Tour of California stage 2, Tejay van Garderen reports

The wear of racing at this level is starting to show. Stage 2 was a relatively uneventful stage with the pack cruising along at a blistering pace to keep the breaks from accumulating too much time.
As they entered Sacramento the sprinters teams had the pack strung out around the finishing circuits. Most of the guys on the national team were somewhere mid pack. Noel kept telling Tejay to move up incase the pack split; that way he would lose no time. That proved much easier said than done. “…I have been in some fast crits in my life but this was just a whole new level of fast, moving up was not an option…staying on barely was…”
In the end tejay was the last rider in the pack with the same time. He remains in 76th position at 29 seconds behind race leader Levi Leipheimer.

Thanks for reading,

marcel