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December 16th, Esparza. Today was another hot and fast stage at the Vuelta. Cory Wallace, who animated the final kilometers explains us out it unfold.
The first 2 stages of the Vuelta were an experiment as I figured out how my body was going to respond to 2 months of on the couch training as I recovered from lazer eye surgery and a broken finger. Surprisingly it has responded nicely, although the 40 degree heat and the sketchy riders in the pack have kept things hard.
Stage 3 was a fast race for the first 80 km as riders attacked and chased each other down relentlessly. At the 80 km mark I road up to the front of the pack to give my teammate David Drouin some bottles and told him to hop on my wheel so I could launch an attack for him as he was our man to win the stage with the 3 km climb at the end of the race. He didn’t hop on my wheel and next thing I knew I was off the front by myself. Seeing a couple riders in the distance I bridged up to them and soon we had a nice 3 man breakaway group as I joined a powerful German and a flyweight Tico.. 
Later we would catch the lead rider, another skinny Tico and we were 4, with a 2 minute gap on the field. Things looked promising but my German counterpart and I figured we would be out climbed by the anorexic Ticos at the finish so we attacked them on a downhill and built a 20 second lead heading into the final 3 km climb. This is where my couch training tactics kicked me in the ass as I started to meltdown, eventually being caught by 25 riders as I hit the top of the climb, 1 km from the finish. The German kept a 10 second gap on us and finished 4th. I continued my epic meltdown and drifted back to finish 29th, so close yet so far away from my first podium at a Pro road race. The race heads into the mountains for the next couple stages so will be hard on us but our Ride for the Planet team will be eyeing the flatter stages to come to try and back up Anton Varabei’s stage win on day 2!
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