With the West Coast Series already tied up, I decided to pass on round five and get a solid few days of racing/training in at the Mount Hood Classic.

Day 1: the prologue, what can I say the 9pm start under lights in the rain, without a pre-ride of the circuit, and only my 2nd time on a TT bike. Needless to say I couldn’t see s##t, which made it work out the directions of the corners. Outcome: I sucked, but happy to be in one piece.

Day 2: crit, nothing like a wet circuit to make things entertaining for the spectators. With the wet roads it was going to be hard for any team to control the pace, and a break went off the front the first lap. It only took me a couple of laps to realize I didn’t want to sit in the peloton around a bunch of “C Graders” who were throwing themselves onto and off the road. I was out of there, and went across to the break, as the race progressed the road started to dry and the pelotons pace brought the break back. I spent a fair amount of time on/at the front, no purpose other than to stay away from what looked like road kill. In the end the position worked out for the finish, only I wasn’t quite committed enough on the last couple of corners to make it count and got rolled at the line.

Day 3: road race, 106 miles with basically not a piece of flat road in it. Having been on the MTB for the last few weeks I was a little conservative not knowing how I’d be feeling come the 100 mile mark, though I ended up feeling comfortable all day and made the natural selection of 10 or so guys over the top of the last climb. Though the group didn’t really work that well until the second group got back on, it was then game on to bring back the 2 minutes the break had with 10km

to go. As Maxwell Smart would say, “missed it by that much”. Was a good day for the Team with Jesse getting the KOM Jersey.

Day 4: TT, Not doing so well on GC after the prologue, and again a wet road and solid descent on the course I decided to play it safe, and roll on the road bike. Nothing special to report, though I did get a nice little picture on velonews.

Day 5: road race, 90 something miles? Thought I only needed to worry about the first 46, as that was the second KOM for the day. Yep, I was on KOM domestique duties, I’ve done plenty of chasing of point for myself in the past, but never had to play lead out on an uphill before. The plan was to either deliver Jesse the points, or take the point to keep him in the jersey. Sounded simple enough to me with only 2 solid climbs, and 2 descents for the first 46 miles. I was riding into the tour really well, and actually feeling better each day, so the biggest worry for me was the downhill start and making sure Jesse stayed out of trouble. It worked out and we quickly came under attack at the base of the climb from the guys with KOM points and the guys looking for a break away as well as Bissell wanting to take the Yellow Jersey. I was climbing well and with the alliance of United Health Care having the Yellow jersey I felt pretty comfortable upfront, I almost wanted to do a lleyton Hewitt "Come On!!!". Needless to say we kept it together to take the KOM points and kept Jesse in the jersey.

I even got a little excited towards the finish with an uphill finish, I was certainly feeling the length/effort of the day and a little uncomfortable, but after seeing the slowness of the other guys to react to changes in pace, I knew I wasn’t alone. Though when I heard the break still had a minute with 1.5 miles to go, I quickly realized that wasn’t going to come back. I think I had the biggest reverse light action in cycling history; I went from 20 or so miles/hr to barely crawling into the finish.

Day 6: another wet crit. The breakaway went early with Team-mate James in it, once it had a winning gap I drifted back to the back of the peloton and made sure I had plenty of room. Lap after lap I watched guys drop themselves in front of me. The term "C Grader" quickly took effect. James didn’t quite have the legs to take the win.