Green Mountain Stage Race wrap-up

Here's a race report from team mate David Costa. David anchored the team at GMSR, riding to a 10th place finish on GC, after blazing up the App Gap with the leaders. He was able to defend in the crit to retain his spot, while I was quickly gapped, dropped, and pulled.

Since this was not the most successful of my GMSR campaigns, I thought David's perspective would be more fun to read than my own:

"Thanks everyone,

What a beautiful weekend we had for a bike race.

Started off a bit slow for us, but ended very well.

I think we were all a bit disappointed after the first day. I know we were expecting to go a little better than we did.

I know I personally was hoping not to lose more than 30 sec. on the winner there, and that didn't quite work out.

Next day in the circuit race we all made good efforts to animate the race, and try to accomplish something.

Unfortunately, none of us were able to stick anything, though Kevin came close.

I ended up blowing myself up early in the race trying to bridge up to the early break on the climb, which soon after turning on to it I realized there was a nice headwind on it too.

Cracked near the top, hung on to the peloton as it passed, and just struggled to hang on to the back from that point on.

Next day we started with the plan of trying to get Kevin into the sprint competition. Unfortunately, we started from the back, and a break went up the road right from the start.

While the Peloton snoozed the break quickly opened up a large gap, and by the time we got ourselves to the front there was little that we could have done to bring them back by ourselves.

I wasn't sure how I was going until we went over Brandon Gap and I didn't suffer to stay near the front.

At that point I was thinking that I might be able to move myself up into the top 20 on GC.

Approaching Baby Gap, Kevin was off the front in a small group. I quickly bridged up just as we made the right turn onto the climb and went straight to the front to pick up the pace. I was hoping that small group would stay off the front, but nobody in the group wanted to work, so it was just me and Kevin pedaling uphill into the wind.

On the plus side the chase back in the peloton hurt some legs and apparently split the group. Over the climb, Kevin helped keep the pace high so that no one could recover too much, and setting me up to lead onto the final climb.

The high pace over Baby Gap and in between, kept anybody from really being able to launch an attack at the bottom, which helped me because I always take a couple of minutes to really get going when we hit a climb off a decent. Matt Mainer tried to go off in the middle of the climb, when it first begins to get really steep, but never got much over me and the other 5 guys that managed to stick with us, and we clawed ourselves back to him. Our group of 7 hit the final 400m all together and it was a drag race to the top. I managed to hang on the back, finishing 7th out of our group, and 11th on the day with 4 guys still managing to hang on from the early break. More importantly our efforts moved me up to 10th on GC

If I hadn't done so much work from the Start of Baby Gap to the finish, I may have done better on the stage, but after looking at the results, the only way I could have improved more on GC was to either be in the break, or do a lot better in the time trial.

In the Crit. There were 2 riders withing a second of me and about a dozen within 30 seconds. Fortunately, being in 10th on GC got me a call-up, my first ever, so I got to start at the front.

Knowing that my best defense against losing my position was to go on the offence. Mainer helped me out when he went off the front at the start and picked up the largest time bonuses. I Grabbed some myself at both sprints and ensured that I would keep my position on GC. In retrospect I probably didn't need them as I didn't see any of the numbers I had on my top tube anywhere near the front the entire race, but better be safe than sorry.

So now onto Bear Mountain, where I hope there will be some semblance of a P1/2 field, and then CATSKILLS BABY!

-Dave"

Thanks Dave, I'm sorry I wasn't there to do more work for you in the crit. I'd also offer a quick shout-out to Wayne Bray, of Syracuse Bicycle/Spokepost.com, who marked a late-race move by stage 2 winner Steven Black during Sunday's road race, to finish second on the stage, and on GC.

I raced Wayne earlier this year at the Tour de Syracuse, and he beat me then too, but he's proving to be adapting to the cat 2 peloton much more quickly than me. Congrats Wayne!