Trophee Centre-Morbihan Stage One

The stage definitely did go as well as I hoped. I started the race just covering a few moves, but mainly just tried to sit near the front as much as I could to conserve energy for the final 7 km circuits. An early brek went about 20 km into the 110 km race. About 50 km into the race I put in a hard attack to bridge up to a few guys off the front. I caught them pretty quickly, but the pack reeled us in shortly after. I continued to put in a hard pull and found myself with a gap on the pack. Quickly after, a Dutch and a French guy bridged up to me. The three of us worked well together and as we were entering the final circuits 35 km to go we finally made contact with the leaders with about a minute on the field. I stayed with the group until about 4 laps to go when I got a front flat. I quickly got another wheel, but by the time I had gotten back on the break was out of sight and there was no way for me to get back on. I chased for about another half a lap until I figured I was fighting an uphill battle and eased up to wait for the pack. The pack caught me about a little while later and I jumped into the top 20 or so. Since I had been chasing pretty hard for the last couple of kilometers I wasn't able to respond when the pack split with about 20 or so went up the road. A little while later I tried to bridge up to them, but I wasn't able to close the gap. I ended up placing around 60th at like 1:33 back. The group that I was with before I flatted ended up staying away at 36 seconds ahead of the second group that had Nate and Stuee in it. If I had stayed in that group I would of ended up in the top six and in the young riders jersey, which I'm pretty sure I could of as I was feeling incredibly strong at the moment. I was pretty mad about flatting, but hey, that's bike racing and I figured I might as well put in a good TT tomorrow then dwell on the past. The course tomrrow is 7 km and mostly flat execpt one semi-hard hill about half way in and the last 750 meters is a pretty big kicker. Hopefully I'll be able to recover well enough to put in a good time.