A bummer of a day because even with a good pair of legs I still wasn’t able
to accomplish anything. The race had extremely nervous energy and there
were a couple of serious crashes, the first coming on the opening lap,
involving about 40 riders.

Sitting 15th after last night’s time trial I
didn’t think that I had that much to lose so come mid race I started to
ride the front and follow some of the moves. A couple of times we got away,
but were brought back by the pack.

Little groups are always coming and going off the front on this course, a
tough 3-mile circuit with a little kicker of a hill at the top at the
finish. With 75km to go the race had been hard for a few laps and putting
in an attack I got away off the front with a 30 second lead at one point. I
was out alone for 2 laps. The idea was to be off the front when the split
in the main bunch occured and that way have the leaders come up to me. The
field was split when they caught me but I ended up flatting just as they
came up to me. With the field split behind I had to wait until the whole
field had gone by before getting a change.

The other main feature of the course is a fast straight downhill which the
peloton just rockets down. It’s this downhill that makes it so hard to
chase back after a flat because as a lone rider you can’t match the
momentum of the field. As always there was no help from any cars getting
back to the field and after a 2-lap chase my day was done.

A few laps later I was lapped and rode in with the group. Unfortunately I
was a lap or so too early in my breakaway attempt because it was on the lap
that I flatted that the move of the day went with a group of nine moving
away to contest the finish. Chris Horner won the stage and Chris Baldwin
ended up moving into the leaders jersey as Mercury failed to defend its
lead.

Andrew Randell is a 28-year-old professional cyclist with the Canadian
Sympatico-Jetfuel team. This is his fourth time riding Fitchburg.