San Dimas

San Dimas Stage Race = Paincave
Gotta love it

Stage 1:
Hillclimb TT, well my climbing has gotten much better and I placed a solid 23rd-54 seconds off the leader- with a time of 15:09, which is 2.5 minutes better than my time last year! I can't really complain about that, but it sure did hurt. The Viper beasted and finished 2nd!

Stage 2:
The road race was a 7mile circuit with one hard climb and another on the back side that wasn't as bad. We did 8 laps of the course and on laps 3,5,7 there were sprint points for the green jersey and time. I tried to go for those since I wasn't too far out of the top 15, but I couldn't get up to the front in time for them because of the climb. On laps 2,4,6,8 there were KOM sprints on the harder climb just about 2miles from the finish. Those laps were generally super fast and painful!

As we were coming into the climb for the second to last time Chuckleberry came up to me and gave me some encouraging words because he noticed that I was in the cave. Thanks mate. On the final lap I decided to sack-up and give it all I had over the climb to stay with the top 20-30 over the top. I was about 30th or so over the top and after the decent there was a bunch of about 20 and then the rest of the guys in front of me were single file. I moved up as best I could on the protected side so as to not lose too much valuable energy. With about 1k to go the field sat up because no one wanted to come around Sean McBride of Lombardi, who had been pulling. Since I was coming from the back I had more speed than those at the front and decided to launch.
I heard Sean yelling at everyone "GET ON THAT! COVER THAT! SOMEBODY GET THAT!".
After I launched my first goal was to catch Evan Pickett who was dangling off the front from the top of the climb. As I caught him I went straight through him and looked up to see that the finish was still REALLY far!!! I gave a quick glance back and thought that I may have a chance in holding everyone off. Well I did, and it was an epic win! Tyler Brandt was 3rd and Julian Martinez got 4th. (The top 5 was all U25 guys).
They gave me a 3second time gap on the field, a 20second time bonus, and 25 points for the green jersey!

Here is a clip of the RR finish that my dad filmed.

RR Podium:



Stage 3:
I started the final crit in the green jersey and 6th on GC. I was feeling pretty good going into this stage and was going to try for the intermediate sprint points and the final sprint to see if I could move up any more places on GC.
The first time the bell rang Chuckleberry led me out perfectly for the dub... but it wasn't a time bonus sprint, but I got a sweet arm warmer/ leg warmer prime. Damn man! To add to the frustration they rang the bell for a "Hot Spot Sprint" (Time bonus and green jersey points) right as I crossed the line. I tried to stay up there for it, but I was too blown to sprint for it.
The second time bonus I got 4th (Just out of the points) and crashed soon after because I was being an idiot coming into turn 1. Accidents happen.
I got back in and soon after that it was 4 to go! Still a little sore and shook up from the crash I told Greg and Charlie to go for the stage, but none of us could get up there.
We all finished with the group and I ended up dropping a spot on GC and finished 7th. Still an amazing result for me!
Mike Margraf from Safeway rode a very smart race this weekend and gathered up enough time bonuses to edge out the win in the overall by hundredths of a second, the U25 competition, and the Green jersey. Pickett took home the polka-dots for KOM.

Pre crit:







Post Crit: (Note: Paul Mach is in the background! He is a sneaky one)