(Update by Jeff Hopkins)Following some good form and a handfull of good rides from yours truly we headed from richmond to arlington VA for the CSC Invitational. I have had a bit of a love-hate thing going on with this race, i did well there when i was an amateur, but since then have done absolutely nothing at all, i don’t think i had even finished the race since then!!

With a reduced field of only pro’s i thought it would lead to a much nicer race, and much safer working conditions. I was wrong. There were a bunch of big crashes leaving guys lying on the ground for a bunch of time after each one. So anyway we rode around a rode around, and then believe it or not, we rode around some more. A break of 3 wen toff the front. One of them crashes, but the other two built up a good lead and looked like they might actually run away with the race. Toyota and Healthnet chased and brought the gap down a bunch. In doing so, they sent a bunch of people off the back dropping about 30guys.

We rode around some more, and the s**t hit the fan once again, and the pace was unbeleivable, with 30 more guys going out the back, and i was lucky eough to hook up with a couple of guys to chase the 30 yards to the back of the front group to be the last 3 to make the 30 man peleton. It was about 12 laps to go i think, i was breathing through my eyeballs trying to recover from the effort. I was really hurting but with a bit of recovery i thought i’d be ok.

My plan was to sit at the back and save it till a couple laps to go and then get up in the action and bump some elbows. My case was helped by a big pile-up on the 1st turn with about 5 laps to go, which i was able to easily avoid and slip through with about 8 guys going down. With 3 to go i jumped up a bunch of spot and put myslef into the top 5. I was pretty tapped out, but had a good wheel on Davidenko form Navigators. So tapped was I that when guys came up to challenge for the wheel, i had no fight left in me.

In the end i was on lars michaelson’s wheel from csc and i couldn’t quite get around him and so finished 6th, with Mark mcCormack from Colivita taking the win. And now the countdown to Lancaster begins, i think kick off will be in about 4hrs, i think i might tape my eyeballs in my head so the don’t pop out.