Tour of Switzerland, Day 3: Stage 3
September 24, 1999, Embrach

After yesterday's climbing and exhaustion, I decided I would simply ride the 10km uphill TT. It's not my thing, I was tired, and I wanted to save something for the remaining road races. The course was totally all uphill with a few flatter sections. Nothing was super super steep and well felt just the same by kilometer 10. At the end of the day, Zabarova proved herself to be well-deserving of her yellow jersey by winning.

What has been the hardest aspect of this Swiss Tour is the travel. To the TT we drove 2.5 hours. For the event we left at 9am and returned to the hotel at 8pm -- all for a 30 minute time trial. It's too much this late in the year with a World Cup on Sunday and World Championships in less than two weeks. Each day has been like that. Many hours of travel each way.

We are staying in the same hotel so there's less packing up. This means little to me since our team is staying in a hotel run by nasty, arrogant people. They refused to let us use the phone because there is NO such thing as a calling card. They smoked continually, glared at us with hairy eyeballs, never once cleaned our rooms nor dumped the trash, and only after Maruska begged did we get clean towels. Without communication to you all in the outside world, I realised once again how important you are to my sanity. The travel is hard, the tensions often high, and personalities strong. Riding as badly as I am it was difficult not to have this communication. Thanks to everyone for your notes.

Day 4: Final Stage
September 25, Embrach

Finally we had no travel. The race started in Embrach. It was 7 laps on last year's World Cup course, which contained a relatively mild 3km climb. Tired, I failed to warm-up and get a good starting position. It was raining and I was petrified of crashing before Worlds. With no legs I couldn't make up for all the errors I had made and got dropped right off the bat. I finished 3 laps and went back to the hotel for a shower and nap.