Well, what can I say about this race? Lots of RAIN… I’ve never seen so much rain in all my life! How unlucky we were to be in the beautiful country of El Salvador during hurricane Stan. Our race was bombarded with natural disasters. Not only did we have torrential rain, but we encountered a volcano eruption that forced a re-route of our first stage.

I want to say a big THANK YOU to the HealthCO company for sponsoring our team for the event. The people at HealthCo really bent over backwards to provide for us while we were in El Salvador. I never had to worry about a thing! My bike, food, and everything I could possibly need during a race was taken care of with no questions asked. I had a great time racing with all my teammates. I wish them the best of luck at races in the future!

I must say that one of the things I like most about international races are the language barriers. Rather, they shouldn’t be barriers, but they are to me because I don’t speak anything fluently except for English. I really love language, and it amazes me when I hear another language spoken so effortlessly. Living in Germany has made me want to learn to speak German more than anything. I can speak some German, “ein bisschen Deutsch”– enough to carry on a small conversation and order food– but I hardly consider myself fluent. I came away from this race with a new resilience to learn another language fluently… first German, then I would love to be able to speak Italian and Spanish. Those would be useful languages to know when racing in Europe.

I had a great time hanging out with all the American gals there on the Wines of Washington team.

Last, but not least, I want to thank Ruben for doing such a great job at promoting and directing a race in El Salvador. He had to deal with all kinds of punches during the week of the race, and I must say he came up with a solution to all of them in little or no time at all!

I encourage anyone who races to go to El Salvador and compete in the 2006 edition of the Vuelta Cyclista El Salvador!