Course de la Paix Junior, Stages 1,2,3a

I left last Saturday from SFO with a travel itinerary like this: ten hours on a plane, 7 hours in Heathrow airport, another hour flight to Brussels, a 45 minute drive, a five hours night's sleep, quick breakfast, and then 10 hours in the car from the National Team house in Izegem, BE, to Litomerice, CZ. Factor in the nine hours sleep on Monday night, and thats just shy of 40 hours of doing absolutely nothing. We just spun for 1.5-2 hours on Tuesday, in preparation for the 95.5 km stage 1 that started on Wednesday. Six riders, Larry Warbasse, Jacob Rathe, Danny Finneran, Ryan Zupko, Rob Bush, and me, are representing the US and A in the "Peace Race", the second of five Nation's Cup races (junior equivalent to the pro-tour). Wednesday's stage was three laps, each with a 3km climb, for a total of 95.5km. I was very nervous before the start, as is natural when 15 countries send their top riders to this race. The first time up the climb was fast as the eventual winning break took off. I had no pop in my legs and suffered badly up the first time. By the time we hit the climb the second time, I just couldn't spin my legs any faster, and the constant surges in the field were too much for me to handle. I fell off the back with five other riders (three of them from the USA. yikes) and finished 5th from last in an unimpressive 86th place. Larry and Jake finished well in 18th and 26th respectively.
Stage 2 was a point to point race that was supposed to be 88.5 km, but was lengthened to around 97 km (no one knows why). The profile was relatively flat with a small climb at about 60km and a 1km drag up to the finish with a gradient of 10%. Since I was already way out of the general classification, my job was to be active on the front and try to get into an early break. For the first 10-20km, we averaged about 48km/h and I found myself in a couple of small moves, none of which stuck. A small group rolled off the front at about 45 km, but was caught at the bottom of the hill. On the climb, a sprint for the mountain points resulted in an 8 man break that built up a large lead pretty quickly. I followed some attacks in an attempt to bridge up to the group, but once again nothing stuck. The German Team went to the front with 10km to go and reeled in the break, so it turned into a large field sprint up the last climb. I finished safely in the bunch in 54th place, with Larry finishing 15th, Danny in 51st, Ryan in about 60th, and Jake a little farther back. Both Rob and Jake crashed, with Rob's coming in the last km, so he finished way behind, but was awarded to same time as the winner.
Day 3 has a TT in the morning and 97km stage in the afternoon. I am currently writing this post TT and pre-road race, so we don't have TT results yet, but I think I did a pretty good ride. My legs still don't feel 100%, but they're getting there. More to come once I have results from the end of today.