Tour de 'Toona - Stage 3

Now in Sunday's criterium it was our job to protect Brady's GC placing, and try to put him into a position to get a couple of more points. It was going to be tough though since Brady is a self-admitted non-crit racer. His lanky physique gave that away as well... it was going to be a tough day! After yesterday and the day before, my role changed from team leader to riding in support of Brady since he had the higher GC position. This was fine as a win for one guy is a win for the team, and I was more than happy to do anything I could to help protect Brady's position. John and Keith were able to play around on the front at the start of the 25-lap race to keep things controlled. About halfway though though a break of 4 guys got away and built up a pretty solid lead. These 4 guys represented 4 of the big teams in the race, so no one was too intent on chasing. That was my cue.

I rolled up to the front and accelerated to start bringing the break back. After the race I found out that I had the whole pack strung out single-file. I pulled everyone around for 4 laps and single-handedly brought the break back with about 10 laps to go. Job done; time to recover a bit now! I rolled back into the pack to get ready for the sprint finale, where I wanted to make sure to put Brady into a good position for the end. With 4 laps to go though there was a crash in the last corner and Brady got taken out! He made it to the pit just before they ended the "free lap" rule, but when he came back out to join the field he was all the way at back chasing on. Keith dropped back and pulled him back into the pack and up to me, but by this time it was the final lap and too late to do anything. No points.

So despite some tough racing and crappy luck at times, overall it was a good race I think. Brady still managed 11th overall in the GC. Along with a 4th place for him and a 14th for me in Stage 2, it wasn't all that bad. Could have gone a lot better though. Our other squads managed a bit better luck: Bianca finished 2nd in Stage 1 and 6th overall in the Women's 3 field. Kristine finished 5th overall in the Women's 3 as well. Despite crashing hard the day before, Stephen came back strong and won the Men's 4 KOM jersey by showing some great climbing prowess on Saturday along with some great work by his team. EJ got what may be his biggest result yet by finishing 3rd in the Stage 3 Criterium too! It's really nice to see all the HZ/PBR squads working well together and achieving great results across the board!