Altoona, PA - "We could've gone after time bonuses at the intermediate sprints and gotten Karl (Menzies) on the final podium," said Jeff Corbett, directeur sportif of the Health Net Pro Cycling Team Presented by Maxxis. "But we didn't want third place. We wanted the win."

So after letting Navigators and Toyota-United trade blows going after the bonus time at the first three intermediate sprints - Chris Baldwin of Toyota-United got the first, taking over the race lead on the road until Sergey Lagutin took the next two to regain the lead - Menzies took off with teammate Greg Henderson, three members of Colavita-Sutter Home, as well as Frank Pipp (TargetTraining) and Andrew Bajadali (Jelly Belly), who was sitting third overall, 13 seconds ahead of Menzies.

Between intermediate and finish line time bonuses, as well as, hopefully, a gap back to the field at the finish, Menzies needed to make up a 40-second deficit on Lagutin. When Menzies and Henderson drove the break out to a 20-second advantage and Menzies began taking bonus time, things started to look promising.

Navigators took a little time to organize their chase, but they finally marshaled their entire team at the front, and one by one, they buried themselves trying to bring back the Health Net Presented by Maxxis duo.

"The pace of the entire race was incredibly fast," Corbett said. "In the first few laps, I think about a third of the field got dropped." In fact, only 68 of the 129 riders who started finished the stage, and the front group at the finish had less than 50 riders, a testament to the fireworks that went off early and often in the 60-minute race.

The gap hovered between 12 and 17 seconds for a number of laps, with Henderson completely selling out for his big teammate, while Menzies was making every effort to out-do his nickname, "10," and ride like 20 men. But it took Toyota-United finally throwing a couple of their riders into the chase to preserve Baldwin's second overall position before the gap finally came down.

"Hendy buried himself trying to get the time gap," Menzies said. "Everyone on the team contributed today. We wanted to win it. We were going to go down swinging."

The break was caught three laps from the finish, but Menzies still wasn't done. On the bell lap, Kyle Wamsley (Colavita-Sutter Home) attacked, but Scott Moninger covered it. Then Menzies lit out of the pack for the sprint. Unfortunately, he couldn't get up to Wamsley and had to settle for second on the stage. The time bonus at the finish moved him up to fourth place overall, just one second behind Bajadali in third.

"Everyone rode incredibly well today," Corbett said. "After what happened Saturday with getting directed off course, it was a lot to make up. But we weren't going to sit back today. We wanted to go for it. Navigators in particular rode a great race today. They burned up a lot of their guys chasing but they got it back for Lagutin. But we made them earn it."

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