The past four weeks are stage race central on the local racing calendar.  May started with the Wenatchee omnium, followed by the Enumclaw stage race.  Last weekend brought us to Olympia for the Capital Stage Race.  Three of our 1-2 riders came out to play: Zach, Lang, and myself.

Saturday's time trial was a short 3.5 mile course guaranteeing time differences would be small but significant.  Everyone was within a minute of the GC leader.  Not a lot of separation.

The evening's crit was more technical than the typical crit on the Washington calendar.  I've never really understood what people mean when the say a "technical crit".  I think they mean it's not Seward Park.  Either that or they mean you need to turn left and right.  Or the pavement is rough.  All three were true, we turned left & right giving spectators great angles on our new Catlike helmets.  Super thanks to Catlike and to Neal at Footworks for making that happen!  The ventilation on the helmets is fantastic, while the green stands out in the local peleton and matches the accents in our kit.  Nice!  The bad news on Saturday was Zach came away down one Zipp rim that saw it's last mile on broken pavement in front of the state capitol building.  A couple taxpayer dollars to pave the parking lot would of gone a long way here...


We started Sunday's 90 mile road race with the standings close to status quo from the previous day's time trial.  Lang took the high road by making the early break, eventually gaining many minutes on the pack with four other riders.  Three significant climbs in the last hour of the race brought everything back; numerous attacks from the pack to follow with nothing getting away.  My plans for a late attack were doused by the reality of heavy legs after the cumulative races, hanging on by a thread for 8th on the weekend.  At least Garage got an honorable mention on GC winner Ian Crane's blog.