Amanda Miller

Fitchburg Road Race (Stage 3)

Today’s stage was a 105km road race. It was 6 laps of an 18km loop. We started and finished in different places. The start was downhill, and the rest of the lap was essentially all downhill until the last 2km climb up to the finish. The sun was out, and it was a beautiful day minus the wind. Things were relatively calm throughout the race. We (LipSmacker) tried to be aggressive and threw down some attacks to make other teams work. Coming into today’s stage, our rider Evelyn Stevens was 1st place by 1 second over Team Type 1’s Alison Powers. So we definitely had our work cut out for us. None of the breaks were sticking due to the nature of the course and the wind. With 2 laps to go, Toni got off the front with 3 other riders. This group quickly gained quite a bit of time on us. At one point, they had 2 minutes. Sweet! There was a bit of mis-communication that happened about who was in the break. The lead rider in the break was 1:22 down in G.C. At the top of the climb on the last lap, 8 riders put a gap on the rest of the field. By this point, the field wasn’t any bigger than 40 riders. The 8 rider group included some key G.C. riders, including Evelyn. She was the only LipSmacker rider though, so Jessica, Anne, and I pushed the pace to close the gap. Anne was 10 seconds down on 1st place G.C. coming into today’s stage. Once we finally made contact, we realized the group had caught 3 of the 4 riders from the break. Andrea Dvorak of Colavita was still up the road. She was the rider 1:22 back from the lead in G.C. So Jessica, Toni, and I went to the front and drilled it to decrease the gap. Once we hit the final 2km to the finish, we could see the rider up the road. I had started to fade a ways before the 2km sign. Fortunately, Anne and Evelyn were still in the group. I lost contact once we hit the climb and just rode in. Evelyn pulled off 2nd place!! Andrea Dvorak won the stage. Not sure of the final time gap that she had on the field though. Anne place in the top 10 as well. I haven’t seen final results yet. But Evelyn is still in the yellow jersey, and won a 5 second time bonus for 2nd place in the stage. Sweet!! This has been an awesome race for us as a team. It’s really cool to be able to do all this team work and see results. Tomorrow is a 25mile criterium, roughly an hour long. More to come afterwards!! Thanks for reading! Bonne nuit!
-A