Woke up this morning around 6 am again actually that was when the alarm went off but I was up to take a leak at 5 (peeing like every hour during this race) two feet on the floor and stand up… Ouch, yep they hurt my legs were crying, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was anxious. Just laid there with my feet up trying to recover in the next two hours. I don’t have a negative thing to say about dopers in the Tour anymore. I get it. I have only had to race for three days and dope on my brother. If someone said hey if you take this one pill you won’t feel the pain anymore and no one will know, I'd say give me two. Wow. So the alarm goes off it’s Kanye bumpin’ “Good Mornin” nice. More coffee (if it’s good enough for Jens it’s good enough for me) cereal and some fig Newton’s (big fan of the fig Newton). Off to the race. I met up with Matt (aka Cousins) at the parking lot, I tell Matt you and me today 747 off the front baby.. Yeah right. I did my 40' warm up and the legs are feeling better now and I am sucking down water like it were go fast juice. We get to the line and we are getting our instructions, “...You’ll be doing two laps” and I am like, “Can we vote on that?” I got a chuckle for the bunch but I know everyone was secretly hoping he'd say yes, man this is going to hurt. But the boys were pretty good for the first 3 miles then they started to turn the screws when the pitch went up and boy does it go up. The freak show continues. What a climb. This would have been a beautiful ride if it weren’t a race. Man we were like 20 min into the race and just carnage. People getting shelled everywhere stong guys. I was staying in the cars. I just told myself stay in cars don’t let them get away. The front group just walked away tapping out a terrifying pace. But my goal was to hold my own today maybe move up a little and keep that sag car behind me. You truly find out about yourself in these races. I have no idea how I was staying on but off we went. That lead group was gone, out of sight, and I could hear that sag car nippin’ at my heels. I could see Mt View's, Wes, who I respect after the show he put on the first day, nice he can tow me to the top. He wanted no part of a reel in, I go by him. I could see Couzens up ahead fading to the back, my boy, my Tensing Norgay (sorry for the spelling) but he wasn’t feelin’ it just then so I went past him and just kept pickin’ my way through the shattered field trying to keep that sag in the rear. I looked back and saw Couzens just behind the sag car “Let’s go” and up he came but just as we crested the climb The sag went by. Dam. Down the descent and let me tell you that was sick. Touchin’ 50 mph at times 6” from some stranger, what a weird phenomenon. And just when I thought I had lost Wes, he comes up behind me towing a frickin caravan and went by me like I was going up hill. “Jump on” I couldn’t refuse. That SOB my not be able to climb a hill so fast but he can fall off one like you wouldn’t believe. I jumped on that train and let them pull me to the bottom. Back to the cars. Nice. Oh wait back up hill, there go the cars. Dam this race is hard. The group was trying to get organized some dead weight some guys with legs left people yelling “F@*# pull through” “Work!” “Get up there” I left that mess behind and started my own line up to the cars. We shelled the dead weight and were picking up more victims from the pace being set in front of us. We still had hope of catching back on.
The Rowena curves were unreal people were taking all kinds of risks on that descent. One guy took a corner too wide right in front of me and almost ended up over the guard rail. Risks for 20th place wow. Our group was growing all the way back to the finish and we stopped pushing hard once we found out we were the chase of the chase of the chase. We got civilized and tapped out a more reasonable pace all the way back to 7 mile hill all the while my legs just turning over like a program that didn’t know how to stop, but my brain saying shouldn’t we stop? That first pitch up ached a bunch and we our civilized pace went out the door. More carnage more pain. We were passing cat 3 guys now. There was just wreckage everywhere. I picked a tempo and sat there the whole way up sometime the puller sometimes the pullee. We picked up a good group of threes with us and made those bastards do all the work after we left Mosier a second time. Hey that’s what they get for having lower numbers than us. But as we went through Rowena the Cat 3's decided to race for 50th, good luck guys. And we just ran out a pace to the finish. It was good group to finish with Paul was in there and Matt and sorry if I am missing anyone else. But we just cruised in, happy to be alive and done.
I am pretty happy with where I finished given the company I was in. What a great race and a fun bunch of guys. I would do that race again anytime. Well give me a few days, my legs hurt.
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