Philly Heat

We have been in Philly for a few days now... and let me tell you it started off HOT!
Not hot as in fast, or hot as in we are hot, but hot as in heat hot hot. The first two days we were here I was literally trying to plan ways to escape the heat. The house we are staying in is awesome, based on top of the Manayunk wall that we will race up 4 times in a few days time (its fair to say we will know this hill like the back of our hands come race day :) ), but although the house is super cool, the one and only thing is, it unfortunately lacks is air con. Yesterday in fact it was so hot even using my computer was a no go as it made me even hotter. All we could do was vege out in the lounge trying to get some cool air from the ceiling fan that was doing an awesome job of pushing the warm air around.
So yesterday we decided to go the movies to escape the heat for a few hours and see the Avengers. The Avengers was good...but not quite as good as the lovely 2.5 hours of air con we got! Thankfully today (and for the rest of the week fingers crossed) the temp is normal, with none of the 99% humidity stuff that has been hanging.
We are all rearing to go for race day on sunday, I can't wait!
Watch this space....
In the mean time some photos:

Rocky

Making friends with friendly Philly the Locals...

It was sooo beautiful training in Connecticut

Somerville Crit, where we all raced great, and through it down as a team and super teamie Ruth Winder took the win :)

Kate :)

Tour De grove and UCI 1.1 Cycliste Gatineau GP, Canada

And so the racing begins! First up was tour de grove.

We flew out of san fran at 7am and arrived in St. Louis at 5pm…..just a quick weekend visit for some ice cream custard…. And a little bit of racing (3 crits in a series called tour de grove)

The first crit was a night twilight race, which meant we raced in the dark. I love racing in the dark, it’s so much fun! The crowds are always awesome at night, especially when you race on a Friday night in down town St. Louis.

Friday night went well, VK was super strong and the girls were super aggressive which strung the race out and allowed for me to finish 3^rd .

On Saturday the circuit was super long for a crit, which made for no break to be able to stick, we tried and tried to get away but nothing worked, it ended up being a bunch sprint, and Emily got 4^th.

On Sunday the course was cool, had a few little hills in it. We raced super well together and Jen managed to escape with 3 laps to go and went solo and took the W! Super stoked! We celebrated in style with some frozen custard that is aparently world famous in St. Louis!

Up next we were on the plane on route to NY!!

We are spending a few weeks staying in Connecticut with our teammate Kathleen Billington and her husband Greg Wolfe.

This past weekend we made the 8 hour drive to Gatineau, Canada for the Cycliste Gatineau GP, a UCI 1.1 race, which drew many of the best women in the world to the start line.  We did 13 laps (137km) of a technical undulating circuit, it was HOT and had a great spectator turn out!

Ruth, Kathleen, Bridie, Emily, Myself and Jazzy.

I felt awesome and all the VK girls rode great, I ended up in 6^th Behind Ina Teutenberg so was pretty happy with that! Unfortunately Em crashed on the last corner, but is ok

Next up is Philly!

Hopefully we will get to visit NYC tomorrow….fingers crossed the rain stays away!