red river gorge

Soo this past week I was in lexington, KY for a pretty big junior stage race, it was the Tour of Red River Gorge UCI 2.1, unfortunately no int'l teams though so pretty much was just the US Nat'l Champs Stage race for jrs. Good competition though, I rode on a composite team HPC U23, including myself, steven black (NCVC), Kevin gottlieb (coppi), Ben Salibra (some ny team), Robin Eckmann (sliipstream jrs), and Andrew Barker (slipstream jrs).  It was 4days/5stages.  Field of 102.

St. 1- 1mi prologue, flat with a turnaround...not soo fun.  We had Robin in 8th, and Andrew in 12th...I rocked it for 59th! Charlie Avis on Team Specialized won.

St. 2- much more fun, 60mi RR with some hard climbing but mostly all big ring.  Pretty fast and aggressive, we were fairly attentive at the front, on the KOM climb steven bk, slipped into a breakaway.  A few miles later going into the feedzone I bridged up when I saw Hot Tubes' Ian Boswell going across.  Drilled it hard in the town we went through where I won the intermediate sprint (apparently I'm a sprinter now).  Two more hot tubes and a handfull of other guys bridged up.  Turned into the move we went really hard shelled some guys...I felt pretty good, much of the break was sitting on but I stupidly wasn't, me and the hot tubes were only guys that didn't miss a turn.   Our car didn't come up behind us and I couldn't get a bottle, I got a bit dehydrated and got dropped with 5k to go.  Held the pack off for 8th, steve bk got 7th.  Moved me to 9th gc.  Rest of the team in the bunch except ben who broke a spoke.

St. 3- 14.3 mi TT...felt pretty good, decent ride for me 30:42 for 11th.  Hot tubes lawson craddock crushed everybody, 2nd place over 30s back, he rode 29 flat.  We also had Barker in 5th and Eckmann in 6th.  Gc shakeout, I dropped to 13th gc, barker 9th, eckmann 10th.

St. 4- Serious rr, 70mi with some real legit climbing.  We really wanted to crush it, maybe a bit too much, put the team on the front at k1 and lined it out.  Unfortunately after a few miles only eckmann, me and barker came through anymore, told barker to sit in while eckmann and I controlled it.  Good think it was hard for the field and we stayed safe.  Over the 2nd KOM climb the major selection was made down to ~20guys, just me and Barker for HPC>  Barker took some good gos, but all stayed together.  We hit the final climb at like mile 58 or so.  Immediately some guys dropped, me and Barker had a bad 30s at the same time and both dropped, we got over together and started chasing, a lot of tough rollers over the top, unfortunately andrew didn't feel soo good and I had to go on with out him.  Just kept Tting passing people...rollled in with 2others for 9th on stage...moved me to 8th GC.  Barker came in with Eckmann and like 15 others for 12th, now 10th GC for him.  We unfortunately dropped from 2nd to 3rd in team GC.

St. 5-80min crit in downtown Lexington, started at 730pm, so fun little scene there.  It was FAST lots of fun, 1mi course fairly technical, not too hard to stay up front because it was pretty lined out, missed the break but we couldn't get a guy up there.  Ben had a great ride, 2nd in the field sprint for 6th, rest of us in the bunch of only 40 finishers with same time.  Held 8th on GC, Barker 10th, Eckmann 11th.  We stayed 3rd team GC though...Hot Tubes won team gc, and individual, ahh!

off to cascade tomorrow, should be lots of fun, try and keep the blog updated

also i have a video from team pres. at red river, gonna try and figure how to load it!