Another tempo session over. The venue was awesome. The Uptown area of Minneapolis is great. There was a pretty huge, knowledgable crowd watching. Everything a big time criterium should have. The course was an 1 mile L shaped course with not much altitude gain. It was fairly open. The racing was nonexistent until the last two laps. Maybe the last lap. Bissell rode at the front all 75 minutes. They didn’t always ride the inside of the course, disrupting the field, but did the majority of the time. Jelly Belly tried to take over with 7 or so laps to go, but didn’t have enough juice. Finally Colivita did their crazy fast last lap and Haedo won again. I was never in the mix the last two laps. I made a few efforts to get up to the front, but couldn’t get into contention, so ended up not sprinting. I ended up 20th. A fair amount of guys lost some time. I guess there were some splits in the field the last couple laps. The average race speed was over 29mph, so the last couple laps had to be way faster than that. I wonder if the crowd had any enjoyment watching a 7 man Team Time Trial for the majority of the race. I’m not sure they even ever offered a prime. I know I’m wrong. Ben Raby won an 60 massage coupon early on.

Tomorrow is the deciding day in this stage race. 4 finishing circuits up a big climb in Mankato. If I was to guess, I’d pick Rory Sutherland to win alone, but who knows. I think if the Bissell Team sets tempo the whole race to the circuits, it would be a huge error. We’ll see.