Team Alchemist Blog

Ken, once again, came through in the clutch.  He won stage #1, by 8 seconds!  It’s the most hotly contested division in the race. He would have won it by much more, but he gashed his sidewall, and spent 15 minutes getting it fixed.  I’ll include the Podium pic on the next post.  We both rode a pretty good race.  We leap-frogged each other for the entire race.  I’d get ahead on the climbs, and he’d pass me back on the flat sections.  That’s the life of a singlespeeder. I rode as well and as hard as I could expect to ride.  But in the end, I finished 8th out of 10 SS riders.  Kinda disheartening, but overall, I was around 55th out of around 230 riders, so that’s not awful.  It was great to be greeted by Ryn and the boys and Jeff Cloutier who had cold beer and sodas for us at the finish.  Jeff also joined us for a man’s meal.  Steak.  Funny thing is that we all ate such puny portions.  It’s hard to put down a lot of food after an effort like that.  We all soaked in the river to cool down our legs, and now we are prancing around in compression tights.  It’s a dangerous shade away from panty hose.  If they were flesh colored, then they pretty much would be ladies’ stockings.  As Ken noted, if those moto guys thought all the spandex was girly, they must have had a good chuckle at our fine hosery.

Tomorrow is the Colorado Trail stage.  Probably the most fun of them all.  Last year, the descents were super fast and swoopy.  Loads of fun.  But I’m going to retire the helmet cam.  It bounced around all over my head, and the lens is filled up with dust, on the inside. Strange. I’ll try to get some footage posted from today when I have the energy.  Here is the profile:

It’s actually 42 miles, despite what the profile says.  7300 feet of climbing.  It’s supposed to be one of the easier stages.

Sorry for the uninspired post. Too tired to be real creative.  But thanks for reading and supporting the cause.