Tour of the Depot Stage 1 and 2 recap

Chad and I finished the first 2 stages today. The TT went pretty well. It's a gradual climb for a few miles, then mostly descending for the rest of the TT. The winner finished in 18:30ish while Chad and I ended up at 19:55 and 20:01 respectively. Chad is a little under the weather and may have been able to go faster. I actually ran off the road on one of the tight turns into some gravel. I kept the bike up, but lost a bit of time. Overall, the TT was really fun. I spun out of my 55x11 on the descent, so we were clearly haulin'.

The 40 mile circuit race this afternoon was pretty boring and disappointing for me. It's a 5 mile loop with pretty steady gradual climbing, then the same descending. The first few laps were pretty hot. There were bonus time sprints at lap 2 and 5. I went for the 2nd lap sprint bonus, but the field was extremely fast and somewhat out-of-control, so I sat up with 300 meters to go. The 4th through 6th laps were pretty boring. I attacked the pack about 6 times during these few laps, but the same team would chase me down every time and wouldn't let anything get away. Most of the racers were content with a pedestrian pace, but my legs were feeling really good and wanted to make the race interesting. Anyway, on my last attack, I tried extra hard and when they chased me back I couldn't recover in time and got dropped from the pack. I chased for the rest of the race and got a good TT workout in, but it was over. I probably finished 5-6 minutes back.

Chad made some crucial moves during the last couple laps when the pace really picked up and did well to stick with the lead pack. Chad is sitting around 25th on GC and I was 30th after the TT, but I'm probably last now. Tomorrow is a big 90+ mile race with two 10 mile 6-9% climbs, so we're going to get our money's worth there. I'm pretty wasted now but Chad is feeling good, so we'll see if we can move the GC up tomorrow. Chad is only about 1min 30sec down on GC, so anything could happen.