Houston, we have full ignition.  That was the theme in stage three.  We raced the first two hours well in excess of 50 km an hour.  It was the same theme as the previous stage with every team wanting a guy in the break.  A group of 4 finally went away, but I think they only stuck because there was a horrendous crash just as they were attacking which involved a Sliptream, a Health Net and a Toyota rider.  I am pretty sure we were going about 50 miles an hour down this wide open roller.  It was one of those crashes that was just plain scary, but I think everyone is alright.

One of the riders in the break was the Mexican rider from Team Type 1.  He is a solid rider and if the break stuck my money was on him over Frank Pipp of Health Net.  Unfortunately, we again missed getting a guy in there.  You have to believe it was not from lack of trying.  Jackson was in several promising moves including the one right before the “magical” combo went away.  He flatted out and I was forced to bring the group back when I saw him swing to the side. I must have covered a million moves, and I was in some good looking combos, but there was always one team that missed out.  Frustrating!

Yesterday’s stage finished on a small circuit.  The break was brought back by CSC and High Road just before we got to the circuits, and the circuit was really tough.  It was only about 3 km around, but it was all up and down with some pretty tight, down hill, full brake corners.  I was trying to help our sprinter Danilo, but he flatted right before we hit the circuits so I switched to trying to help Darin Lill and Nydam, our GC guys.  I was not feeling that great at all yesterday so once I got those guys withing the 3 km mark I just started drifting and ended up last rider in the front group.  That is called the veteran drift.  In the back of my mind I was think of the TTT and how much energy the next two stages would require, so when I realized that I did not have the legs to really get a result, I started to conserve.

My friend and old teammate Greg Henderson, from High Road, took out the sprint.  Greg is a great rider and he must have really dig deep to get it done which is his usual MO.  So today is the TTT on the Road Atlanta race cousrse.  It should be 10 miles of pain.

Later

Havoc