April 7, 2006 - Redlands

Timmerman Top Amateur at Redlands, March 24-26

Dan Timmerman and the rest of the squad had another great early season race in California, and Dan wrote the following report:

Unlike the races on the two previous weekends, the Redlands Bicycle Classic was warm and sunny. It actually felt hot out! The three day race for this year started with the Panorama Point Time Trial. It was a 5k TT that had everything. It had false flat, had rollers and ended on a decent climb which all made it pretty hard. Unlike the earlier races, we had a full 8 man team racing, many coming straight from the frozen east. I was the last of our team off, going right in front of someone I didn't really want to be chased by, but I had a good 30sec man in front of me. I put a lot of time into him, but when I got to the climb I was a hurting unit and started to really slow down. I ended up 34th. Not too good, not too bad I guess. Mike Cody was our next rider and pulled off 63rd.

I was kind of dreading Saturday's Downtown Criterium, which had 9 corners per lap with 170 guys. That's a lot of corners for 90min and a lot of guys going through them. It wasn't that bad, mostly because I got a decent start and made myself stay in good position. It probably sucked to in the back. Cody celebrated early and I got him at the line with a bike throw for 55th. Maybe next year.

I'm not really sure how long Sunday's road race stage was supposed to be, but it felt like 30million laps and 150miles. If someone told me it was 150 miles after the race, I seriously would have believed them. Supposedly, we did 14 laps and it was a climb up, descend down kind of course. Not much resting, since all the guys that were hanging on up the climb were doing all they could on the way down to move up so they didn't get dropped when they hit the climb again. As Health Net and United fought it out and a break got away, the pack shattered more and more on the climb every lap. Josh Gewirtz was riding really well on his birthday. By the time we hit the 5 finishing circuits the pack had dwindled to 30 riders and as we headed onto the last lap of the finishing circuits I threw in an attack and tried to get a gap. United was setting up JJ so they came back by me in about 500 meters. Oh well, at least they know I was there. I came in 14th, and moved up to 19th on overall GC.