BMC Racing Team's Tejay van Garderen climbed his way into second place overall Monday at the Amgen Tour of California while teammate Mathias Frank, who paced him for much of the final climb, is fourth overall.

Van Garderen finished second, 12 seconds behind stage winner Janier Alexis Acevedo (Jamis-Hagens Berman) while Frank was one of only five riders to finish within a minute of Acevedo. Sweltering heat - with temperatures soaring past 43 degrees Celsius - and a tortuous, sun-baked climb at the end of the 199.7km stage shattered the peloton and left massive time gaps after two days of the eight-day race.

"I was just trying to stay as relaxed as possible because in this heat if you go into the red zone once, sometimes you can't recover," van Garderen said. "So I just tried staying as calm as possible, which is easy when you have a team as strong as ours to follow their wheels." Frank said he was feeling better and better as the pack rapidly dwindled. "I turned around and saw there were only four guys behind me, so I tried to go as long as I could," Frank said. "I can maybe handle the heat a bit better than the other guys. I'm happy with the way it turned out."

BMC Racing Team Directeur Sportif John Lelangue said it was not crucial for van Garderen to win the stage and take the race lead. "We know we have a few days coming that are not easy," he said. "We have a nice time trial on Friday and the Mt. Diablo stage on Saturday, so we know we have a lot of opportunities. Taking time on some really good time trialists is already a really big success. From a team perspective, we did what we had to do and we are in the position where we wanted to be on the day."

BMC Racing Team Dr. Eric Heiden said even though precautions were taken to ward off the searing heat, some riders dealt with it better than others. "It was pretty typical post-race conditions for the day - with some dehydration," he said. "If anyone suffered more than someone else, it was probably Marco Pinotti. He needed a few minutes to recover at the finish line and cool off."