Stage 4 - 18.5 miles with 1900 ft of climbing. We went to bed last night excited that we could sleep in as our first rider, Jeff Spaulding would be first to go off at 1:14. Most of us started crawling out of bed around 7:30 though as our stomachs were begging us to be fed. We enjoyed a hearty country breakfast consisted of bacon, eggs, potatoes and OJ except for Patrick who's pre-race meal consists of around 40 lbs of oatmeal mixed with fruit. After breakfast, most of us headed down to the garage to prepare our TT bikes before the race. We were joined by our Race Director, Ian "Big Dirty" Mullins (whom is also the team's Director of the Dirt Squad) who had the logistics planned out for the entire squad. I'd like to take this moment to let everyone know what an outstanding job Dirty is doing here as our Director Sportif. In addition to the logistical planning, he is treating each and everyone of us like as pros. Imagine being driven to the TT start, having your bike checked out, water bottles topped off, ice water rub downs before and after the race. It is amazing and I can't say how great it is (and how jealous the other teams are). Back to the race, everyone left it all out on the course and turned in respectable times. The big gun award today go's to the team TT specialist, J-Dub who laid the smack down and finished 12th with a time of 42:17. Good enough to move him up in the GC to 14th overall in the 2's and 11 seconds from a top ten finish. After the race, we rode home to shower off and put our legs up and recover. After a couple hours of chillin, a group of us mounted our road bikes and headed into town for iced mochas in the local coffee house followed by a recon of Sunday's crit course. The locals here are great and have been very accommodating which is very refreshing. After our night on the town, we headed back to the house for a dinner of Cucina Fresca tortellini, BBQ chicken and salad. After watching some tv, the guys decided to call it a night. Stay tuned for tomorrows details.
No comments:
Post a Comment