Today we drove to Baker City, Oregon for the Elkhorn Bicycle Classic. Heather and I have both done this race the previous two years and really enjoyed it. The courses are beautiful and it’s only 2 hours from our house. Heather has won the last two editions but since she hasn’t been feeling well who knows what will happen.

As for me, this is my first “real” Pro/1/2 race. Today’s stage was a 73-mile road race over one real climb, then a bunch of rollers to the finish. Last year I crashed at mile 5 and TT’d the rest of the 68-mile course, mostly by myself. Since I didn’t want that to happen again, I stayed near the front for the first 10-20 miles of flat terrain. There were a series of attacks here and there, and finally, two riders got off. We kept tempo in the pack to make sure they didn’t get too far. I was in front when we hit the first small hill. This was a good thing since I was almost off the back when we crested it! I really don’t have a high 3-6 minute effort to stay with climbers on those short power climbs. From that point on I made it a point to conserve and not be in the wind anymore.

When we hit the real hill I said by to the lead pack and just rode at my own pace. Then I saw my teammate, Mike Coffman, and I joined him to the top. The climb was hard, but we ended up in a group of 6 or so guys that crested together. Then we pushed the descent and caught a few more riders. We thought we had enough horsepower to catch so there were a few of us pushing pretty hard. We could see the lead group off in the distance. But by the time we hit the rollers, I think people were running out of gas and there was no way. We ended up coming into the finish in a rainstorm and I pushed the pace to the line to try to save as many seconds as possible. Of course, Mike, being a sprinter had to sprint and nip me at the line. Not like it makes a difference, we were both just trying to get in workouts by that point.