The Cat 5 men lined up to start...
...and now the Cat 5 men moved off the road so the pace car can go by!
Starting out.
Some of the country we were riding in. Beautiful valley.
Pretty purple flower.
A river runs through it.
Another shot of the purple flowers, this time with a bug in it!
Really cool shot from a depth of field perspective.
Interesting looking tree. By the way, the road looked like this the entire way so when the ref said we were supposed to follow the yellow line rule my thought was, "WHAT yellow line?!"
Another beautiful shot of the creek.
A mansion off in the country.
More flowers!
An interesting dam/bridge thing.
This is the lead group coming by, ~18 miles in. The back hill had already dropped over half the field.
These are the strong ones.
This is part of the chase group that I spent three miles chasing by myself only to see them every so slowly pull away :-(
The rest of chase group one.
This is Rob and I. He and the two guys behind me caught me ~13 miles in when I had given up on catching the chase group. I was feeling pretty despondent by then but these three saved the race for me. Sadly, however, I had blown the back two off our group with my stupid hill jamming (I'm deadly over tiny hills that don't require me to shift) and then the group was down to just Rob and I.
Rob and I again. I made an effort to smile at the camera.
More shots of the farm country.
Funny women.
Amanda has moved to the hill here and here is what remains of the lead group, as far as I know. She said someone else has already gone by as a lone leader.
Nice perspective on what a bitch this hill was.
Another shot of this winding wench.
Cyclists attacking...rather, surviving, the hill.
Mark...with me lurking in the background. Interestingly, when I hit the first false flat of this climb, I saw two Rogues guys just entering the woods. I would find out later that one was Mark...
...I never caught Mark. It turns out, he's a pretty rediculous MTBer too.
I had really wanted to take my glasses off but forgot to do so before hitting the climb. Once I hit the climb, I couldn't take my hands off the handlebars if I wanted to.
Sweating like a mad man.
My quads lead me to belive I'm not now, nor will I ever be, a good climber. I'll shoot for adequate as a goal.
Here is the second Rogues guy which I was able to catch and pass. I later found out that was Henning.
Rob arrives on the climb. We rode together for ~15 miles around one circuit but at one point, after finishing a pull, I looked back to the guy taking over and said, "Where'd Rob go?" He replied, "He was cooked after his last pull." Then I was sad.
This guy wearing some scrapes from where he went down on the back half of the course.
Check out this guy's bike. He rode that bad boy for all three events. Pretty impressive. I was talking to him at the TT and he told me he hadn't raced in fifteen years and was just getting back into it. I applaude the determination.
This guy giving a clinic on how to descend.
Some riders going down, some coming up.
Dave, I believe.
This is what descending at 45 mph looks like. Notice how the car in front of us is actually braking!
For the most part, bikes don't really brake on descents. Bikes actually corner a lot better than cars so this car was, annoyingly, slowing us down.
