There were 4 of us in the Elkhorn Cat3 race this year and the first stage turned out to be a good one for us. With 2 guys slightly off the front in the last couple miles, Spencer Bushnell led the attack in the main field through the awful headwind and uphill grade to the finish. At 1km to go he was the only one working. We almost caught the break at the line and I would have done a bit better if I’d waited 50m longer before sprinting, as I was in 4th until I got swarmed at the line.

I was 9th that day with Spencer in 15th. Sean and Erik were close behind. Sean Passage had a great TT and moved up to 8th in the GC. The TT course was the best one they’ve had at Elkhorn, with rolling terrain, no traffic and a really nice tailwind on the way home.

The crit was our best performance because our mission was to win primes. I took the first, Spencer got the second one and then we alternated from there trying to get the bigger ones… We ended up with our names on the loudspeaker throughout the race and had enough certificates and cash to buy the whole team and support crew dinner and still had lots of prizes and some cash left over. Erik Bergstrom was tangled up in a 6 man crash but he hopped the curb to avoid going down. Nice work!

Going into the final stage, Sean was 6th and I was 14th GC. Dooley Mountain was really enjoyable this year because it was so cool — we were actually a bit cold on the descents. A large break formed rather early and the peloton was doing an alright job of chasing under the lead of the Davis Bike Club guys but they eventually faded on some of the climbs and their solid team effort dissipated. Spencer and I couldn’t hang with another group that broke away because we thought they were going too hard to maintain a gap. They surprised us though by sticking it. So we tried to organize the remaining peloton and it was not easy. Lots of people didn’t know how or were too tired to pull through. There was Mark Vergari from Hutch’s Bend and about 3 other riders that helped me and Spencer maintain a good solid pace for the last 30 miles until the base of Dooley. We were trying to work to bring Sean up as close as possible behind that break so he could tear it up on the climb and stay within the top 10 GC but we had no way of knowing if that would work. So we hammered anyway, protecting Sean and Erik. Erik seemed to be climbing really well at the base of the climb and Sean said he “was picking people off one by one” but we don’t really have results yet to know how everything worked out on the GC past 3rd place.

I thought it was interesting that my time from this stage this year was only 20 seconds different from my time there in 2005 but it felt much easier… That was the year that our field was 10 minutes faster than the Pros!

Thanks to Dick and Siobhan Knowles for letting the crew crash at their place!