This was the first year I have ever put a schedule together. Channeling my skills as a former banker, I made a beautiful Microsoft Excel file with dates, locations, plans, and details, and I even added in some fancy hot key formulas.

I shared my masterpiece with family and friends and I was ready to tackle my 2013 season with precision and detail. All was going well

until I literally landed on my face in Italy during a race [Classica Citta di Padova]. My beautiful Excel file went flying out the window as quickly as a few of my teeth had broken off, and I quickly learned that

cycling, like life, cannot always be planned.

To embrace a classic cliché, this past month I was given a few lemons — but thanks to my team and amazing support network I have learned how to turn them into sweet and yummy lemonade.

One of the biggest changes in my life since I became a cyclist was addressing the amount of help I needed. In the beginning, I found myself resisting, but I quickly learned if there was any way I was going to succeed in this sport, I needed help. That help has come in all forms: a ride from the airport, a place to stay, being taught how to corner and descend, someone to answer my plethora of questions, someone who helps you laugh after that bad day on the bike, and in so many more ways.

Crashing hard last month multiplied the amount of help I needed;

sometimes you don’t realize how lucky and loved you are until something bad happens. I am grateful for everyone who has helped me this past month — it made my recovery as smooth as possible. I now feel rejuvenated and ready to be back on the bike and I have even started to think that my scars and broken teeth are cool.

Feeling rested, happy, and with a bigger smile than before (albeit a bit different looking), I ventured off to the Czech Republic on Tuesday to meet my Specialized-lululemon teammates for the start the Gracia Orlova stage race. My teammates have been amazing this spring; we had a bad string of crashes with myself, Trixi Worrack and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg all hitting the tarmac hard. The rest of the team has been forced to pile quite a lot on their plates. They have been amazing to watch from afar and I am thrilled and honored to be lining up next to them again!

Thursday was the first road stage and I would be lying to say I wasn’t nervous to start racing again. But after being sidelined for a month my hunger and love for bike racing has grown even stronger. When I was struggling in the bunch, I just tried to flood my mind with happy thoughts. I thought about drinking a coffee with my mom and dad in Cape Cod or the beautiful Tuscan view I had last week while staying with Connie and Davis Phinney.

I am lucky to have teammates that are patient and supportive and

quick to let me jump on their wheels and help me through the peloton.

This spring was not what my Excel file had planned, but I feel lucky to be back on my bike, back to racing and back to smiling, thanks to so much help and support.

For a bike racer, or well at least for me, I find the month of the February to be the most challenging. As you get closer to the racing, the thoughts, worries and doubts start to creep in, did I train correctly, am I fit, can I still go fast, all those wonderful neurosis and more.

I have titled it February Anxiety and thank goodness today is the beginning of March and February Anxiety is now a thing of the past. Yesterday, relishing in the beautiful weather of Merced, CA, the team raced brilliantly and we ended the day with Tayler in yellow.

After attending an inspiring dinner last night, with Davis Phinney as the keynote speaker (he spoke about the importance of women’s cycling and even went as far to donate to the women’s prize purse for Merced, a true class act!!), we all woke up ready to endure the pain and suffering in the race against the clock.

The Merco TT is a wonderful way to shake out the TT cobwebs from your legs, put to use all the practice and training from the winter and a great test of our super fast and spiffy aero equipment from  Specialized and HED, plus it is a great excuse to wear our killer red booties from Lexxi Sports.

Time trials never feel good, if they do, then you likely need to go faster. At the end of the day, we still have the yellow jersey, enjoyed some yummy ally bars and merced burritos. Thank goodness for March, as I write this, I am lying on my bed, comfortably back into the routine of a competing bike racer.

Constant sideway winds, torrential cold rain, 1000 exceedingly tall women all fighting me for position 999, a million tricky corners, roads too small for cars, road furniture jumping out at me left and right, the sight of the 999 tall women stretched out in front of me and the winning break disappearing into the cold midst, me adding as much value to the team’s performance as a rain jacket on a sunny day …this horrifying vision used to pop into my brain when I thought of racing in Holland. It is true, I used to suffer from Dutch Anxiety.

Thank goodness I have spent a lot of time working on differentiating “anxiety” vs. “fear” and I decided 2012 would be the perfect year to overcome my Dutch Anxiety. What a better place than the Brain Wash Tour (formerly known as the Holland Ladies Tour), 6 days of racing in Holland, 5 road stages and 1 team time trial. For all of those readers who are still stuck on the name, Brain Wash, it is a hair salon, not some form of Dutch torture, phew.

The big goal of the tour was the TTT, it was the last chance before Worlds to test out our TTTing skills in a race setting. For me it was 34 kilometers of pure torture to my legs, yet there is nothing more satisfying than crossing the finish line with your teammates, who all suffered and raced their hearts out as well and then learning you got the win. Cycling is a team sport, yet only one person gets to stand on the top step of the podium, which makes a TTT win even more special. The following days consisted of great racing, with Trixi and Charlotte being in the leader’s jersey and Ina taking another dominating stage win.
Racing specifics aside, I learned to not only tolerate Dutch racing but I actually found it quite enjoyable. It was hard (yet in my opinion if a bike race isn’t hard, then I should try racing harder!) but there was something sort of beautiful about racing in this flat country (well flat except for where we were racing today, hello roller coaster roads, please see my Strava file to fully comprehend http://app.strava.com/rides/21391918). Perhaps it was the belly-laugh inducing conversations I enjoyed with my teammates, or that after 3 years of racing together, I decided to request the friendship of Ina Yoko Teutenberg (that is via Facebook) and she accepted!, or maybe it was my Dutch teammate Eleanore Van Dijk (who is quite a legend in this country) turning to me today and saying “who would have thought you would have done this well in a Dutch race,”  because as I currently lie on my bed writing this blog, the vision of flowers, smiles, world peace and happy babies pop into my mind when I think of Dutch racing.