Catching up and wrapping up

Its been a long and busy summer.  Racing has called for a lot of traveling.  Helping put races on has taken a good chunk of time too.  Its all been fun and wouldn't change a thing, but I'm finally getting a chance to take a breathe and catch up a little bit.

Most of my racing is done for the year.  3 National Ultra Endurance races since the end of July were a blast, but the travel was exhausting.  I would seriously rather sit on my bike for 8 hours than sit in a car for that long...  Without anything else really scheduled for the rest of the year I'm pumped to just see what comes my way.  Of course that means that I've already got a century fundraiser that I'm planning on riding/working, a 12 hour race I'll look to be teaming up on, and some epic 50 mile urban/trail epic thingy that I have no idea how will work out, plus finally checking out the cyclocross scene.  Did I mention that I don't idle well?  The point is that nothing is structured and I'm kind of excited for that.

One of the great many things that happened this summer for getting into the coaching world was getting my first article published.
http://granfondoplus.com/content/overcoming-cyclists-posture
I was happy to have the opportunity to write for the site, which is newly launched.  Whats great is they've asked me to keep contributing to their "tech tuesdays" articles, so no real chance to "catch up" its time to keep pressing on!

Most recently I spent the weekend in South Portland going through the League of American Bicyclists "League Cycling Instructor" certification course.  It was a long, but really enjoyable weekend of practicing teaching road skills, bike handling skills, and educational modules.  I'm excited about the connections that I've made and am looking forward to doing more work as an LCI, and to be working events as a representative of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.

So I would say fall has arrived and I'm sure that at some point things will come to an absolute screeching halt.  But for now I'm going to enjoy keeping busy, decompressing slowly from the craziness that was this summer, and continue to press forward with the opportunities that continue to present to me!

Educational Talks Rolling Along

Held another installment of my "Getting Ready for the Dempsey Challenge" educational talks the other night.  This was the fourth in a series of six talks that I'm doing throughout the summer at Central Maine Medical Center.  The topics that the presentation series include:

April 16th

     Bike, Equipment, and Fitting

May 14th

     Commuting, Rules of the Road

June 11th

     Cycling Aches and Pains

July 9th

     Rehabilitation Exercises and Cross Training

August 13th

     Nutrition

September 10th

     Mechanical Care of the Bike

This past week I got into the heart of the discussions covering "Rehabilitation and Cross Training".  The talk built off of the aches and pains discussed in the previous talk.

I finally got some good attendance thanks to the assistance of the communications department at the hospital (I have a LOT to learn when it comes to marketing and putting myself out there!).  It was great to see that I had new faces, returning attendants, and some medical/ fitness professionals come hear what I had to say.  Since the first few events had a low turnout I'm working with the Dempsey Center to possibly come up some alternative dates to go over the talks again.

As the Dempsey Challege gets closer I'm hoping the interest in the next few topics will be even greater.  Nutrition is hard- not only the science behind it, but more than anything else there is a lot of personal preference.  So I'm excited to offer some insight on this, particularly in relation to nutrition for an endurance event.  While the last talk is currently titled as going over mechanical care of the bike I may just leave that open ended for folks to ask whatever particular questions they have just before the Dempsey weekend.  Either way, enjoying the talks and glad I got back into doing these after a year off.

Rocky Mountain Development Camp: Last Day

The Billy Goat Club breaks for some fuel while ascending

So today was the penultimate day at camp.  This was the day that the camp got shuttled up to 10,000' to then ride a ton of single track back to town.  A few of us coaches, Kip, Doug, and myself and three campers opted to skip the shuttle, and ride up to where the shuttle would drop off the rest of camp.  Of course the shuttle was picking up at 7:30 with plans to ride at 9:00.  So for us that meant a 6:00 AM departure.  That also meant no coffee (not cool) and breakfast on the trail.  Somehow the Espresso Hammer Gel, while tasty, just doesn't match a good hot cup o' joe in the morning.

Climbing.  Why no singletrack pictures?  Cause its really
hard to ride trail with one hand on the bar- I save that for
the roads/easy trail.

So why the early departure?  Because we had to climb 4000 vertical feet, and most of it was along trail and old railroad grade.  So nothing steep, but it was a lot of mileage to get there.  We had plenty of time so we didn't rush it and rode a nice easy tempo up to the shuttle drop, which was good because by today my legs were absolutely feeling like junk- I guess riding 3+ hours per day for 5 days straight, racing, and all done at altitude does have a cumulative effect.  And that was just the riding, not to mention that I was working a camp the whole time!

Kicking back as the vans arrive.

We made our way up to the shuttle drop with plenty of time and had a few minutes to relax as the vans rolled in.  We grabbed a refuel on water and energy bars and then the whole group was off riding.  The first part of the ride brought us to our peak elevation of the trip- 10,300 feet.  From here we dropped into trail that had rolling hills that gained/lost 200 feet at a time.  At this point I was REALLY feeling the effects of the week and the altitude, still riding, but absolutely no pop.  We made our way down, down, ....and down as the riders all took turns showing each other the best way to crash...none of them looked pretty, but dang did they bounce back up!  As we made our way to the bottom we got deep into a valley and the trail started to resemble riding in New England (crazy huh?)- rocky, technical, bermed turns...basically it was really fun!

We worked our way back into town around lunch time, and by that point I think someone turned the thermostat up to about 100 degrees and we baked the final few miles back to campus.  In all it was a 4.5 hour day on the saddle covering just over 40 miles of trail/dirt road and about 5000 ft of climbing/descending.  We all devoured whatever was being served at lunch, then took a an hour or so to cool off/relax.  We then spent the afternoon doing one last skills session- this was basically their final exam.  We put together an obstacle course that they did for time that contained all of the skills we worked on all week- straight line riding, turning, bottles hand offs, bunny hops, step ups, mount/dismount.

Obstacle course

So tonight camp officially wrapped up.  We had a last minute discussion on cramping, then hung around through the night chatting with the riders about any specific questions they may have had.  Some folks took off tonight, a lot of us leave first thing in the morning, so a lot of tonight was spent cleaning and packing up the bikes for traveling.  Overall everyone was excited about what we did this week- the coaches were blown away by the fitness and skill level of the riders this year.  Aside from a few hard crashes and some minor mechanicals on the last day, we couldn't have asked for a better camp.  The riders are already making plans for when they'll run into each other next- a good majority are heading to the National Championships in Idaho later this summer.

For me I was really excited to pick up as much as I could at camp as well.  Not just doing a lot of the riding, but learning the process of rider development, learning what the focus is, and learning what skills instruction is all about.  I'm helping with the Maine Youth Bike Series later this summer and I can't wait to apply the drills learned here to the series back home.

That's it from Colorado Springs.  Tomorrow I'm travelling all day- I think I'll appreciate the break and a chance to just relax for a bit!

Rocky Mountain Development Camp: Day 4

This is bound to be a shorter entry.  Its late, its been a long day, and I'm going to be getting up to ride my bike at 6:00 AM tomorrow.  Today we had to battle the heat a little bit- forecast called for mid 90s.  Ideally we would have done our skills work in the morning and then taken what was practiced and applied it on the trail.  We just thought it was in the best interest of everybody to try to get the ride in earlier in the AM while it was cooler.

The climb up....

We rolled out shortly after breakfast.  The past few days were starting to take a toll on some of the riders and today wasn't going to help the matter.  The ride planned was going to bring us onto some of the best singletrack around, but it was also going to bring over 2000 feet of vertical gain.  We topped out at 8200 feet today- a climb that was more than plenty for a lot of folks.  But the views were awesome!

Group pic at summit- Mondays ride will put us at horizontal line of center peak in far distance.

It was interesting that we have all these trails thanks to motorcycles.  They're really the ones that did all the work out here, and whats great is that they are considered multi-use trails.  We saw a couple motos on the trail, but everyone was super
courteous- it was great to see that all the different recreational parties exist together out here.  From the top of the climb we actually got a glimpse of where we are heading on Monday- another 2000 feet up.
After lunch it was back to working on the skills development.  We spun out to one of the pump tracks in town so the riders could practice negotiating bumps and using their momentum to carry their speed over the obstacle.  Then it was back to the park to break into individual groups again.  This time around I worked with Sean to go over bike mount/ dismount.

Get off your bike, get on your bike!

Keeping the momentum.

We rushed back to campus for dinner then it was time to get down to business with the educational sessions.  Ryan led a great talk on nutrition and hydration and spurred on a lot of great discussion.  Even though that talk went pretty long, we pressed on and I gave my talk on injury prevention.  I focused on knee injuries- traumatic and overuse; had all the riders practice a simple single leg squat to screen for weaknesses and discussed how what happens at the hip and the foot can wreak havoc on the knees.  I moved through the material pretty quickly since it was already 9:15, and despite the few heads nodding off (wouldn't you if you had to sit through class that late?!?!) I got good questions from the group and they seemed to appreciate it.
Tomorrow is the last official full day of camp.  This is the big planned ride where most riders will get shuttled up to 10,200 feet and ride trails back into town.  A few of us coaches and some of the fresh-feeling climbers of the group are actually heading out at 6:00 AM to ride up to where the shuttle will drop everybody off.  So we'll climb over 4000 feet, anticipating it taking between 2.5 and 3 hours depending on how people feel.  We'll finish up with a few skills we haven't gotten to yet, FINALLY get to Yoga, and then its on to packing bikes for those who leave early on Tuesday (myself included).

Ryan addressing the group about nutrition.

 Last full post tomorrow, probably have something random to write about from the airport on Tuesday.

Day 3: Ute Valley Pro XCT Race

Today was one of the two major ride days that the camp was looking forward to- the cross country race.  The next big day will be the last day of camp where we will do a shuttle run up to 10,000 ft and ride back to town.  We ended up lucking out with the weather- they were calling for a 50% chance of showers, which as I'm told here in Colorado Springs means that your buddy could be standing next to you with rain pouring on him, and you can be bone dry.  So it was anybody's game.

We had 5 riders who were racing early at 9:15, so they were up early and rolling up to the course first thing in the morning with Doug, one of the coaches.  I rode up later in the morning with Kip, another coach, to bring the rest of the riders up for the 11:00 start.  We had a nice mellow ride up the bike paths and road to get to the venue.  Again, I like these easy rides as it affords great opportunities to get some photos.

One we arrived at the venue we grabbed our race numbers, then each rider went through their warm ups and pretty soon we were off and racing.  The conditions amazingly had changed from even the day before- one of our earlier riders had told us that the course got a lot more sandy and a lot of the corners were really loose- so that was some great recon work that the later racers really benefited from
Short of doing a full blown race report lets just say that it was fast and everyone was pretty happy with how they ended up.  Nobody had any major mechanical issues and nobody got hurt.  I got a chance to race my age group as well and the race was a lot of fun.  All together the race took 1 hour 12 minutes- way too short for me- I only started to feel really good about 40 minutes in.  I'm not really too concerned, as racing today was just an excuse to ride my bike and I had no major aspirations with this event.

Afterwards everyone was pretty smoked.  We definitely enjoyed being able to just relax and have lunch right there.  Unfortunately soon we started to notice a change in the skies.  Because the coaches are local and they know the weather, they knew that we were in for something, so instead of hanging out all afternoon then riding back, we took off before the Pro Women's race, showered back at the college, then drove up to watch the Pro Men's race.  Somewhere in this time frame is when the skies opened up and we got a 20 minute downpour.  No big deal for us, we were done racing/riding and were just there to enjoy the afternoon.  But the poor Pro Women's field got nailed by the storm.  Since Ute Valley has a lot of sand when it rains the first 1/2" gets muddy, and it turns to CAKE.  As we were walking the course I kept wondering why I felt like I was stepping on something.  Basically the top layer of mud sticks to whatever goes over it (shoes, tires) and peels up from the dry sand under neath.  Very happy none of our racers had to ride through that.

We finished the afternoon with watching the Pro Men's race, cheering them through one of the toughest technical sections of the course (will upload video at some point once I get the hang of that whole editing thing).  Back to campus for dinner then had a quick talk on bike maintenance and packing bikes for traveling.  That ran a little over and everyone was already falling asleep, so there was really no need for the yoga session after that, so that'll get bumped to a later date.

Ryan Trebon taking the Pro Men's win- high fives all the way to the finish.

Tomorrow is going to be hot, so we'll be doing our long ride in the morning before it gets super super hot.  It'll be a big climbing day, supposed to climb up to 8500 ft (currently at ~6200) and hit some of the best trails in town.  In the afternoon we'll do more skills- playing around on a pump track and practicing some trail specific bike handling skills.

Rocky Mountain Devo Camp Day 2

Day two at camp and we got down to business today.  One of the main focuses of the camp, as it was last year, is the Ute Valley XC race.  This year it happens to be part of the national tour- so its bound to be a pretty big race with some good national competition.  Since it is an important part of camp, today was spent checking out the course.

One really nice thing about Colorado Springs is that you can get virtually anywhere around town via recreational paths.  Colorado College is an 8 mile ride away from the race venue, and we were able to spin over to the venue hitting virtually no roads...just awesome.  So this morning we cruised over to the venue, of course checking out some trails along the way.  Once at the venue we broke everybody up into 4 groups and worked on riding the course first to get a feel for the difficult sections.  Once we finished  a lap we headed out again and whatever section someone had difficulty with we hung out and practiced it until the riders were all comfortable.  One particular section was right at the beginning of the lap as it was a pretty technical rocky downhill section.

The majority of the morning was spent riding around the course, talking about good places to pass, places to drink, sections to be ready for.  We finally rolled back to College for lunch and had a little down time before the afternoon skills session.  In terms of fitness and physical exertion, this was pretty low key- which was good since we were riding for a solid 3 hours in the morning.  Instead the afternoon focused on basic bike handling skills.  It was a surprise for me coming into camp to find that practicing and developing skills is really the focus of camp, and is really the direction that rider development is heading.  Fitness will come later on, but being able to develop great bike handling skills right away they are finding is much more beneficial.

So the rest of the afternoon was spent running drills like learning to bunny hop, riding in groups, doing water bottle hand offs, and straight line riding exercises...all topped off with a little game of team bike basketball (not really a good name for it).

After the skills session it was back to college to review the race course again, which we did first by recalling everything from memory.  Then after dinner the kids got to watch the GoPro video I shot of our lap pre-ride earlier (its 20 minutes long...I doubt anyone wants to see that plugged in here) cleaned the bikes and got ready to race tomorrow.

We'll have some Cat 2 riders heading out early with one coach to be there early for their 9:15 start, I'll head out with the Cat 1 riders and another coach a little later for our 11:00 start.  I actually get to say "our" start on this one, because it sounds like all the coaches will be freed up for the cat 1 race, soooooo they don't need much from me....soooooo I that means that since he offered for me to race I better take advantage of it.  So yeah, I'll be hoping into the Cat 1 race as well (even though I've bee racing pro/open at home, I've been doing that under the "open" class, here the race is strictly those with a pro license).

Much more to come!

Rocky Mountain Devo Camp Underway! Day 1

I've been getting excited to come out to Colorado Springs for this development camp for a long time now.  I traveled out here Wednesday-first time flying with a bike so I was pretty nervous about how everything would go.  Fortunately the flight to Denver and drive down to Colorado Springs were uneventful- although I could see the massive wildfires in Fort Collins as we approached Denver.  When I left Maine it was 60 degrees and pouring rain.  As we landed in Denver it was 92 and bone dry.  I felt the moisture getting actively sucked out of my skin.  How do people live in the desert? This was enough of a shock   

I got to Ryan's house (camp director) as he was making his way home from a local race.  After chatting and dinner I got to building up my bike/ praying that it survived the plane ride.  As I unpacked everything looked great, I even got this neat postcard from the TSA telling me they "randomly" selected my luggage for a search...which was interesting because everyone else who flew hear was "randomly" selected as well.  The only scare came when I had trouble located the plastic bag that had pedals, quick release, rotor bolts, tools...you know kinda essential stuff to a bike.  I started to run through the worst case scenarios of "how did I leave that out?!?!?!"  Before I went into full blown panic mode I completely emptied the box, and low and behold the bag was there under my wheels- not even close to where I packed it.  thanks TSA.  Anyways, got most of the bike put together and finished it off the this morning with a cup of coffee by my side.  Rough way to start a morning, huh?

 After getting everything together it was off to Colorado College for the arrival of the riders.  I thought the view of the rockies from campus was great, apparently this is actually hazed over becuase of the wildfire smoke drifting down to us.  Today was mostly a check in day, riders came in throughout the morning and we planned to do a quick afternoon ride while waiting for any late stragglers.  Seems like everyone was pretty amped to get to camp because the whole camp (21 riders!) was checked in before lunch.  After lunch, we quickly changed and headed out for the first ride of the camp.

A major focus of the camp this year is racing on Saturday at the Ute Valley Pro XCT race right here in town.  As such, nothing strenuous was scheduled for today and it was a good chance to get everyone out to stretch the legs and play around on some fun local trails right here in town.  Here's where my job at camp first started to kick in- play ride leader and I nominated myself ride photographer as well.  I like these easy spinning rides- plenty of time to reach into a jersey pocket, pull your iphone out of the plastic back, take your glove off, snap a bunch of photos, and get everything put back together while still on the roll...I don't think this is one of the "skills" that is the focus of the week, but hey it comes in handy!

 As we navigated through the trails (I have no idea what they were called, but they were fun!) there were plenty of options for the group to split as we had myself, Ryan, and Kip all leading.  While nobody opted for the "hey we can do this 30 min climb and hit this crazy downhill" option, there were plenty of times where we did do little extra loops.

After the ride it was back to the dorms, dinner, and then the official introductions.  Great group so far, and they're from all over- Colorado, Utah, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.  We went over the schedule for the week and discussed the process of getting into the USA Cycling Development track.  Even though it day one, everyone is pretty wiped, as they're all pretty excited to do well at the race on Saturday.

Tomorrow we'll head out to the course in the morning to pre-ride and session on the technical aspects that people want to figure out.  The afternoon will have skills sessions and then pre-race talks in the evening.  Well, off to drink my 14th bottle of water and try to fight jet lag and altitude (okay, its only 2 hours difference, and its only 6000 ft of elevation, but I've gotta have some excuse, right?)

Pats Peak 6 Hour Race Report

Race report is posted on the riverside team blog.  Check it out:  http://riversideteam.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/pats-peak-6-hour/

I'll be posted here through the rest of the week as  I'll be working a junior development mountain bike camp in Colorado!

-Greg

Coyote Hill Race Recap

I actually have the race recap posted on the team website
http://riversideteam.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/bouncing-back-at-coyote-hill/.  I'll probably keep doing race reports there and providing links.  Everything else having to do with rides and training I'll keep on this site.

Getting Busy

Okay so it seems like the summer riding/racing is in full swing.  The EFTA New England Championship Series kicks off tomorrow with the Weeping Willow.  I'll be heading down nice and early to help out with the race as my sponsor shop Riverside Cycles is putting on the race and the team will all be there helping out.  Should be a busy day as it looks like the race has been sold out for over a week.  The Elite field looks to be absolutely STACKED with some of the fastest guys in New England, so this should definitely be a rude awakening- I actually might just unofficially change the name of the race.  Riding 4 hour marathon tempo is one thing, but being able to go all out at the gun is something completely different, so we'll just see how that goes and I'll get a review after the race.

Aside from the racing I've got a lot of other little side projects going on as well.  I'm starting to do a lot of writing and presenting on cycling.  I've been working on a monthly education series "Getting Ready for the Dempsey Challenge" looking to reach out to folks in my area who have signed up for The Dempsey Challenge, great charity ride here in Lewiston.  The first two sessions were a little light on attendance, but with the help of Central Maine Medical Center's communications department I'm hoping to reach a much broader audience (there is a reason why this is their full time job- they are GOOD at what they do).

Also starting to work on articles on injury prevention in cycling for an upcoming website geared towards Gran Fondo riders.  Totally fell into this one on LinkedIn, someone posted that they were looking for contributors, I wrote back, and low and behold they wanted me to send them some stuff.  So I'm excited about getting that up and going.

After that I've got a HUGE trip coming up in June where I'll be heading out to Colorado Springs to work with the Rocky Mountain Devo junior development camp, a regional camp put on by USA Cycling.  I'll be out there for a week working and riding with juniors (btw, in USA Cycling they consider juniors to be 14-22...interesting), many of whom I'm sure are looking to get selected to attend a national training camp later in the summer.  Best of all, we'll be in town for when the Pro XCT tour rolls into town for the Ute Valley Pro XCT race that the juniors will compete in.  I'm really excited to have this opportunity to work at an event of this level and I can't wait to see what experience I gain from this and what doors this may open.

Lastly, (holy crap this was supposed to be a short update) I'll be helping a good friend and fellow racer Andrew Freye get ready for his summer Maine Youth Bike Series .  They'll be held at a new venue in Falmouth, ME this year and I think everyone is pretty excited about the change.  With this event I'll be wearing a couple of different hats- prior to the race I'll be acting as a coach organizing skills sessions where kids can practice their bike handling/racing skills while waiting for the race to start.  Once the race begins I'll change hats and go into athletic trainer mode and be providing the medical coverage during the event.  These are going to be some busy summer nights.

Okay, that's enough for now.  Off to enjoy a great Saturday and get ready to race tomorrow.  I'll be back with a post on how the Rude Awakening/ Weeping Willow turns out.

Greenbrier Challenge Marathon!

Greenbrier Marathon Race Wrap Up

Earlier this year I got an email from USA Cycling with "upcoming events in your area" for mountain bike races.  Apparently I had indicated to them that Maryland was "in my area" and so I got all of the mid-Atlantic races sent to me along with New England events.  One that caught my eye in particular was the Greenbrier Challenge to be held in Greenbrier State Park in Boonsboro, MD.  Would I normally travel over 10 hours one way for a 4 hour race? No... But we do have friends who live in Frederick, 20 min away, and I had yet to visit them.  So I figured this would be a great opportunity to see friends and get in an early season training race.

The race was on Sunday and we drove down on Friday to check out downtown Frederick.  Saturday I knew I needed to stretch the legs so well all decided to head out to the Frederick Town Forest to run the dogs and I would get in what I thought would be a nice 45 min spin on multi use trails just to loosen up the legs.  Before I can even get to the race- let me just say this:  If ever the opportunity comes up to go ride in Maryland DO IT!  The riding and the terrain down there is fantastic.  Just to get to the trail head my friends were nice enough to kick me out of the truck at the bottom of the hill and left me with a nice 20 min dirt road climb just to get the to trail head.  Legs felt like lead so I didn't try to force any kind of pace.  Once at the trail head I dove into the woods and was pleasantly supprised to find not just a bunch of double track, but very well-built technical, rocky singletrack with tons of climbing.  I started thinking to myself "I know this is day before the race, but c'mon- you can't pass this up!"  Long story short- an easy 45' spin turned into almost 2 hours of playing around on some ripping trails and the legs were starting to feel better and better.  After that I'd caught the Maryland bug and was ready to race!

Okay, so the race itself.  Interesting format- basically a 12 or 24 hour race format, only 4 hours long.  Greenbrier Challenge had multiple events going on throughout the day.  marathon started at 9:30, Cat III XC at 10:30, Cat II's at 11:30, and Cat I/Pros at 1:45.  The marathon was formatted so I needed to race all the way until 1:15- once 1:15 hit if I came through the finish chute, I would be done.  If I rolled through at 1:14, I'd be allowed to finished the next lap.  So winner would be based on 1) how many laps, then 2) fastest time if multiple riders on same lap.

Being the first race of the year, and a long one at that, the gameplan for me was get in long quality hours on the bike.  My goal was to start strong, staying in a lead group, but not be the one setting the tempo.  I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to blow up after 3 hours and then wimper into the finish for the last hour.  To me its always a challenge to figure out when to attack, so I wanted to really sit in on this one and watch things play out a little.  I thought things would end up really interested since bikereg indicated that 40 riders had pre-registered for the marathon- by far the biggest field of the day!

Lining up for the start was a little eerie- nobody wanted to be in the front.  I came into the starting chute with only two riders on the line and a whole crowd behind- apprarently everyone else was just as apprehensive about the start as I was.  The gun went off and we were rolling- a few hundred yards of field before dirt double track climb.  I had the inside track and kept looking over my shoulder to see who was going to come by- finally a few riders went ahead and I was happy to let them set the tempo.  By the top of the climb it was a pack of three of us and we began making our way down a fast down hill with log drops and rock gardens strewn throughout.  going through one of the gardens I heard  a lout "clang" and started thinking, 'dang, I almost flatted there'.  After taking a peek at my rear wheel I looked ahead and the leader was doing the same thing- only he was running on a flat, so he peeled off to repair.

Interesting...so my gameplan had now completely gone out the window.  Here I was 8 minutes into the race, and starting the first big climb of the lap looking back I already had a 15 second lead.  So much for sitting in and seeing how things pan out.  Okay, new plan time!  Since I'd built this lead essentially following someone elses tempo, I decided to just go with it.  I got into the mindset of riding strong, not sitting up, but not putting in heroic efforts on climbs or flats to widen the gap.

The rest of the lap consisted of a few long climbs with some absolutely ripping technical downhills taking you past campgrounds with little kids cheering, a flat section across a resevoir wall with some people fishing, and coming through the start/finish loop.  As I rolled through starting my second lap I was able to take a long look back at the end of the lap and didn't see anybody, so I knew at this point if I could remotely hold this tempo and was mechanical free I could take the race- and thats essentially how the rest of the day played out.  I was able to keep my lap times consistent, fought of the beginning of fatigue cramps for the last two laps and finished with 9 laps (close to 46 miles) in about 4hr 10min, one lap up on the field.

If they hadn't taken forever with the awards,
I'm sure the rest of the podium would have been there.

One of the nice parts of this format actually was being on course while all the other races went off.  I was lucky that I never came through the start finish while a race was trying to start, but I saw plenty of Cat 3, Cat 2, and other marathoners on course, and it was great seing people on course, cheering people on as I rolled through, passing along words of encouragement.  Great start to the season, pumped to build on this as I work towards some 100 milers later on this summer!