Tour of Holland
Day 5: 84km, 1 sprint
September 9, 1999

The group split a bit today with the hills, although less than we all expected. The course was three laps of last year's World's TT course plus a section to get onto that loop and 1.5 short loops to the finish. Each of the TT loops included the Bemelburg and the Kaulberg (or some spelling like that). Each climb is about 2km long, not extremely steep, yet definitely small ring and definitely a climb. The short loop included the Kaulberg.

Attacks happened primarily at the top and after the Kaulberg (the steeper and longer of the two climbs). The Dutchies again were the instigators. Van Morsel, on the Farm Frites team, covered everything. Petra's team kept an eye on things too. Dede and I took part in the covering. (I am so frequently impressed by her aggressive riding.) Nothing got away. On the last time up the climb Miriam Melchers jumped at the top with VanMorsel on her wheel. Suzanne Lungstrum got on too. And I was just behind a Belgian, not able to jump onto the train taking off and surprised to be there. I chased them with the Belgian and then with Dede and Kim. I had hoped to get one of us across to the group of three. Dede hoped to keep Petra's loss to a minimum. At the end, Miriam won the three-up sprint and the field came in about 20 seconds back.

Going into today's race Allison (who dropped out after yesterday to prepare for Mt. Bike World's), Kim, Katie and I all had group time. Dede lost a minute or so one day. Kerry lost 9 minutes after being steered off course yesterday. Today, Kim, Dede and I finished with the group. Katie got caught behind a crash going towards the final climb and didn't catch back on. Kerry dropped off a bit earlier.