Tour of Utah

Well what can I say, this race was a mixed bag. I had a mediocre prologue, partly because I spent the whole afternoon before the race taking care of team business, the stuff that a manager was supposed to do, but our composite team didn't actually have a manager so I had to do it. But at least we had a caravan car and a driver, and although he was pretty inexperienced, he figured it out pretty quickly. The first stage was pretty mellow until I flatted right at the base of the final 10km climb. So instead of starting the climb in the top 20, I started it at the very back of the caravan. I worked my way back up to the peleton but I was too gassed to make the front split when Sevilla and Mancebo attacked with 4km to go. I still made the second group and only lost 1 min to the main group which was ok considering the circumstances. The third group lost 5 minutes and then it just went up from there.

Putting the frustrations of the first stage behind me I focused on Mt. Nebo. It is a gruelling 36km climb that goes about 4800ft vertically and ends up at 9300ft. The first 90km of the stage were basically flat and a break went that everyone knew was going to come back. I started the climb a bit further back then I wanted since I was out of water and hunting for a bottle in the feedzone right at the base. I had to work my way back through the peleton to make several splits as OUCH was drilling it at the front. Near the bottom Lill from Type 1 attacked and split the rest of the group to pieces. I was again in the second group but in the company of some good climbers. We could see the front group basically the whole way up the climb and we caught some of them as they started cracking towards the top. There was actually a slight downhill to the finish and thinking that I could still get a top 10 on the stage I sprinted out of our group and won the sprint in a bike throw over Brent Brookwalter of BMC. Sadly there were still 10 riders up the road so I was 11th, but it was still a good day.

The next stage was the 15km ITT and I had another mid pack ride. I haven't really spent any time on my TT bike since March and I think it showed here. But we've done so few TTs in Europe that it didn't really make sense to train on that bike too much. This Utah TT was actually only the second non-prologue TT that I have done all season, so I guess I can put my mediocrity down to lack of practice. I really need to strengthen this part of my racing to be a real GC threat.

The final road stage ended up being the only really hot day of the tour, and the heat definitely took a toll on my body. I barely made the front group of 25 over the top of the first climb over Alpine Loop and then suffered through the rest of the stage until the bottom of the finishing climb up Little Cottonwood. I held on as long as I could, but I really didn't have good legs and ended up finishing the stage in 19th place. But due to other guys crashing going down Alpine Loop and others cracking harder then me I ended up moving up from 23rd to 15th overall. I then rode pretty conservatively in the crit, just staying in the top 30 but out of the wind to keep my place and the prize money that comes with it.

So now the plan is to rest a lot this week and hopefully this race will give me great legs for the USPro road nationals in Greenville this coming weekend. I am already in South Carolina and enjoying the abundance of oxygen.