very cool stage

BennyJM won the first stage in dominating fashion. He's got a 5 second buffer over the Symmetric's Eric Wohlverine. Should be a kick-ass time trial tomorrow morning.

The story of the opening stage was how deceptively difficult the course was. There were many a kicker throughout the loop and if you lost power ... you lost buckets of time. The number of DNF/OTB's in the p/1 field is ... staggering. There were carcasses strewn all over these cow-country hills today. It is was a serious case of ToC legs stomping bloody over the rest of regularity. Ugly out there.

The women's race was a bunch sprint of sizable proportions. As the pack swooped down the long, finishing straight ... you could see a TMobile rider jump first in the middle, and then Tibco's Miller begin to come around her too early. It was a long, long sprint and with a touch of headwind. Colavita's Tina Pic, fresh off the big races in New Zealand, timed her sprint better and took the win with a length to spare. Miller was frustrated with herself for starting the sprint too early, but satisfied having survived the high tempo on the climbs and still having the gas to finish up 2nd.

Still, I have to think TMobile was the luckiest of the day ... getting to keep in their big TT specialist, Anderson, for a straight up clock-fest against Webcor's Thorburn and the rest of the women's field.

I think VAC was happy with having Courtenay Brown up in the top-15 for the sprint and having seen her ride the breakaways thus far this year, i think she can burn a decent TT. But, it's a learned ability ... fo'sho. And i'm not sure she's been given that playbook, yet. I didn't see where the PROMAN sprinter, Olds finished up ... but, the announcer Dave "golden chords" Towles commented that she looked disappointed with her finish. But, there's a crit with her name on it on Sunday ... so, she shouldn't be down one bit.

For the men, I think BJM has to be the favorite for the TT, but Wohlberg is a pure-bred against the clock ... and on huge form. But, Woolie's riding solo and i would think he'd have one helluva time defending that jersey in the crit if he were to nab it from BJM in the TT. To be honest, I think BJM's Priority Health squad will have all they can handle, themselves, if he keeps the leader's jersey on his back after tomorrow's stage. But, this sho'nuff would be a damn fine NRC stage race to put in his win bag - so, i hope he throws down huge for that ride.

And on the geezer front, I was lucky enough to win the road race ~ so ... yay for me and the BagBoys. But, i took a look at the TT course ... it's pancake flat and exposed like Moonlight Beach ~ not my specialty, unfortunado. It's a fair bit probable i'll be handing over the jersey to someone else tomorrow.

But, i'll go down swinging.