Great race
ouch ouch Im still so sore. dang, my legs are cramping now more than they did during the race. It truely was a great course, but dang I'm still not good at hills. I tried to keep up with my teammate Dar, to determine if I really could move up to the Expert cat, but 1 mile in I was toast.
I then paced myself for the long day knowing I wanted to better my last years time of 6 hours 27 minutes. Jess McGinn of Marty's Reliable came up on me on a hill. ( That's what lots of road riding does for ya.) We hung together with her climbing and me bombing the downhills for the entire race. She then said we should cross the line together which was fine by me. This made the ride a whole lot more enjoyable. We even had conversations when we weren't out of breath.
With a mile or so from the finish, she saw "her goal" behind us and wanted to out race him. I knew I had 5th and an improvement on my time, so I told her to go. She asked me if I meant it, I replied, I got my goal, you go get yours. Well, continued and could see her on the downhill riding with 3 dudes. A few minutes later I was at the finish. Ahhh to finish. It was Grand. I was 5th, 76 overall, and did it in 5:31 minutes.
thanks everyone for such a wonderful, but tough race. Thanks to all the volunteers too! It was surely a long day. Next, Darkness at 909