A couple weeks ago, I went to Charlotte for the Crossroads Cycling classic, a 
series of 5 crits over 5 days around Metro Charlotte, NC. 

Cabarrus Creamery Crit 
Date: 7-26-2003 
Place: Concord, NC 
Speed: 19.3 mph 
Distance: 13.2 miles 
Time: 41 minutes 

Charlotte South End Crit 
Date: 7-27-2003 
Place: Charlotte, NC 
Distance: 12.2 miles 
Speed: 18.2 mph 
Time: 40 minutes 

Donna (C4) and I had a great time at the crits in Charlotte. The attendance was pretty good. There were 26 women in our race (combined with the 4's) on Saturday. The course was so much fun! It was .5 miles around downtown Concord, a suburb of Charlotte. I think it is my new favorite crit course. It was tight and fairly technical because of the cobblestone walkways on the corners. The race was really fast! A bunch of us got dropped after about 10 minutes when Candice Blickem from Genesis attacked and went on to lap the field. The group that got dropped hung together most of the race until it 
started to rain with about 8 laps to go. I pulled ahead of the other women, so that if someone went down on the paint, I wouldn't go down too. I wound up 12th in the 1/2/3's, just outside of my goal of Top 10. 

Sunday's course was in downtown Charlotte near the Carolina Panther's stadium in what could be described as a very transitional area of town. Maybe it was good that the official parking was in a Catholic church parking lot. There was 
a really steep hill on the first turn, and the rest of the approx. 1 mile course was slightly flat to downhill. One of the Fuji girls went off the front and shattered the field on the first corner (and the big hill) of the first lap. My legs were not working very well, and I got dropped. After the breakaway was established, the field slowed down. I hopped back in a and hung 
with them til the finish. I was 14th out of about 16-17. My legs don't race well several days in a row.