The UCI killed the radio star.

Wow. That was exciting and extremely nerve racking! It was totally planned, don’t worry, we had it under control. Okay, I’m lying. Today was one of those days where nothing went to plan but everything went right. “That’s actually possible?” I hear you ask. Well apparently, if today is anything to go by.

I’m talking about the third stage of the San Dimas Stage Race, a one hour criterium held around downtown San Dimas.

We went into this, the final, stage of the tour 16 seconds down on the race leader and had planned to try and gain Evelyn as many bonus seconds as possible over yellow jersey wearer Mara Abbott. If we achieved this we would take the overall tour win. If that failed, we wanted to win the stage, we were determined not to go home (or to Bob’s wife’s brother’s house) empty handed.

We did both. We won the stage and the overall tour. But not exactly as we had envisaged.

Basically it boils down to this: Ina-Yoko Teutenburg . One of the most respected and established women riding in the peloton who will never cease to amaze me. Twenty minutes into the criterium, after the pace had been at a leg shattering level since the beginning, Ina attacked and took five girls with her.

For me, it seemed like she had a death wish. The circuit was incredibly fast and it seemed as though any break that went up the road had only miniscule chances of actually staying away. Despite this Ina’s break seemed to consistently gain time on the peloton. The time checks we received each lap just continued to grow. Fifteen seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds until it reached in excess of 50 seconds and it became possible that just maybe the break could gain enough time.

And so our tactics rapidly switched from attempting to gain Evelyn bonus seconds through intermediate sprints to trying to allow Ina’s break to gain enough time. While this may seem simple, once again the radio ban seemed to complicate the situation as we strained to hear the instructions being yelled/mimed to us by our Director Sportif, Rene Wenzel from the side of the road. What should we do? Chase and continue to try and gain Evelyn seconds, attempt to send Evelyn across to the break, or just leave Ina out there to her own devices?

When we finally heard and understood Rene’s simple change of tactics we knew the plan had been completely altered, “BLOCK!”. And so we did.

It was an ambitious undertaking. Gaining a minute and a half in a road race is difficult. Gaining a minute and a half in a final stage criterium is almost unheard of.

With two laps to go, despite the frantic efforts of Mara’s Peanut Butter & Co team to chase back the break, the time gap hovered around 1minute and 10seconds. As we crossed the line we were all oblivious to what had unfolded in front of us.

As it turned out, Ina had attacked her breakaway compatriots with four laps to go and rode to the line solo, 1minute and 11seconds ahead of the chasing peloton. The time bonuses gave her an additional 30 seconds, meaning she gained 1minute and 41seconds, enough to put her into the overall lead.

It was an awesome, almost unbelievable end to a weekend of racing that just didn’t seem to want to go our way. Now we head to Redlands, another town in the suburban sprawl that is Los Angeles, and attempt to recover and recuperate before the Redlands Cycling Classic which begins on Thursday.