Last Day at Nats

The sun came out again for the last day of Nationals. I have to admit, that snow stuff is sort of pretty.

But treacherous. Overnight freeze changed the muddy ruts to dangerous slippery concrete swaths. Crazy Miss Mary actually raced on them. She’s much more woman than I am. I ached just getting up that early. After her race, her first question was, “Did you get a picture of me racing in the snow?” Yes, my funny heroine, I did.

The sun melted the course to a thick crunchy mud by the time the elite women went. We rarely face mud in Nor Cal races, let alone this weird part ice, part rut, part slimy mud mud. I don’t think I even saw this mud on Dave’s index.

Several crashes in the slushy goop took out Melodie and Christine. Erin and Sami soldiered on, and I swear I think Erin was having a good ol time out there. Ann had an amazing race, finishing in 12th place in her first nationals appearance. And Barb battled as best she could for her best mud finish and a 6th place.

I, we, couldn’t be more proud of all of them.

That night, the entire team, support crew and host housing families got together for dinner. The restaurant had set up two seperate tables to accomodate our large group. We promptly annoyed the hell out of the waiter, by getting up and scrunching all the tables together. Alex made speeches, Barb ate two meals, we all drank too much wine. Good stuff.

But, the night was not over. We had one last bella mission to accomplish. And we GOT that party started.

Love this team.

Cyclingnews results – B Women
Cyclingnews results – Elite Women
Nationals Gallery
The Pics you really wanna see

This fabulous post was written by one of our awesome bella volunteers ~ Sabine is the cofounder of Velo Bella and if you like this report, you can thank her with brownies and beer.