George Ganoung wrote Power-Tap
Stage 3: Tombstone Road Race . 87.2 miles with 6427 feet of climbing, ridiculous crosswinds, 10-30mph.
Place: Stage 26th@25:00 GC 25th @ 27:00
The race starts with a .neutral. roll out up a nice 3km climb (ouch) and then a 10k 50 mph decent. Right after that we dump into a valley for 40 miles on open plains and enter the cross winds. The two larger teams there just clobbered the field and put on an echelon clinic. I felt I did the best I could with positioning on my own but with two committed teams, and a field who wanted to ride in the gutter instead of form echelons, it was doomed. Long story short, I ended up in the second group, and once we realized we weren.t catching anything (mostly due to some very frustrating lack of cooperation in the chase group) it slowed to training ride pace. But we kept picking up stragglers that were popped off the front group until we had about 12 or 15 at the base of the final climb. Up the climb we realized there was no field, even up the road it was all small groups and there were only about 20 left ahead of us so suddenly it became a bit of a race again. I was climbing reasonably well and ended up 2nd out of the second group. I can.t say I am too disappointed it was a hard day mentally (it would have been so easy to call it a day) and I stuck it out and felt better for it. ***