Tour of Ohio, Stage 5....

Today was a bullshit race. We were suppose to do 5 laps of a 12.8 mile course and finish with 6 circuits for a total of 64 miles. Well, turned out we couldn't do the circuits in the city for some reason and they had us do 4 laps of an 11 or so mile course. 45 miles...that was it. We actually finished it faster than the stage 4. We averaged between 26-27 mph for this race.

The course was pancake flat with one little climb at the beginning of each lap. The climb wasn't even that horrible, but A&F drilled it so it did definitely hurt sometimes. Nothing eventful really happened today. No breakaways....lots tried. Seth Meyer got into 4 of them. About 50 riders got dropped. Huge group sprint of 80 riders.

The second time up the climb there was a crash half way up. I looked over and the white jersey was in it. Great just stay with the group and finish. It is a lousy way to win the jersey, I may add, but thats also bike racing. I was feeling good as the peloton was cruising at about 28-30 mph. All of a sudden I hear from behind "yeah, I was chasing really hard for awhile". I look back and its the White Jersey. That dude must be strong...and I respect him for that. It is something about having a jersey too...it just makes you go that much harder. So looks like he'll keep the white jersey, and I'll have to deal with 2nd, which isn't really that bad.

Other than that...not much happened in that race. Kinda boring. As Seth Meyer said, "Stage 5 should have been stage 2, stage 2 should have been stage 3, and stage 3 should have been today". I think that would have been a great idea. The race was pretty much won on Stage 3. These last 3 races are/have been crits. Nothing will change in a crit.

Well, today is the last day of the ToO. Stage starts at 7pm. 40 mile, 4 corner, 1km crit. All I have to do is stay with the pack and watch out for all 110 squirrely riders in the field, cuz I really don't want to crash on the last day. After the race we'll be heading back home, doing some night driving. Sunday I need to change my saddle cuz somehow it cracked perpendicular to the rails in the middle of the saddle. Too much Man-torque I guess. I have an extra saddle thank god. After I make that repair I think I'll go to the UWW road race and hopefully make some Cat 3's hurt.

Ciao ciao....
Waitey