Today we won the Santa Rosa Criterium. What a cool race! Down town Santa Rosa, kind of technical course, nice prize list for women, and lots of people out cheering for us.

Of course, I really could not have won this race without Taitt’s help. She basically had the field in tears, with a strong wind and she was just attacking and driving breaks! By the time I finally attacked, luckily everybody was too tired after chasing Taitt to respond or they just didn’t want to stick their nose in the wind (which is understandable - it was really windy!) Plus I could afford to take risks because I knew if I was caught before the finish line, Taitt would be in the field ready to handle the sprint. It was a win-win situation. The minties did a great job being agressive and I hear that they had a full lead-out train going to the finish line. Laura Charameda, I think she is a previous Champion of the Universe or something similar, took the field sprint with Taitt crossing the line for 3rd.
Cat’s Hill was also a great team race with Taitt taking the ever-competitive Queen of the Mountain competition for the second year in a row! Courtenay Brown took 3rd place and I finished in 4th place! Not bad for a team with only three people in the race! Karen Brems won for about the 20th time. I think she started winning that race when she was still in elementary school or something! Anyway, she is one crafty bike racer and very difficult to beat on that course. Of course, big thanks to LGBRC for putting so much energy into making Cat’s Hill the race that it is, one of the gems of the NCNCA calendar.