Mt. Hood by Kiwi Bear

Wow what a great tour. The team rode awesome and we had a great time. Carmen and Chris were fantastic at taking care of things, we were especially grateful for Chris’s help as he was racing too and was always there to take care of our bikes and help out. We stayed with Jennifer who was in charge of all the volunteers for the race. What an incredible lady. She came home one night after a long, hot day working in the feed zones and organising her volunteers and still had the energy to go for a run!

When not racing, we kept ourselves entertained by watching various Disney movies belonging to Jennifer’s daughters. Jump In and High School Musical were among the favourites. Unfortunately we ran out of time to watch the sing along version, Kat, maybe you can get a copy for the next race??

We started the 6 day tour with a 3mile prologue. It started with a short uphill, followed by a slight downhill and finished with a short climb. Not much to report here, rode out, raced, coughed up our lungs afterwards, rode home, cooked dinner and went to bed.

What can I say about stage 2? Well, it was a slow, long, hot, and kinda boring 84 miles (apart from the climb). Carmen had given us the talk earlier to prepare us for a potentially slow stage and to be patient as there was a lot of tough racing coming up. We did a few laps of a relatively flat circuit, with one climb each lap. The girls did a great job of looking after Felicia on the climb and she was able to take a controlling lead in the QOM competition.

Stage 3 was 66 miles and a lot more exciting. We did 3.5 laps of a circuit that was pretty much a long gradual climb on one side, and a long gradual descent on the other half. On the 2nd lap Carmen had a great attack which forced VAC (in yellow) to chase. This was followed by a perfectly timed attack by Kristin. There was some chasing for awhile, but no one was able to get up to her. Kristin rode amazingly and stayed out there on her own until just a few km to go on the final climb. As she was caught Kat attacked with Felicia on her wheel and they were able to get a gap with Kat taking the win and the yellow jersey! Awesome work.

Stage 4 was an 18.5 mile time trial. A tough course with a couple of climbs. Leah Goldstein had a superb ride and won the TT and took over the yellow jersey.

Our plan for Stage 5 (the mountain stage) was to make the race as hard as possible to force Leah to chase and hopefully get the yellow jersey back. To Leah’s credit she did an awesome job at covering our attacks. We made it hard from the first climb 8miles in. Kristin, Felicia and Leah got in a break and both had a great race with Felicia winning the stage solo, but not enough time to take the yellow.

The final stage was a downtown crit. Felicia tried her best to get away but Leah wasn’t letting her go anywhere. Kat got away and was joined by Katie Mactier with Kat taking the win! All in all, a great tour for Aaron’s!!