After a fairly lengthy drive (two days actually), I settled in nicely at the Courtyard Marriott in Grand Rapids courtesy of the Marriott Rewards points accumulated by Mum and Dad McGuire. The hotel was lovely and the race course was literally 3 blocks away, so I was feeling very pleased with myself, especially once teammate extraordinaire, Nicole Freedman, and we focused on some serious sleeping in preparation for the big crit Saturday afternoon.
The race was perhaps a little small in the number of participants, but it was certainly not lacking in firepower. Tibco brought 4 strong riders and Cath Cheatley and Laura Van Gilder were ready to battle it out, so we had our work cut out for us. The race was aggressive and quite fun, I have to admit, even if I felt like I was hanging on for dear life across the two lengthy brick-cobbled sections.
I was able to make it into what turned out to be the winning move with 4 laps to go, only to be unable to hang onto a blistering attack by Cath Cheatley that only Jo Kiesanowski could stick on. That meant I was pretty toasted for the sprint, but it meant that Nicole was fresh and ready to go. She came up to see if I wanted a leadout and when I could barely hang on to her wheel, she knew to just go for it. She jumped with half a lap to go and had a huge gap going into the last turn. Unfortunately, Laura Van Gilder was charging hard and was able to catch her at the line, but we were very pleased with 4th place in such a classy field.
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