Tour of Holland
Day 6: 79km, 1 sprint and 16km Time Trial, no sprints
September 10, 1999

We raced twice today. The first was another flat road stage with one sprint. Because it was a double day the first race started earlier than we have been (10:30) and, like the other mornings this week, it was overcast and foggy. Warming up, some of us wore arm and leg warmers. For the race we took them off. Rumor had it that Petra's team, along with the Dutch national riders were going to go all out from the start. They did pretty much and Leontin Van Morsel stuck on them every time. I reached my limit today dealing with the rude, pushy, dangerously, needlessly aggressive riders here and surfed towards the back of the pack. In the end, it was a pack sprint again. The pack is down to 72 riders now, so seemingly quite small. Petra won again.

At 5pm started the time trial. I was 24th going into today's two races and started at 6:05. The course was, not surprisingly, flat with lots of turns on cobbles and narrow streets. The key would be going fast on the flats and staying focused for the cornering. By this time in the stage race, I am definitely tired and felt that in my legs warming up on the course. In the race, I felt smooth with a good cadence (I've been working on cadence) even though I struggled a bit with the bike. Going through the finish, I had the fastest time. There were 24 riders to go. After everyone came through Leontin beat us all with a ridiculous time and I finished 4th, putting me in 5th overall for the stage race.

1. Leontin Van Morsel 21:45
2. Judith Arndt 21:50
3. Suzanne Lungstrom (?) 22:17
4. EE 22:20

Then, I had a nice piece of apple pie and a big plate of fries for dinner. Tomorrow, we head to a real hotel for the World Cup. 186 riders are signed up! 186! WOW! Imagine that two years ago there wasn't even such a thing as a World Cup for women road riders. Apparently, the Swiss Tour and World Cup have tons of riders as well.