks were done in and needed watering. Kristen Armsrong came up to me and said that she was going to help us in the lead out!!! I said, ok, you know how this goes: it is a strong cross headwind, just gutter it and I will be there. Sure enough, going into the right hand turn at 1 mile to go, Kristen was there, WEBCOR was up there manning near the front, and I jumped on Kristen's wheel. She went into TT mode, and, in the cross winds anybody who wasn't in the top five was going to suffer! I tucked in behind her and launched my sprint at about 200m to go on a slightly uphill grade. It was a bit early but the time was then. I kicked it really hard and made a pretty good gap coming across the finish line with time to think about the victory salut!!! (editors note: I forgot to zip up my jersey).
Once again, WEBCOR showed their strength and most of all their dedication to TEAMWORK. Great job everybody."