88 Miles/4 Laps/22 miles per lap/8,700 Total Elevation Gain
Limited squad for this race of… Art Rand who had just returned from a bike touring adventure. Frank Spiteri which had just recovered from mountain biking injuries. Justion Rossi who is just always on fire. And me who is somehow always in a breakaway.
The plan was to get a win for Justin and the team.
After the first lap of easy riding there was a breakaway that rolled off the front. I bridged to with a helper. Everyone didn’t seem to want to work. Yury Yurchanka rolled off the front of the breakaway while the breakaway was gobbled up by the field.
On the second lap on one of the smaller rollers Justin crossed bars with another rider and went down. I stopped to see if I could help out but his derailleur was ripped off. So I took off in hopes to catch back onto the field and report back to my teammates.
Somewhere on the third lap a few pairs of riders were able to separate themselves from the field. Then Nate English and Evan Huffman attacked and no one followed. A few guys (including monster pull Frank and Art) organized at the front of field and started pulling on the super fast tail wind flat section to bring back the English/Huffman break. With me tail gunning and holding on for dear life.
With teammates bringing the gap down I was then able to solo kamikaze bridge across to the English/Huffman break. Now my teammates were able to just sit in and it was time for another breakaway for me. The breakaway wasn’t working together well with Huffman not really working because of his teammate up the road. But we managed to catch two riders and share more of the workload.
Up the last roller a few miles from the finish Huffman attacked and blew apart the breakaway. I followed English as we crawled back to Huffman. Once English realized that I was stuck on his wheel he started to soft pedal. I then attacked him and he crawled back to me. Then we were stuck in a soft pedal waiting game. I knew it was a head wind finish so I held off my next attack until we got onto the finishing straight. I through down whatever sprint I had left in me and was able to hold English off and almost brought back Huffman for 5th place.
Art through down a sprint but James Wingert got him by the line for 10th place and Frank pedaled in for 16th.
Limited squad for this race of… Art Rand who had just returned from a bike touring adventure. Frank Spiteri which had just recovered from mountain biking injuries. Justion Rossi who is just always on fire. And me who is somehow always in a breakaway.
The plan was to get a win for Justin and the team.
After the first lap of easy riding there was a breakaway that rolled off the front. I bridged to with a helper. Everyone didn’t seem to want to work. Yury Yurchanka rolled off the front of the breakaway while the breakaway was gobbled up by the field.
On the second lap on one of the smaller rollers Justin crossed bars with another rider and went down. I stopped to see if I could help out but his derailleur was ripped off. So I took off in hopes to catch back onto the field and report back to my teammates.
Somewhere on the third lap a few pairs of riders were able to separate themselves from the field. Then Nate English and Evan Huffman attacked and no one followed. A few guys (including monster pull Frank and Art) organized at the front of field and started pulling on the super fast tail wind flat section to bring back the English/Huffman break. With me tail gunning and holding on for dear life.
With teammates bringing the gap down I was then able to solo kamikaze bridge across to the English/Huffman break. Now my teammates were able to just sit in and it was time for another breakaway for me. The breakaway wasn’t working together well with Huffman not really working because of his teammate up the road. But we managed to catch two riders and share more of the workload.
Up the last roller a few miles from the finish Huffman attacked and blew apart the breakaway. I followed English as we crawled back to Huffman. Once English realized that I was stuck on his wheel he started to soft pedal. I then attacked him and he crawled back to me. Then we were stuck in a soft pedal waiting game. I knew it was a head wind finish so I held off my next attack until we got onto the finishing straight. I through down whatever sprint I had left in me and was able to hold English off and almost brought back Huffman for 5th place.
Art through down a sprint but James Wingert got him by the line for 10th place and Frank pedaled in for 16th.
Author and team member KEITH HILLIER can be found on Twitter @ keithhillier, breaking records on STRAVA and racing via USA Cycling license #276108.
Read all 7 Blog Posts by Keith Hillier
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