I have been putting in a lot of training getting ready for my next Ironman. So I wanted to go out and mix it up a little with a Stage Race here in California this last weekend. It was the Madera Pro Stage race and here is a little recap of the weekend.

Stage 1 – 10 mile TT(much harder than a 112 mile TT) – 1st place 21:56

Stage 2 – Crit - 75 minutes - After many solo efforts and covering almost everything myself. I launched an attack the last lap and held off the field almost to the end. I got swallowed up and finished with the field in 15th.

Stage 3 – 85 mile Road race. 3 Teams (Lombardi, Spine, and Webcor) were out to get me. After many early attacks by those teams, finally one stuck without me. They had 2 minutes on us at one point and no one in the field would help me. I was on my own. I convinced one guy to launch me off the front to get away and I soloed for about 10 miles and got within 10 seconds of the break until they saw me and started attacking. At that point there was no hope. I dropped back to the group and things seemed to just slow drastically since no one wanted to work. The break got up to 6 minutes by that time, and we only had 40 miles left. I spurred 2 others to help increase the pace as we did we dropped the group and had about 6 free riders tagging along for the ride. We finally caught the break with 5 miles to go. Then there was attack after attack. Once we got about 2 miles to go I let a guy roll off the front solo and when he got 15 seconds on us I launched solo across to him and we battled it out for the stage win. I finished 2nd, But I still held onto my GC Victory by 23 seconds.

Overall winner of the Madera Stage Race

Thank you for all your support and sharing in this victory as it will hopefully lead to much larger ones.