With the first race of the year in the books, I traveled home for a couple days before heading out to the west coast for the Tour of California.

This was my first race with Team TIBCO for the 2009 season, and it started off with a bang. We were greeted with colder temperatures and lots of rain. What happened to the lovely spring weather the Northern Californians were bragging about.

The crit course was pretty straight forward with 4 right turns, 2 long straightaways and lots of bot dot's that could be slick when wet. I knew positioning was going to be important. Little did we know that the rest of the peleton was thinking the same thing, and showed up to the start line 20 minutes before the official start.

Once the gun went off, I focused on staying top 5, followed a few attacks and before I knew it there was a separation in the group. The leaders never really got organized, but the rain was a motivating factor to keep the group small. When we first rolled off the front we were about 10 minutes in to the 1 hour race. I tried a few solo attempts, but was a marked rider by Team Columbia so I resigned to the fact it was going to be a sprint. I had my teammate Meredith Miller in the group with me and she did a great job setting it up for the finish. Coming into one lap to go she launched an attack. Columbia set up the chase behind, and I was right on the wheel. We caught Meredith with 1/2 lap to go and from there we were single file. The sprint was on coming out of the last corner. I never was able to come around Emilia Fahlin who took the win for Columbia, followed by me in 2nd and Rachel Lloyd from Proman for 3rd.

All in all it was an excellent race, and I was happy to see the legs were still there after all the crazy travel. It's going to be a fun season and it has only just begun!!

If anyone is interested in watching some video footage of the race click here.