Indeed, the fireworks did ignite today!! Five miles into the race was the first sprint, and not long after that was the first QOM. This caused the peloton to shatter early on. Lauren De Crescenzo (Cinch) launched at the base of the first QOM, and Instafund, DNA, and EF-Education-Tibco scrambled after her. Lisa and Helena stuck with the GC group until the second QOM, but the effort was extreme. Afterward that, Lisa and Helena began to regroup with others until there was a solid group of 7. We made the descent, and the group gradually increased to about 15 as we meandered back to Fort Bayard. Lisa thought she was going to implode with 50 miles left in the stage, so Helena took the responsibility of rotating through pulls. Lisa recovered enough to grab bottles from the team car and brought them to Helena. Helena attacked the group with 20k to go and nearly got away, but was brought back at 5k. Not ready to give up, Helena then launched a sprint 500m from the line and ended up sprinting against one of the best women sprinters in the country at the moment (Maggie Coles-Lyster from DNA Pro Cycling Team). She ended up 15th overall in the UCI stage. We are so proud of her! Eleanor, Gabby, and Robin all had very tough work coming back to the car with fewer riders to work with and the feed zone not until 60 miles in. Annie unfortunately crashed on the descent, but was cleared by the local ER and is already looking forward to riding again.
Megan