This week’s Amgen Tour of California had some high points and some low points for Napa native Lucas Euser.

The 23-year old cyclist was in the breakaway of Thursday’s Stage 4 for the majority of the day, which was a highlight. But he also had one of his toughest days on Saturday when he was forced to dig deep just to finish after his chronic asthma began to flare up.

Despite the low points, Euser says there were enough high points to make him happy with the outcome.

“Coming out of this race and feeling strong and every day it was getting better and better (was a highlight),” Euser said. “For me, I feel a lot better than I did last year. I got sick on Stage 3. This year I feel a lot stronger. There were some difficult times. It was a sprinter’s race. Just getting through it and knowing that I was getting better every day was good enough for me. I came out of it faster.”

His 55th-place finish on Sunday earned him a 63rd overall standing out of 144 cyclists.

“We finished all our guys,” Euser said. “We all feel good and are ready for a big season ahead of us. We’re just going to keep on building on the success we had here. (It was a) great way to start the season. I wouldn’t change anything, You can’t simply change the outcome of a race like this. It just happens sometimes. Maybe a stage in there would have been good but we have plenty of races to show ourselves. We are not worried.”

At one point during Sunday’s final stage, Slipstream teammate Danny Pate was in a breakaway that had a three-minute lead from the peloton. The Discovery Channel team wasn’t thrilled with that since overall leader Levi Leipheimer, one of its riders, was back in the pack.

If Pate and the breakaway would have been able to hold onto their lead, Pate could have finished the tour as the overall leader.

“We really thought one (breakaway) would stick once this race,” Euser said. “That’s why we kept trying. But no dice.”

It was Santa Rosa native Leipheimer who started with the yellow jersey and never lost it over the eight-day, 1,029-kilometer race.

A break of seven cyclists, including Pate and teammate Steven Cozza, had rolled away on the first 12K lap of the 10-lap stage. Karl Menzies and Timothy Johnson (Health Net Powered by Maxxis), Sean Sullivan (Toyota United Pro), Benjamin Jacques-Maynes (Priority Health) and Adam Hansen (T-mobile) worked smoothly together, but as the laps counted down, the sprinters’ teams became more aggressive.

With 15K to go, the break was caught and then CSC took control of the front for points leader Juan Jose Haedo, with Most Aggressive Rider of stage six Stuart O’Grady leading his new teammate all the way. But with 4K left, the peloton bunched up in the face of a stiff headwind and their lead-out train was swamped and it was a free for all to the line, with Ivan Dominguez (Toyota United Pro) getting the win from Rabobank's Graeme Brown by a tire's width.

Pate was honored with the tour’s overall Most Aggressive Rider’s jersey, voted on by the media. He finished the tour 16th overall to lead Slipstream.

“It’s kind of like a consolation prize but it’s nice to be recognized for what we’ve been doing,” Euser said. “It’s always nice to accomplish those goals and come out with a jersey. It turned out to be more of a sprinter’s race than we originally thought. Things came back together and ended in a field sprint pretty much every day. Not exactly what we expected so we weren’t going for sprint wins. You can’t always predict it.

“We just wanted to get out there and let people know who we are. A lot of people have been coming up and congratulating us. This isn’t the end of our season by any means. We have a lot of good things to look forward to. Going to keep building on it and off to bigger and better things to come. We’re excited. It’s the start of a good season.”

Euser will head back to San Luis Obispo, where he lives, and will take it easy for the next few of days before he jumps back on the saddle for training. His next race is next month. The next two months of training will be in preparation for his next big stage race: the Tour of Georgia.

The Tour of Georgia is in mid-April and last year, Euser finished second overall in King of the Mountain points, while wearing the KOM jersey one day. He’s hoping on doing as well as last year, if not better.

The course is more Euser’s speed, with it’s hilly terrain and not so many sprints.

“I kind of want to try for an overall somewhere,” Euser said. “I’m definitely going to try a little better than I did here. I’ll be in better fitness by then. Georgia we really want to step it up.”

Once that tour is done, Euser and his teammates are off to Europe to continue their season.