Fabrice wins the Giro, Ryan 5th!

The team had a great finish to CalCup this past weekend. Parnes took second at Esparto Time Trial and Fabrice won the series ending crit in San Francisco on Labor Day. So, that makes 3 wins in CalCup and numerous podiums. On top of that, Fabrice, Parnes, BP, and Rand teamed up and won the district team time trial title this past Saturday. Great work guys! Below is Fabrice's report from the Giro.

Some photos from the race (From Veronika Lenzi's site):
Fabrice in the break, bay bridge in the background
Fabrice taking the win

Now that CalCup is over, most of the guys are calling it a season. It's been a really good one for the team. Thanks for following along this season and thanks to all our sponsors for the continued support this year.

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Giro di San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
9/7/2009
Weather: Sunny, windy
Teammates: Rand, James, Rob, Ryan (5th), Neil, Graham, Bruce, Billy

Finish: 1st of ~110

Much like every other street in San Francisco, the roads used for the Giro contain numerous pavement seams, potholes, and railroad tracks, making for some technical racing. Add the brutal winds that picked up in the afternoon, the small hill on the backside, and the strong 110 man field, and you have the makings of a very hard race.

This race was an objective for me after being off the front for most of Vacaville and finishing in second place at Winters, I knew that the form was here.

The team plan for the race: stay up front, be represented in moves, and try and get me, Rand, or Ryan into a good position to the victory, if possible.

The race started very fast and Rand took the first move with 4 other guys, included Roman Kilun from Team Ouch, but after 3 laps we were all together. During that time, I moved on the front of the pack to stay in good position.

Just after the junction with that first escape, Jared Barilleaux from CalGiant team made a counter attack, I followed him with the idea of creating a group of 4-6 guys. But after few pulls together, we realized that nobody joined us. At that time I was thinking "this is not good, this will be a long day".

From the beginning of that escape we settled into a good rhythm. I took the lead from the finishing line to the top of the hill then Jared has to finish the lap.

We quickly gained an advantage of 15 seconds but we had still 50 laps to go!!! We managed to stay very smooth and tried to increase our little advantage, but it was very suspenseful for the entire race because our maximum advantage was only 20 seconds and sometimes less than 10 seconds. I think the gap was still 15 seconds with 10 laps to go because all the Webcor team worked together to protect my advantage off the front. In all the moves we were able to see a green jersey sitting in the wheels.

With 5 laps to go our advantage was still under 15 seconds and the big teams tried to stay on the front and worked together to close that tiny gap. But we pushed harder and harder on the pedals and with 2 laps to go the advantage had not changed, still 15 seconds.

Our adventure still had a chance to see the victory but we had to stay together and work as hard as we could.

With one lap to go, the gap was under 10 seconds. I had very bad feelings from the week before at Vacaville where I was caught in the last straightaway after staying off the front during for the entire race, so I pushed harder on the last climb and let Jared to be on the front for the last straightaway. I didn't look back but I was able to hear the noise of the field so I decided to launch my sprint from a long way. Jared didn't react and I sprinted to the line and took the win, I was afraid to see the same scene as Cat's Hill (so many close calls!), that's why my celebration was very subdued. Anyway, I think my legs were so sore that I would not be able to do a big celebration. As I didn't look back, I was not able to see that one guy (Sterling Magnell, formerly(?) of Rock Racing) succeeded to close the gap between us and the field in the last lap. He passed Jared in the last straightaway to take second place, Jared held on for third ahead of the charging pack. Ryan took a very good fifth place, which meant two Webcor guys on the podium. Awesome!!!

For the last race of the Season that was a very exhausting race but a perfect team race!!! Thanks for the entire team for all work they did in the field!!!

Thanks for reading
Fabrice