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Sorry it's been a while since I last updated. I've been constantly traveling, and haven't had the time to sit down and blog it up. Just to recap the stage on Easter Sunday; after a long and stressful day working for Adam, we somehow managed to keep the yellow jersey by one second over one of the Belgium National Track team guys. He and another Belgian escaped with three laps to go (about 30 km) and finished eight seconds up on the pack. The fourth and final stage on Monday was easily the hardest with five King of the Mountain sprints, four of them happening within 20 kilometers of each other. The stage itself was about 120 km (80 miles). The team's main goal was to hold onto the yellow jersey and maintain our lead in the Team Classification. In the beginning kilometers of the stage, a group of five got up the road and built of a lead of about a minute by the time we hit the base of the first KOM. This climb was a little over a kilometer with pitches as steep as 15-20%. One of the Belgians attacked at the base of the climb, and I jumped onto his wheel. About 100 meters later, another 2-3 guys bridged up to us with the gap at around 5-10 seconds. I then proceeded to get dropped like a hot potato and rode at my own pace until the peloton swallowed me up. I then tried to stay near the front until the top of the climb. At the top, the white jersey rider and one other jumped across the gap to the group that I was in. That group then bridged up to the leading group to make it about 10 riders. The following three KOM's where all about the same as the one we just climbed, and by the end of them all, the lead group had a gap of about 1:15 seconds. The peleton then just rode at a steady pace until we hit the 10 kilometer finishing circuits and the gap had gone up to about two minutes. With about 40 kilometers left, Team USA got to the front to try and reel in the break. The whole team was working extremely hard with some help from one or two other Belgian teams. With one lap to go the gap was still around a minute, but everyone was still working as hard as they could. Unfortunately, we weren't able to pull the break back and they ended up finishing 23 seconds up on us. This moved one of the riders in the break into the lead to take the overall win. Adam ended up finishing third overall with myself in 14th. Team USA lost the lead in the Team Classification to a team from the Netherlands, but we managed to hold onto second. We all drove back to Izegem to pack up for the trip home the next day. After going to bed late and waking up early for the trip to the airport we all said our goodbye's, and headed off to our flight gates. Here are some photos from the trip... Prologue Shot
Pro Team Bus
FRITS!

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Future Quick Step Pros

I'll post more photos soon!