Rubicon in Second going to the Final Stage

The criterum was fast, fast and then faster - a split happened and Aaron was on the wrong side of the split. Kirk saw it, looked back and saw Aaron on his wheel, Kirk knew what he had to do and it was going to hurt -HURT A LOT. Kirk hit the after burners and moved Aaron up into the first bunch of guys, where all the GC riders where sitting keeping Aaron in the lead for the TT coming up in the afternoon.

I do not have placing on the criterium.

Time Trial. Aaron has a 4 second lead over Healthnet and Toyota and now it's time for a 5 mile TT. Luck again was smiling on the guys. Toyota United has been very nice, for those of you who don't know Kirk Willet, he's the team director of Toyota. Kirk is an Oregon guy who lives in Bend and will be starting his medical education at OHSU soon. Toyota saw we had zero to nothing in the way of water bottles and they brough us arm loads to use.

David talked to the Webcor girls, our sister team through ORBEA, about borrowing a disc wheel for Tuckerman, as we have no areo equipment outside of the TT bike. They asked David who he was and when he said he was managing the Rubicon guys, they said "those guys?!" David walked away with a disc and an aero helmet . . . all the teams except a few unnamed pro squads are pulling for the "badnews bears" of Oregon to pull off the upset of the year.

David told all the guys to roll an easy TT as Sunday's race will really be a hard, hard day. Aaron was the only one who had to ride hard. I still haven't see the times as of yet, but Aaron flew in the TT with his borrowed disc and helmet and now Rubicon sits in 2nd going into today's final stage.

Mt. Nebo waits for the guys, 3 1/2 miles of pure pain; 18-22 % grade and tons of switch backs. This is where Rubicon is going to give it all or nothing. The guys are going to run it hard to the base of the Mt. and put Aaron on the front field and with a little luck he will be the first one up that old mt. Most of Arkansas will be out on that Mt. today wearing Orange . . .emails have been flying around from cycling clubs, running clubs, you name it, everyone has been challenging everyone to come up and cheer for the "RUBES" as they have now taken to calling us . . . maybe with the 5th man in the game, Rubicon can pull off the "upset of the year." -I've got my fingers crossed.