For some reason, about 90 minutes before our start, I got crazy nervous. I don't know why, after all, according to one of our neighbors in our condo, "it's just a hill climb." Ryan wasn't too happy about my nerves, as I started way too fast. But then we got into a rhythm and rolled pretty well. We had four teams in front of us, and we passed three of them fairly quickly. We could see the guys who started 30 seconds in front of us just up the road. Every time I checked we were about 20 seconds back, and it looked like we'd catch them. Unfortunately, the lightning and rain forced them to shorten the stage a bit, so it ended right at the top of an ugly hike-a-bike. They hit it really hard and put 25 seconds into us in the last few minutes of the climb.
So that's how it ended. We finished in 2nd place, 25 seconds of first place, and 7 minutes or so ahead of third. Quote of the day? After we hit the top, we didn't get a "nice race" or "good job" from the guys ahead of us. No, we got a "you guys kept us honest," like they were just cruising and only worked hard enough to beat us. A bit of motivation for the rest of the week.
Tomorrow is the Colorado Trail, 47 miles and 5k feet of climbing.
Oh yeah, one final point. I put the cycling cap on when I thought it would rain, but quickly realized it wasn't a great idea for a technical, singletrack hill climb. I couldn't see far enough up the hill to take good lines and had to flip it up to see. It wasn't a big deal, but annoying. And it looks kind of funny.
I snese a lack of respect that might end up as motivation. Maybe they should be keeping you honest over the next few days.
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