I went to the Joe Martin Stage Race over the weekend, and the great news is that my teammate Luke was fourth overall in the cat 3 General Classification. Which is AWESOME. He got in a breakaway in the road race, came in fourth and held that position over the rest of the pack in the time trial and criterium. Congratulations, Luke! You worked so hard and you deserve it.

As for me, Joe Martin kicked my ass. Not taking care of myself in Italy, the exhausting jet lag, and being sick with a cold added up to way less than 100%. But even if I had been on form, I would have been outclassed by some of the talent there.

Our RR started about a mile from some seriously long climbs -- where the girls who could shatter the field, did. I gathered a bunch of other stragglers and organized a rotating paceline. [it took lots of shouting, heh] You can really get moving that way! I never quite realized. There were about 5 of us taking hard pulls the entire time - including a tough 13 year old junior girl, fighting her junior gears each time her turn at the front came - and another 5 or so pulling through occasionally. It took us 20 miles, but we caught the first chase group, who were very surprised to see us. [I'm very proud of getting that paceline up and running]. Then I was sitting in, resting and trying to eat [I didn't have enough food, dammit. Would it have killed me to put a clif bar in my pocket?]. I saw a move go, and I was right on it . . . until halfway up the long climb when my legs stopped working. I could not make them go as fast as I needed to and I fell off the back. It was so frustrating! I kept them in sight, but lost a minute. Came in 22. Still, that paceline improved my time immeasurably -- along with the times of about 7 other racers.

I could not recover for the [punishing, uphill] TT. We ate & napped, but I felt sick and weak. I rode at recovery pace for 40 minutes, which helped [although nothing I ate went down well], and then did a proper warmup. However, my time sucked and I came in 28th.

Still felt low-energy Sunday morning. I tried to do a set of 3-2-3 intervals to warm up, but could only manage 1-1-1's. Not a good sign. The crit course was fun -- lots of turns and hills -- but I was shelled after the first lap, and spent the rest of the race catching the person ahead of me, working with them and then riding away from them. I felt stronger as the race went on and I made up 5 or 6 places for 25th . . . as if it mattered. OK, not giving up matters.

So I ended up 24th of 33 in the GC. And totally wrung out. But it was SUPER fun AND I get do-overs -- I plan to do a lot of hard work, come back next year and make the top 10.