Tour of Utah Navigators win stage 1 -- Cesar 4th
I just got off the phone with Cesar after he finished the first stage of the Tour of Utah and he finished 4th with his Navigators teammate Sergey Lagutin wining the stage. This is a perfect start to the Tour for Cesar and last Thursday's motor pacing session with Tyler, Greg Henderson and Chuck Coyle must have really paid off in today's sprint finish.

It is actually amazing how well Cesar does in the sprints. If you take a look at the Tour of Langkawi and Tour of Georgia stage finishes Cesar was consistently right around 10th in the sprints. In fact I think I remember Floyd finishing right on Cesar's wheel in the sprint stages in GA this year.

I told Cesar to save as much energy as possible in tomorrow's flat stage just like he did today. His tactic of finishing top 10 in the sprint is a safe guard against losing any time in the opening stages. This could be crucial as it comes down to the short time trial (7-miles) day.

Now that Cesar is gone out of my place I've also taken advantage of the Colorado Altitude Tent he was using for the last three weeks in my basement. I slept in it for the first time last night at an oxygen saturation of 15.5%, which equates to about 13,500ft. I guess I did feel more stressed during my sleep and may not have slept as deep as usual, but it was my first night and I'll see how it goes the next few nights.

Yesterday I raced the Bannock street criterium in Denver. I made it into a 7-man break with two Health Net including Greg Henderson, two Tiaa-Cref riders including my ex-teammate Chad Hartley, a 5280 rider and my teammate Christian McCarthy. With about 20 minutes to go in the race Hendy attached and luckily I had my teammate Christian right on his wheel. This move split our group and I was left out with Chad and the other Health Net rider. We were eventually reabsorbed by the main group and the lead four stayed away.

Greg Henderson won, the 5280 young rider was 2nd and my Vitamin Cottage teammate Christian was 3rd. My other teammate Alan McCormack (age 50!!!) was 7th, I was 12th and I had another teammate Jon Baker in 14th.

This week we have no local races and then it picks up again with; Longmont criterium, Carter Lake RR (CO State RR champ's), Grand Junstion RR, Gore Pass RR and then the final NRC race of the year in Parker CO (a 3-day omnium).

Lots of racing left. Can't wait.
Ciao
Dirk