I was so tired this morning I could hardly think straight and the bike yesterday took a lot out more out of me than I thought probably due to the fact that I have been up 2 nights in a row and only got 2 x 4 hours of sleep during the day. I am also not only physically but mentally exhausted as well. It has been a long 4 weeks!

This was my first real roadbike race ever and I was actually excited to get to bike in a group. Well that did not work out at all :(

Tail-Sidewind going out and Head-Sidewind going back!

No planned tactics possible at all as I lost the group during the first 200m as they just powered away and I was really uncomfortable with all the people around me at the start and did not go fast at all. Had my hands on the brakes a lot. Once I got going I caught quite some people again during the first 2km but the only bigger group (5 people) was biking quite a bit slower than me so I went and caught the guy in front of me and we worked together for the next 8km trying to catch 2 guys ahead of us which did not work. After 11K I looked behind me and saw that there were 3 guys about 200m behind us and we agreed to slow down and let them catch us to form a group of 5. I knew I needed to conserve some energy for the way back as I would most likely bike alone or in a group of 2 at the most. We biked 5 together for the last 3km before the turnaround point and then they went on as they did the long one and me and one guy turned around and the headwind hit right away. For about 1km we took turns in front but then he slowed down and I ended up biking the last 14km alone into the headwind. It was really tough and at some point I just slowed down and took it easy for a while as I knew I was long first in the women and there was no reason to kill myself one week before an important race!
Picked it up again with about 3km to go and kept the pace up towards the end.

Won the race by about 6 minutes to the 2nd woman and was 8th overall including the men.

My wrists were killing me towards the end as I am just not used to being up on the hood that much. I really missed my aerobars the entire time especially when I was alone against the wind. The whole body was tired as well as the position on the roadbike is quite different from the Argon and if I want to do the longer course at some point I need to bike on the roadbike a but more before!

The race organisation did great and they had good food and a million prices afterwards!

Ride my roadbike before and get some more sleep and rest!