I'm up here in Beautiful Bend, Oregon for the Pro/1 Cascade Stage Race and Elite Nats next week. Yesterday was stage 1. It was a 75 mile road race with rolling hills. It was suppose to be a day for the "sprinters" but didn't turn out that way. We rolled off the start line with 190 riders (largest field ever assembled for Cascade consisting of 120 pro's) and 98 degree temperatures. Attacks of course, started right from the gun and never relented. About 15 miles in I found myself off the front with Floyd Landis, Victor Hugo Pena of Rock Racing and a Garmin rider, which was kinda fun. We got about 45 seconds then got reeled back in. Bummer. Going thru the feedzone I lost about a 100 spots trying to get a bottle while all the pro teams had domestique's feeding their GC guys from their team cars. The GC guys conveniently (for them) decided to split the field which resulted in 23 guys, (all pro) off the front. Game over. Pack finish. Ended up being one of the fastest days on the bike for me averaging 30 mph for 75 miles.

Today was an 80 mile, rolling for 70, then 10 mile finishing climb. This was tough. We averaged 32 mph first hour then 30 mph in the second hour. The field today was not going to let a break get more than 10-15 seconds after what happened yesterday. No break, equals brutal day. Leading up to the climb, I was starting to cramp pretty bad. After narrowly avoided a big crash we started the climb, and I just rode my own tempo and let the big names fight it out. Not sure where I rolled thru, but I passed and went thru Tom Zirbel and Phil Zajicek. Small victories right? Oscar Sevilla won the stage and I believe is now the overall leader and his teammate Francisco Mancebo in 2nd or 3rd. (Rock Racing has 5 ex - Pro Tour riders here).

Tomorrow is the TT with more near 100 degree heat forecasted for the rest of the week. I'm looking forward to it as I have been working a lot on my time trialing. It will be interesting to see how I rate up against the best Pro's in the country.

Mike