Redlands, Day 2

Today was the first stage of the Redlands Bicycle Classic, „The City of Baumont Road Race”. We had to complete 4 laps of 39 km, which came out to 155 km of fun. As we got out of the van at the start we were nearly blown off our feet… this wind also made the race pretty hard. Fortunately, we didn’t have too many cross wind sections but in the few that we had the race got very chaotic. People just don’t know about echelons here apparently, so everyone rather sits in the gutter and open up gaps when they pop… Enough said.

As if that wasn’t hard enough, we had a couple of miles of super smooth, slightly downhill roads with a tailwind. Now, that doesn’t sound bad but according to my SRM I maxed out at 191 rpms and about 55 mph and still couldn’t hold some wheels. Not my favorite part of the race.

Anyways, the race blew apart a couple of times but rolled back together until the last lap. Once we hit the climb on the lap, my legs where so shot that I had nothing left and had to let the pack go. I found myself in the fourth bigger chase group after it was all said and done together with Andrew. We finished 1:41 down and I dropped to 80^th in GC. Not the kind of result I was looking for but I feel that this is about what I am capable of doing at this point so I have to be happy with it.

Tomorrow we’ll race the crit. It looks very technical and should be hard again. But I am confident that we will do all right and am actually looking forward to it. I’ll keep you posted.