March 25-27th
Racers-Peter Hurst, Alister Ratcliff
Result-25th prologue, 33rd prologue, 28th General Classification.
This past weekend Peter Hurst and I made a trip to California expecting a great weekend with plenty of sunshine and great courses to race our bicycles. Unfortunately, we were stuck with overcast and windy weather all weekend. In addition to the poor weather for California standards, the race course was terrible! Lucky for us, the quality of racing didn't disappoint. The competition was fierce and dense.
Peter and I both had decent rides in the time trial the first day. Peter rode in for 33rd place on a 3.8 mile uphill time trial and I went a few seconds faster for a 25th place finish. The road race the next day was where all the fun was going to happen. Neither of us had luck on our hands, Peter had some problems with his wheel and had to go back to the wheel van and I ended up chasing back on in the final laps due to a crash. I was able to get back to the front group on the final lap only to be gapped off a little bit running into the finish over the climb on the course. I lost a few spots on G.C sliding back to 30th.
The last day was a fairly uneventful day for the G.C. However, there was a sizable crash with a couple laps to go that I was able to avoid and move up 2 spots to finish my first big race of the year in 28th place.
