CPT Athlete Edward "Teddy" King (Bissell) Tour of California Stage Diary

Tour of California, Stage 4 - February 21: Seaside - San Luis Obispo, 135 mi / 217 km

CPT Athlete Teddy King (Bissell) was in the break all day. With a lot of fans out there for Teddy, we're glad to post this journal of his and wish him the best of luck. There are other days Ted! Brilliant effort, and a job well done.

"Ow", he starts out..."TV and/or computer coverage doesn't even begin to do it justice." said a tired King. We asked him to write something if he felt up to it. So here it is straight from Ted King:

Race report, eh? Okay, but my energy stores are currently pretty low so it'll be short.

The plan was to put someone in the break. We're saving Ben Jacques-Maynes and Tom Zirbel for tomorrow's TT, so it was up to the other 6 guys on the team. Plus one guy is sick but still racing, so we had 5 of us aiming for the break. The guys rotated well and were happy to get me up there. The only problem is that once in the break, I realized that I had about 125 miles to go. That, on top of the 7 miles of neutral riding, plus rain, wind, hail, and (not really) snow. There were a half dozen times when we had to stop pedaling and cross our fingers that we wouldn't get blown over because the wind gusts were so strong. Steady 20 mph block headwind plus 50mph gusts, making the wind chill well below freezing.

I sadly don't have that kind of distance in my legs, but I was still happy that I could pedal strongly towards the end. I had power, but no snap whatsoever. The breakaway dwindled from 11 down to 6 when the final attack went. I was among those 6 but magically finished 4th to last when the peloton blazed by me with about 15k to go.

All emotion had to be left at the doorstep today, and you just pedal out of habit. Everything hurt or was painfully cold. I was hypothermic and shivering for the last 100k.

"Epic?" he asks. "Yeah."

Thanks for the support. It means a lot.

tk