A Frenchman

I'm like a Frenchman racing the Tour.  That pretty much sums up the 4 days of racing at ToAD for me.  Let me explain...  The chances of me winning a race at ToAD are pretty darn slim, yet that incredibly slight possibility still exists.  For the most part though my role as a teammate has been to animate the race, get us some time on the microphone and make sure everyone knows that we are here to RACE our bikes.  I think we have done a great job of that.  In fact Dan, Logan, Ian and myself are all like Frenchman racing the Tour if they don't mind me saying.

Dan and I have been the guys going in the nearly no hope breakaways.  Yet, just like the FDJ rider in the Tour who may be rewarded with some KOM points; we are hoping to be in a good position to snag a prime.  The two of us have done a great job of that over the past 4 days and we have gotten quite a bit of TV time as well.  Although instead of getting our sponsors jersey on TV for hours on end we settle for being announced over the PA system during the race.  I can assure you that there are some Wisconsinites now aware of the Hagens Berman Cycling Team because we have been taking risks and pedaling hard.  So that feels good and the prime $ certainly doesn't hurt.

Cantwell is a straight up thug.  Thankfully with the whole field watching him I was able to sneak away from the situation with a prime.

Now Logan and Ian...  They too can be compared to the French riders in the Tour.  Logan kept a stranglehold on the green spotted cow jersey for the best Cat 2 rider during our four days of racing.  So not only was he getting lots of love from the race announcers, but he was backing it up too with some aggressive racing and excellent finishes.  Ian has been finishing well too.  Now don't get me wrong here, Ian is a great sprinter.  But if Jonny Cantwell is Mark Cavendish, Ian is Jimmy Casper.  Sure the possibility of Ian winning the bunch sprint exists, as proven by Casper in the 2006 Tour de France.  There are a lot of good sprinters here though so that is a tough battle with small chance for reward.  Ian knows this, but he still gave it his best shot last night.  Ian put everything he had into bridging to a pair of KBS riders with 2 laps to go.  He gave himself a legitimate chance at winning the race.  Unfortunately it wasn't to be and they were pulled back going into the final lap.  Major props though for hanging it all out there.  Ian's take on it here sums things up well. THAT is how we race bikes!