Thursday, August 23, 2012

Twice Over 12000ft/3600m

I believe they called today's stage the queen stage, and it certainly was tough enough and exciting enough to have that name! It was the longest at 210km, had almost 40km of dirt roads, and it took us over two mountain passes at 3600m, one of which was 25km of dirt ascent. The day looked tough on paper, and it was tough in real life!

A large break established itself after about 12km. BMC began to pull immediately because it was so big, and there were a few dangerous guys in there. Everything was pretty normal until we hit the first big climb of the day. At that point Garmin threw down the gauntlet. They clearly had a plan, and they executed it to near perfection. They were able to launch Tom Danielson across to the break, where he had Dave Zabriske to help work all day. He ended up making an incredible ride to win the stage by a mere 2 seconds. We had Jakob finish 3rd on the stage and kept ourselves within striking distance for the coming days. We're staying positive and will keep fighting.

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