Stage 8: Thousand Oaks/Westlake Village/Agoura Hills Circuit Race

Stage 8: TO/Westlake/Agoura Hills 134.4km

1.Ryder Hesjedal (Can) Garmin-Transitions.3:21:56.

2.George Hincapie (USA) BMC Racing Team. .

3.Carlos Barredo Llamazales (Spa) Quick Step. .

4.Christopher Horner (USA) Team Radioshack

Total Time: 3:35

Distance 134km

Stage placing: Outside Time Limit
Average heart rate: 142
Max heart rate: 172
Average cadence: 86
Average watts: 232w (271w normalized)
Max watts: 1123w

TSS: 241

KJ: 3003

Vertical Feet Climbed: 6667

The final day of the Amgen Tour of California was relentless as the top general classification contenders knew the final results were still to be decided four times up the Rock Store climb. Very few riders had much left after such a long and difficult tour.  Those that did have fuel left in their legs quickly got to action once the flag dropped.

Darren Lill was one of those riders that animated the race right from the gun. In an attempt to help setup his Fly V australia teammate, Phil Zajicek, Lill took off in a 13-man break. You can see this within Lill's Quarq power file as he had a normalized power of 349w the first nine minutes of the race. Immediately as Lill's break was caught Zajicek countered along with Dominique Rollin (Cervelo Test Team). Zajicek was too much of a GC threat at only 2:49 behind Michael Rogers (Team HTC-Columbia) so this move was quickly brought back by HTC. That allowed lower placed GC riders to counter once again and this time HTC let a group of seven which was allowed a maximum of three minutes advantage.

Lill ended up riding to the finish within the second group that formed behind the 37 front runners. Unfortunately this group finished just outside the time limit and was subsequently not placed as official finishers of the stage.

The below image shows the daily KJ's, TSS, CP5, CP20, CP30, CP60 for each day of the Tour of California.