Well this week of racing has flown by. Today is the last stage or the Redlands Classic. The infamous sunset loop. It is a very hard circuit. Extremely fast with lots of tight corners at high speeds and climbs that are twisty and drawn out. I have heard that it is tough to finish this one with the lead group.
Our team plan changed dramatically after Stage 1: Oak Glen. We were aggressive early on that day hoping to have Cesar get to the top of the mountain first. Unfortunately, he was taken out in a bad crash breaking the scaphoid bone in his wrist and separating his shoulder. Our plan changed quickly as we were on the road during that race.
I was pretty tired as were the rest of us from attacking early on trying to get into moves that could produce a good result. Nothing went and by the time we hit the bigger climbs, I had burned a few matches. The icing on the cake was when I pulled a rookie move and tried to shift my bike into the small ring at the bottom of the 5 mile climb for the second KOM. Dropped the chain, and had to get off the bike and put it on. That was all she wrote! Evan Elkin my teammate dropped back to help me get on and we did get onto the back of the group, but guys sat up and the main field rolled away. I lost 18:00 minutes that day. DONE!
Yesterday was the crit. I actually felt really good in the criterium. I threw a few attacks myself and covered some moves. Tommy Nankervis got away in the break and ended up 4th in the sprint. Not a bad result.
Tomorrow it is back to the real world again of school. I am very burned out on the whole school thing and can't wait to be done. I enjoy school very much, but don't enjoy trying to juggle a full on racing and training schedule around it. Well we will see how the race goes today. Wish us luck, we will be going for the stage win today of course.
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