Larry Perera Cycling Diary
Fiordifrutta Cycling Team

Stage 5 had a bit of a different feel to it. Although the clouds had been threatening all week long it hadnt rained for any of our races. But the weather gods were still partial to us bike racers and the rain had stopped falling midway through our transfer to the stage to somethingorothersburg. This was the first day that I had gotten to drive to a stage start so I took full advantage of the situation and carved out some turns in the mazdaratti on the descent off of blue knob. Pete was a bit stressed by all of this nonsense. Hes kind of one of those guys who doesn’t like to take risks. He plays it straight….by the books….no short cuts kind of guy….i like pete. Anyway so we flew to the start…parked….got a prerace rub and did a little warming up. The plan was simple to come up with but a little harder to execute. We would get someone in the break for sure today no matter what.

I went from the gun….just cause I could. Svatek went another 3 times till he got a 15 second gap and I thought that his little group would never be seen through the rolling hills of corn again. But Navigators chased it down for no apparent reason. I went hard down a descent and then got a gap but fell apart on the ensuing climb where the successful counter went and stayed away all day. We all tried to get across but didn’t. Svatek took some kind of massive risk and went down on the right hander immediately after the start finish….nate went back for him and towed him through the confusion of the race caravan. Sierra Nevada tried to sabotage the ensuing chase back on and almost got a large svatek sized dent on his hood. Lots of Pros were aking where adam “I can put out somewhere around 1200 watts for 6 seconds and still have time to go back for bottles” Myerson was. We told them that he was in a secret training camp somewhere in the foothills of Davis Square – turns out he was probably scamming on the cute girls at his local coffee shop. (adams my friend – I just like to make him laugh) After some Pro blew up at Kevin B-H. through the feed zone…and every one finished having a laugh I brought Matteo Svatek up to the front and set up the sportsbook.com 2 man train with 18 miles to go. I rode in the wind till about 7 km to go and then started getting in his way so I tried and make it through the finish ok. The finish is a bit too technical for luck to not have some say in the field sprint unless you have a 6 man lead out. Lucky we were not but we rode a super agro race lit it up and just didn’t bring the magic 8-ball with us to see which would be the winning move. I think we are all looking forward to the RR where the real showdown will occur on the slopes of the cote de blue knob.

We got back to blue knob early again and spied on the saturn team for a few hours untill we realized that there were way too boring. So we went to bed early in anticipation of the next day’s monster RR. Since GC was pretty much established there would be a good chance that a group that were no threat to the overall GC would get up the road so maybe the orange blue and yellow wave could put someone in there!

Lorenzo