well you never know until you try and today was my day to try. i've been looking forward to this day for two months and my only worry is that it wouldn't work out for me, no legs or get in the wrong break, but no it went gloriously right.

a few attacks hit out on bear valley road (Berkeley hills RR course) i went HARD up momma bear, like 53X17 to close a gap on a CSC guy and i thought it was going to be a group of 8 but we got ridden back. over happy valley it was pretty easy but for the last 100 meters or so, a few hits went for the KOM at the top and it slowed way down, so i squirmed out and hit the top with a gap, then absolutely flew down that decent, all rough and sketchy but when you have both lanes it's super quick if you know where you're going. bridged immediately, and we had 45 seconds by the bottom, 1:45 on St. Marys, and 4:00 on pinehurst.

i was with Creed of TIAA-CREF and a Credit Agricole guy named Mads Kaggestad, and we were cooperating quite well all the way through. when we hit the bottom of Palomares with almost 6 minutes, i started thinking we had a chance. the wind was kinda cross/head though so i don't think we could really roll as well as the group, and it was taking up energy, especially from Mike C. he said later he felt way underpowered on the level ground, but we were all faking it pretty good cuz i was starting to get twinges of cramps but i guess i was rolling him.

Disco did someone else's work though calaveras and stretched the group long and thin, so we came out down into SJ with about 3:30, not enough i could already tell. i have to say i've been thinking about riding into san jose in the lead for a long time, every day for months, so to actually do it was pretty special. all there was to do at that point was get over to the climb and just suffer through it. you know you're getting caught, you know you're hurting, and you just have to soldier on and carry though. and hope it'll be over soon.

well, the climb did suck and i went slow all the way up. anyone there could see how much i suffered. but i hooked up with a few guys right over the top, we caught a few more around the back ridge, and then we had a group and we just rallied all the way down that decent. i don't think i touched my brakes once, no joke. my bike computer said 87 kph max, freeking fast with those corners in the mix. caught a big group towards ther bottom of calaveras, which turned out to be the second group on the road. we just rolled in to the finish from there, i pulled though if i had to my my legs were pretty pissed at me by that point and really were rebeling. funny thing, my two break away companions were in the group too, i guess they crept up the climb too.

the funny thing is, i really don't think my result would have been any different if i played it safe. if i sat in all day and got to the bottom of sierra with those guys i still don't think i could have gone with them. i would have ended up in the front of the group i ended up catching, instead of the back, and i would have been pissed i didn't try. i gave it a go and a good one at that.