Tuesday, March 29, 2011

San Dimas Stage Race

This weekend Team Specialized headed to southern California for the San Dimas California. The 14 juniors filled out three fields. Willy Zellmer, Dean Haas, David Benkoski, Andrew Lanier, Marcus Smith ,Torey Philipp and I lined up for the Category 2 field. There were 4 Juniors in the 15/16 field Jack Maddux, Matt Valencia, Diego Binatena and Phil O'Donnell. And in the Junior men 17/18 field we had James Laberge, Chris Laberge and Kyle Torres.
The first stage was a 4 mile uphill time trail averaging about 5%. The fastest time by the team was set by a 14 year old! He did the climb in 14:17 averaging about 16 miles and hour and his ride put him in the leaders jersey. Kyle Torres was not far behind at 14:22 and the team now had 2 leader juniors in the lead of their categories. The category 2's didn't have quite so much success but everyone got some good efforts in.
Saturday was a road race on an 8 mile circuit with a flat finish. All the juniors categories started together and so we had two yellow jerseys in one race. There was a crash early and Phil was caught up in it but the team rallied and came back and got him back to the field. In the field sprint James was second and the team kept both leaders jerseys. In the category 2 field the team patrolled the front but let 2 guys escape on the second lap thinking the race was long and we would get them back. Then the field got neutralized on lap 4 of 8 because we were being passed by the pro field and the lead of the now 4 leaders ballooned. In the sprint David came away with 8th.
The final day was the criterium on a mile "L" shaped course. The junior race was wet and fast. A break of 5 went up the road containing both Phil and Kyle. But with 4 to go Kyle slid out in a corner and crashed. He got to the start and was told he would get the same time as the break who he was with. Phil stayed in the break and they both came away with the overall wins. In the Cat 2 field we attacked and attacked but nothing was going away but it kept the pace fast. We planned to lead out David but when we got burned with still about 2 laps to go. Then on the last lap on the second to last corner someone slid out and forced Marcus, David and I outside the cones and we couldn't get back in the race.
The race was a great race experience for the team. We learned a lot and the team had success.

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