TOUR OF OHIO, STAGE 5

Granville, Ohio. Wow, what a tough stage this was! Going into it I thought we were over the hump on hard road races. Mistake. This was only about 50 miles with seven finishing loops in downtown Granville.

We rolled out of town and not more than three miles in a break went up the road with Alder Martz, a Jittery Joe's guy, Andre Vandenberg (Globalbike team mate), Craig McKinney (also a GB team mate) and a few others. They opened about a minute lead. The Specialized-Mercy team decided to pull it back and did so within three or four miles.

Dan Quinlen (Carbon) attacked and Globalbike team mate Sean Weddell went with him for game on! The two opened a gap of roughly two minutes in short order. Jittery Joe's felt threatened by it and put all their guys on the front and pulled for a solid 15 miles, maybe more.

We went over the first KOM (one mile climb) as a group turning many inside out including yours truly... It was H-A-R-D with a serious cross-wind which created at least two echelons traversing the entire road. Much of the time was pulled back but not all of it.

After another seven to eight miles we re-entered Granville and the screws really began turning! Two short steep climbs put us on the seven-lap, mile long finishing circuit. A small group splintered off including Tyler Hawes & Andre Vandenberg (Globalbike team mates) and the rest of us did our best to stay near the front. Each of the one-mile loops had a short 50 meter climb and one steep 400+ meter climb on it followed by a 200 meter ride along a ridge before descending into a hair-pin turn and a couple 90 degree crit corner/straight-away combo's back to the 50 meter climb... Man was this a hard little circuit!

Tommy Smith (Globalbike team mate) managed to sneak away from the group he and I were in and bridged to the secondary group. Sean stayed with the secondary group but climber extraordinaire Dewey Dicky (Specialized Mercy) rallied to bridge across and go ahead of the entire field gaining about 2 minutes on everyone.

Globalbike finished strong with Tyler Hawes in 5th, Tommy Smith 6th, Sean Weddell 9th (after an all-day break!) and myself 11th. Overall, Sean gained the climbers jersey as there were five KOM's in all (three on the final circuits and two on the initial loop) and I dropped a spot to 4th overall due Dewey Dicky's solo finish in the final circuits.

Stage 6, the final day, is tomorrow outside Toledo, Ohio.

Coach Jim