Players: Nick, Michael, Eric, Spencer, Aaron
Place: 11th (just out of the money)
The race started off fun. Nick and I on the front, chillin, relaxin, while Eric made an early break for a couple of laps. Overall, the first half of the race was fairly mellow. There were attacks, and like yesterday, at least one of us was in each of the moves. And, like yesterday, we rode like a real team, no watching and sitting around. Everyone was very active, getting in breaks, and chasing breaks down. We had a very talented field, including Tony Cruz, our own Sergio Hernandez, Antony (Moose) Galvan, Chepe (Mexican national tt champ), Thurlow Rogers, Chris DiMarci, and Sterling Magnell, just to name a few.
With about half an hour left in the race I found myself following a wheel into what turned out to be the big break of the day. All the names mentioned above (minus Thurlow and DiMarci) were in that break plus about 7-8 others. We had the horsepower and we were working well together, driving at over 30 mph for a good 15 minutes. Then Tony pulls through like a bullet, then Chepe takes over at an even higher speed, a gap opened up and Sergio pinned it to jump the gap. That's when I got popped. I know, I know, never get dropped from a break. It just so happens that I was making my way back up to the break but saw the peleton closing in about 10 seconds back. How they caught us and who was driving it, I have no idea. But the break was caught and I was able to relax for about 5 more minutes than the rest of the guys in the break, which helped me in the end.
After I came back into the peleton the guys did a great job of getting to the front and driving the peleton. I made a bad move with about 5 laps to go and spent the next 4 laps recovering because Amgen got on the front followed by the NOW boys. After 4 laps in the back, I put my head down and moved up to about 20th wheel in one lap. That lap just happened to be the last lap.
Coming up the outside I could see that the pace wasn't high enough through the last turn so I decided to stay outside, and it was a good thing too. Sure enough, there was a big crash and I was forced off the course, again, and got back on in time to see that almost the entire field was stuck behind the crash. The sprint for the line was really more like my legs just loading up and 11th was all I could muster up.
Unfortunately, Nick was involved in that crash. From the looks of it he dislocated his pinky and acquired some pretty good road rash. Hopefully right now his finger is back in place and hopefully he's probably drugged up. Wishing a speedy recovery to you Nick.
I must say, overall, we were a team to be worried about today. We looked and rode like a top notch team today. At one point, we had all five of us in line flying up the outside. Kind of reminded me of those big teams moving up to drive the peleton. It happened again while I was recovering and couldn't join the other four. But that's just two examples of how we were riding today. I couldn't be more proud of these guys today and it was a true pleasure riding with them.
Cheers,
Aaron
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