Tour of PA Stage 4

Oops. Forgot to post one yesterday. I'll do two in a row here.

I looked at Stage 4 before the race, and knew that this would be my best shot at a result. It was short: only 60 miles, but had the hardest climb of the week. The last climb was pretty far from the finish, so my plan was to make the front groups, save energy, and do something sneaky at the end to win.

The plan worked perfectly, but the execution didn’t quite happen as I’d hoped. I made a selection of 13 riders over the big climb 20 miles in. This group became the break, since the yellow jersey and a number of other well-placed riders were dropped. As the well-represented teams set the pace, I pulled through enough to keep everyone working, but mostly sat on the back, playing the rainy descents carefully, and thinking about how I’d handle the last few k. Near the end, attacks started flying. I was caught in the wind a few times, but I had to do whatever it took to keep ahead of the splits. With 2k to go, a non-gc rider counter-attacked something, and the group gave him a gap. I was on the front at the time, so I swung off to make someone else do the work. I found myself in the wind, with a bunch of guys to the right looking at each other, and another one solo by 10 seconds. I jumped.

I didn’t want to catch the one rider too soon, because he was my leadout, and catching him early meant he would sit up and the group would come back. I timed it perfectly, and got onto his wheel with 250 meters to go, immediately going around him to what I thought would be the win. Unfortunately, someone in the group chose to bury himself, and brought me back just in time for David Veilloux, the new race leader, to blow by me with 75 meters to go, dragging three guys behind him. I ended up 5^th. So close! Damn! Fuck! Fucking shit ass christ piss! Smegma! I could go on, but you get the idea (FUCK!). The good news is at least I clawed back a lot of the GC time I lost on day 2, so I’m sitting 15^th now. There really aren’t a lot of chances to improve that, with only one more road stage before the final crit Sunday, but a little luck and some good legs could put me into the top 10. I don’t feel like I’ll get a better shot at a stage result than the last one, but I’ll see what I can do.