San Dimas stage race

This past weekend we raced the San Dimas Stage Race, in none other than San Dimas, California. It is a cool little race that a lot of teams use as preparation for the opening NRC race in Redlands four days later. It started off with a 6km uphill time trial up a fairly steady grade in Glendora. I had a decent ride but in my anaerobic haze I accidentally crossed the centerline in a switchback right in front of an official and got slapped with a 30 second time penalty. I was by no means the only guy to cross the line and cyclingnews has photos of other riders over it, but I did it by an official so I got penalized. Rules are rules. Chris Baldwin, Rory Sutherland, and Karl Menzies all had good rides into the top 20 so we still had a lot of cards to play in the overall for the rest of the race.

Baldwin ripping it up the climb

Ben Day from Fly V Australia won and was in the leader's jersey so our plan going into the road race was to make his team suffer and hopefully isolate him so that one of our GC guys could get some time. We managed to do just that, with Karl, Brad White, and myself all getting into some dangerous breakaways which really put the pressure on them.

Going up the climb on some lap

Sadly, just before the real action started, Chris got caught up in a stupid crash with 2 laps to go and lost some time. On the last lap, Jonny Clarke and I perfectly led out our sprinters (Andrew Pinfold, Jake Keough and Karl) and Rory for the bottom of the last climb which topped out only 2.5 km from the finish. Rory put in a savage attack and only 4 riders managed to go with him. He then put in a perfectly timed sprint to win the stage and move up to 5th overall.

Best feeling in all of bike racing.

The last day was a super fast crit around downtown San Dimas. Our goal was to look for some opportunities for Rory to get time, or barring that go for the stage win by leading out our sprinters. This raced ended up being super fast with an average speed of 29mph despite 6 corners in a 1 mile course. Naturally this meant that no breaks got anywhere and it came down to a chaotic sprint. I got up near the front with 5 to go trying to help get our sprinters in position, but unfortunately I lost them in the melee a lap later and couldn't get back up to them. In the end they got a bit separated and swarmed so it didn't work out. However, Brad kept hold of his Sprinter's Jersey which he took on the previous day so the week turned out to be a pretty successful one with a leader's jersey, a stage win, and 5th overall.

Next up Redlands!