Brutal pretty much sums up today’s race. The speed was so much faster than any race I’ve ever done before, but I was feeling good about it. The field size of 220 riders made for a couple of sketchy situations on the road. The first came as we crossed some train tracks. I was towards the front 1/3 of the group and over to the left so I got by pretty easily, but about 15 guys went down hard. I looked back to see that Ian must have been to last to get around unscathed. He says that he bunny hopped the tracks, landed and locked them up, then slid it out sideways to ride around the carnage. Sketchy situation number two was rolling through the first feed zone. I came to complete stop so that I could reload with fresh bottles since the six year old volunteers could barely get their hands around the bottle and were dropping a lot of them. Sketchy situation number three was an uphill crash that I was behind. The guy in front of me was going down so I rear ended him and sort of did a nose wheelie. I got my feet on the ground and was able to run it out before going down.
I was with the lead group until we hit the eleven mile climb that started 75 miles into the stage. By this point I was starting to feel some fatigue, but the worst of it was that my feet were throbbing, my back wrenched, and I had a weird side/chest ache. Other than this I think my legs and lungs were still ok. Needless to say I got popped from this lead group and climbed solo. By the top I’d joined up with six others so we had a seven man team time trial going on. I at the limit a couple of times but I couldn’t get dropped because I thought I’d never find my way to the finish. As it turned out, all of the intersections were marshaled, but the fear of getting lost likely kept me in the group. I finished 136th, but the key thing here is that I finished and lived to fight again tomorrow. On schedule are 93 miles of sharply rolling hills. I’ll be sure to buckle up. Keep it Real, -TJ
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