Ephrata Road Race

Started off with 119 guys, every team had 6 but one which had 5. The course was a bit difficult with a good climb, some wind and a ton of turns. Lots of attacks went, many were represented with the best teams, but everything came back until 2 to go of the 12 mile course which ended up being over 80 miles.

The initial break had about 15 guys, including Dave Fuentes, Keck Baker and Ken Johnson all from Harley. I was covering guys trying to bridge and ended up getting pulled across by Jason Meidof from DC Velo.

I was pretty fried from attacking so much and after drilling it a couple times to make the break stick sat on the back while Dave pulled it to the base of the climb. There were three or four bike reg guys with us, but they didn't really contribute.

On the climb, 2 Bike reg guys launched and shattered the break. Keck Ken and a CRCA rider stayed with them, but I was on the rivet, and crested with Meidof and Jeff Brandon. Brandon and Medoif drilled it to try to catch the leaders, but I would not help because we had 2 out of 5 guys in the front group and Brandon can sprint pretty well.

Meidof cracked and I tried to jump across by myself, but could not make contact so I waited for Jeff Brandon to work with him and hold off the small developing group behind us. We kept getting close to the leaders so I would let up some, and Jeff pulled like a champ the last 2 miles.

To get a spot ahead of Jeff, I drilled the last Kilo and finished ahead of him but with the same time.

Ahead of us, the 5 got the same time with Jamie Driscol from Bike reg taking the win, Keck 2nd, CRCA third Ken 4th, the other Bike reg guy 5th, me 6th, Brandon 7th, Fuentes 8th. We are leading team GC, Bike reg is over 40 seconds down and I think the next closest team is over 4 minutes down.

Tomorrow is the team time trial, I hope we do well.