It was a really nice place to have the races and the people in the town are absolutely THRILLED to have all of the cyclists in their town for the weekend. Volunteers were out in droves, the cars on the road were very aware of cyclists and the locals LOVED our bright pink jerseys! We became famous almost immediately, even these clowns wanted their picture taken with the Sturdy Girl Cycling Team!
OK...so maybe we wanted our picture taken with them...but we did become quite famous! One guy even asked Dana and Sally for their autographs! :) I think it was the pink...very attractive! 
Here we are doing our best podium girl imitation...that's Sally, me, Naomi, and Dana. Behind us, you can see the start/finish line of our first race.
Now...for some interesting local sites in Altoona. One that really struck me was this:
Drive up window? It's not enough that they have an entire chain of stores dedicated to tobacco products, but a drive up window? The small amount of exercise that could be gained by WALKING into the store...GONE!
This is us in front of Hoss's, which is a restaurant. We joked the entire weekend about taking George there. Though we spent most meals at the apartment, eating REALLY well, we finally went to Hoss's on Saturday night, admittedly expecting the worst. It was GREAT! The food tasted like home cooked meals, and we all ate well in preparation for our crit on Sunday.
I guess I should also give out a bit of a race report:
Friday: Martinsburg Road Race, 20 miles, finishing time 51.10, average speed 22 mph
It was a great course. Rolling hills throughout the entire race with one longer, 2 mile climb between miles 10 and 12. The pack was BIG - over 40 women in the field - so the road was always blocked by the large group that managed to predominately stay together. The end of the race was very technical, with 7 tight turns before the 200 meter sprint to the finish. Not wanting to end up like the two girls who crashed in the 3rd of those turns, I stayed calm and settled, finishing 10th in my category. Happy to be done with day 1, I looked forward to the 6 mile climb that awaited us on day 2!
Saturday: Altoons Road Race, 20 miles, finishing time 59.26, average speed 21 mph
This was the big challenge day for me, as I am not really a climber. The course starts out with a few rolling hills leading up to the 3 mile mark. We started fast and I was concerned when we reached the bottom of the climb that my legs were not going to work well on the day. I stayed calm and the lactic acid soon spun itself out and my legs felt good. We had previewed the course on Thursday, so I knew what to look for. At the end of the 3rd mile of the climb, the grade got a bit steeper and I knew that this was where it would make or break me. I managed to start passing people at this point and when I hit the final 1 kilometer to the top of the climb, I had just enough to get me up and over the last 15% grade! Then, it was time to descend. I got a bit chickened out, despite feeling that I am a pretty good descender and actually lost contact with the group that I was with. I managed to time trial myself back to the group at the bottom of the climb and worked with 6 other girls to get to the finish. After a strong sprint to the finish, I found myself in 7th for the day, and 9th in the Overall Classification. I knew that I wanted to be top 10 in the "GC," so the crit on Sunday was going to be important....and hard!
Sunday: downtown Altoona Crit, 20 miles, finishing time 43:13, average speed 23.5
The course was great...lots of wide, sweeping turns, two chicanes (left turn right into a right turn) and a few sections of road that went uphill. The race, again, was FAST. According to the Toona results page, the fastest woman in our race averaged 27.99 mph, if that is true, we were going faster than the pro women and only 1 mph slower than the men! Not sure if that's accurate though. Anyway. It was fast and it hurt. Again, I managed to stay with the pack until a little mess happened at the end of the 2nd to last lap. When a group of riders in front of me had to slow down a lot in a corner to avoid another rider, the front of the group took off, and I lost 20 seconds on them in the final lap. I still managed to finish well and beat the other Cat 4s that were with me at the finish line to take 8th for the day. I got a great compliment afterward...one of the riders from a team in DC told me that I was a really strong sprinter and that she had been on my wheel and tried to get around me at the end, but couldn't. She jokingly called me Gert Steegmans, who beat his leadout man to the line in the Tour this year!
The GC:
In the general classification for the whole weekend, I ended up 8th in the Cat 4 group. I can't wait to do this challenge again next year as a Cat 3 racer. What a great weekend it was!
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