Only four of us survived to start this stage from Jet Fuel Coffee/ Norco Bicycles squad, while others left out to take care of their battle-wounds from previous stage. Actually more than half of the team members are now covered in road rush! Whoever said cycling is not a contact sport…

Ryan, Travis and myself rode out to the course in the late Saturday afternoon and were greeted to a beautiful downtown Redlands and the lively crowd. We did a few warm up laps, and to my relief the course wasn’t as technical as in description of being very narrow. We still had all three lanes of the road, so number of corners we had to go through actually made for a really fun and flowing course. My goal personally was just to sit in and be as economical as possible to save the energy for the final stage tomorrow. I end up lining up in the last row at the start and knew I have a little work to do to make sure I don’t get caught up behind the splits of the large 150 men field, which sometimes is not an easy thing when you’re stuck in the tail-whip of the field. I managed to move up few spots every lap pretty effortlessly with my Norco Tactic cutting the corners smoothly around the guys riding their brakes way too much, yet the gap to the front of the leaders on the clock still grew a few seconds each lap – it’s getting strung out! To my relief I realized it was a breakaway gaining that time as I was finally able to see the Team SmartStop train doing the chase on front of the field rounding the corners ahead. Whew, safe! Mid-pack, I can finally enjoy the ride at 50km/h…lean left, lean right, though the switchbacks with guys all around you. A few jittery riders to avoid, but on most part it’s a pleasure riding crits in a Pro field!

After 60 min of racing riders were safe from a time cut if they got dropped, and given pro-rated time. It’s amazing how little time it took after that marker to realize that I was a dead last guy of the train again! Where did everyone behind me go?? I won’t lie the thought of pulling the plug went through my head, but the self-respect forced me to finish the damn thing. Ryan safely finished in the head of the bunch keeping his GC position, well as Travis and Bailey in the same time gap.

Everyone safe and sound, off to the toughest stage of the race today, the infamous Sunset Loop Circuit. Nothing to lose, it’s time to push all the chips in! Stay tuned to see how the cards dealt out.