Just keep spinning: Breakthrough

So this season has definitely started off rough as some may say, between sickness, and injuries I just can't get a break! I recently had a wreck and messed up my elbow pretty bad, I've been in a splint and icing my elbow whenever I can. April was actually a pretty good month other than my little spill, lots of good milage and racing with some good company!! I had one of my biggest races, Joe Martin Stage Race. It was a two day stage race with three races, time trail and road race on Saturday and criterium on Sunday. The time trail is a pretty challenging course, 2.5 miles with a 6.8% grade, after the time trail I was sitting 21st out of 34... I wasn't to happy with my time but I still had two more races to move up. A short 3 hours after my TT I was off in my 40 mile road race, as most of you know Joe Martin is known for its hills, luckily I only had one lap. After the first hill you could tell who the climbers were, surprisingly that day I was a climber. The field totally blew up, and I was in the lead group for a while. I ended up getting dropped after an attack and got swept up into the chase group. I won the sprint of my group putting me in 8th place for the road race and 13th in GC, jumping up 8 places! I was 3 seconds out of the top 10, I had to make that up in my 20 minute criterium that had a pretty hurtful hill in it. My race began at 7:30am, you could tell everyone was a little sore after yesterdays grueling road race. The field split pretty quickly, I was in the lead group with about 13 riders. It was probably one of the most painful races I have done so far but I kept in the lead group and ended up 8th in the crit also. After starting in 21st I jumped up to 10th overall in GC which was my goal! Thankfully I had my amazing boyfriend at the race with me to keep me from losing my mind, I wouldn't have gotten though the weekend without him! I was super happy with the way I raced, there was an amazing field with some tough competition out there which was good!! Joe Martin Stage Race was definitely a turning point in my season, I couldn't be any happier with my results considering I was racing on a bum elbow, but there were no excuses in this race!! I'm super excited for these next few months, all my big races that I have been training for are coming up sooner than I had thought!! I'm ready to step on the podium here real soon!