It is baffling that in all of Southern California an actual road loop could not be found to host nationals.  From what I hear though, there are few road events down there all year due to the population density and possibly hostility towards cycling events taking place on the sunny roads.  My advice to So Cal--don't host events that you can't pull off the satisfaction of everyone.

The flattish course did make it hard to predict where crucial attacks would come.  Neither hills on the ends of the course were hard enough to make a separation, but the finish hill did see lots of aggression that caused splits in the peloton.  The big keys to success in Irvine this year were having a big team, see California Giant Strawberies with 13 riders or approximately 10% of the field, and endurance, the race was 115 miles long.

Kevin and I were the protected riders, and we didn't do a whole lot, except that I marked the very first move of the race since I was up there, and later more or less set up Justin Rose to get away and join what would become the giant group up the road that the winning trio came out of.  Calvin covered tons of moves, bridging to the big group at one point but having burnt his matches already.  Matt covered a couple dangerous moves as well and rode until his legs fell off.

Justin came out of the big group and was absorbed by the peloton but stayed at the front and set tempo until he was cooked, showing tons of class while going out in flames.  Seeing the lead group come down the "far hill" heading for one lap to go we could see the winning move getting away from the rest of the break and it didn't look good for the rest of us.  Hitting the line with one to go we were down 3 minutes with 20 miles to go, and we were racing for 16th at that point.

I did my best to get into position for the field sprint, taking the spot beind the Cal Giant train, but this seemed to throw chum to the sharks, leading to swarms on both sides of me very close to the final corner.  I did my best to get out of traffic and more or less sprint for 800 meters up the hill to get what I could.  In the end I was able to pass Lang Reynolds of Hagens-Berman for 28th place, while his teammate Dan Harm was able to hold me off by a couple of spots.

While we didn't set the world on fire, we did what we could with five riders on a course that didn't really allow our riders to show their stuff too much while being dominated by one of the best amateur squads (peppered with former pros!) in the nation.