Anna Milkowski is a member of Team Advil-Chapstick. This diary entry was completed a few hours after she won the 2008 Tour of the Battenkill Valley in New York — Editor

Redlands exists as a haze — a temporary exchange of lobster gloves and neoprene flippers for sunscreen and swimming pools — then a quick return to winter. The experience hinted I had survived this challenging winter of indoor riding and even a yard-sale crash on black ice, but the season began for real today with the Battenkill Roubaix in Salem, New York.

It's not quite Belgian cobbles and it's the cultural opposite of the Laguna Seca racetrack, but it’s fantastic. Battenkill Roubaix is one gorgeous loop through rural upstate New York, featuring tons of up and down, huge community support, equal prize money for men and women, a covered bridge, and several much-hyped steep dirt climbs and descents.

In just three years it has become what the promoter claims is the biggest single-day bike race in the country, drawing crowds from New York and Boston who make a weekend of hilly rural riding and promising the Canadian and Burlington racers their shortest drives of the season. It features a pasta dinner, pancake breakfast, and maybe even host housing in a mansion. The women's cat 3/4 field even filled up — more than two weeks before the race day!

Last year we had snow; this year it was close to 80 degrees. I was still optimistic we could make it epic. I was joined by my two of my Advil-Chapstick teammates in a tough regional field.

The race started calmly, with riders catching up with friends after the long winter. I led the first dirt climb to pick my line and potentially wear out some legs … and because as a cyclocross racer I revel in the dirt.

After the hill, we noodled for a while. In regional racing, in addition to fighting off my general tendency toward impulsivity, I must also fight the urge to race to make the race interesting, to ensure the women’s race isn’t negative and slow, making us a big pain for promoters and officials.

But nobody lets me go in suicide breaks in regional races anymore, no matter how ill-advised, so I had to be patient. My teammate Elisa wisely reminded me “race hard when the race is hard.”

After a while there was some action spurred by my teammate Reem and others that resulted in Canadian cyclocrosser Natasha Elliot and Kenda’s Andrea Myers getting a solid gap on a windy flat section. Elisa and a rider from the other strong team in the race, the Northeast Bike Club, bridged up. With the teams represented and considerable horsepower, the break seemed like it would stick, but instead the field came back together. I was starting to get worried the race wouldn’t be hard enough to be selective and we would end up with a big field sprint. I put in a few attacks but they didn’t do much.

The opportunity lay in the big dirt hills starting around mile 30. I rode a hard tempo, trying to force a selection and also as a defensive strategy to ward off attacks from riders who actually enjoy pace changes on climbs. I was quite pleased with my 34-26 gearing that allowed me to spin comfortably up the rubble. (I highly recommend the 34-50 11-26 combination, especially for the standing-averse climber). When I looked around at the top, there were just three of us, Kathleen Billington, Anna McLoon (a newcomer to bike racing with an enormous engine from cross-country ski racing), and me.

We got a quick rotation going to establish the gap as we passed through a wide-open valley of farmland. We were going at a comfortable pace and at this point the race was about working hard but not harder than anyone else, eating and drinking, and trying to figure out how I could win. I didn’t especially want to sprint against either of these women — last year’s sprint defeat still a sore spot! In the second feed zone I got something dark. I was disappointed given my minimal enthusiasm for artificial grape soda, only to learn it was ice-cold Coke!

I drove it into the final dirt section with 10 miles to go, visibility limited by the plumes of dust from the pace car. We navigated past a bucking horse. The section was long with some large rocks and a definite best line of hard-pack dirt, sand and rocks on either side. I think this is where Anna flatted.

The road quality seemed to be getting worse and worse and we were now riding into the dropped stragglers from one of the men’s fields. To pass a few men, I steered into a section that turned out to be a sand trap, and almost had to join some of the riders walking up the hill. The sand caused Kathleen to bobble and I had a gap — just like how things play out in cyclocross. This was the race, now or never! I went as fast as I could up that hill, knowing that if I made it to the top with a gap I could probably keep it on the flats into the finish. I descended fast and then it was just a game of intermediate markers, this many mph to this sign, etc.

I won a stuffed cow and a cowbell at a fantastic grass-roots race with teammates and among friends near my hometown. My priorities lie elsewhere and the stars are competing today in California and Europe, but this is a great way to kick off the East Coast season. And just imagine how truly epic this Battenkill Roubaix could be with a top-notch national level field. Other races might have more Cs and Is attached to their names, but pencil in the Battenkill Roubaix for 2009!