The profile for this stage looked nasty on paper. But in reality, it was pretty easy. Although the course was almost all up and down, all the hills were big-ring. The pace remained consistently high for the entire race so any break attempts were short-lived. I attacked on the long climb on the back side of the course. Another rider joined me and we were maintaining nearly 24mph up the grade, but it was not enough. The pack, strung out in a thin line, made the capture and then maintained the pace over the top. The race ended with a tricky 6 turn finishing circuit into town. It got pretty crazy with 3 crashes in the last 500 meters. I stayed back out of trouble and rolled in with the tail of the pack.
Oh...another cool thing about today's stage. We had a rolling enclosure. So that meant no yellow line rule! you could go all over the road. I've never raced with a rolling enclosure before and it was quite awesome.
