Tour of Battenkill

Top: Josh Sprinting for 4th on Saturday                                                                                                                                                                                        Botton: Start of Sunday's Pro-Invitational Road Race

This is a great race.  Awesome course...long, hilly, and 25% dirt roads.  And now an awesome field.  While it wasn't on the NRC this year, it was definitely a NRC caliber race (actually they are going for UCI status next year) with 7+ pro teams sending full squads.  Saturday was merely an 82 mile warm-up for Sunday's 124 mile jaunt, but it was a terrific opportunity nonetheless and we made sure to put some representation in the break.  Eric and myself were the lucky two since this break was going the distance due to the representation from most of the big teams in the race.  There were 3 BMC, 2 Ouch, 2 Type1, a Bissell rider, and a handful of amateurs to make 15 total.  Given the challenging terrain late in the parcours the break was shattered to pieces by the end with myself making the final selection of Zirbel (Bissell) and Beyer (BMC).  Those two were marking each other pretty closely so I liked my chances to catch them by surprise...but the surprise was on me when my rear tire went flat with about 3 miles to go.  I had a quick change and was able to catch the next two on the road and still hang onto 4th place for the day.  I thought that was fairly unlucky, but I got a real taste of bad luck the following day with no less than 3 flats (out of 11 total for the team on the day) with the last of which coming less than 20k from the finish when the s&*t was really hitting the fan.  While it was clearly not our weekend, the fact that we were mixing it up at the front of the race both days bodes well for a number of future opportunities.