T. O. O

Early race today, 1pm. All of the races have been 5 or 6 or 7 pm, which has given us lots of lounge time beforehand, howerver today we had to leave by 10am!
The course today apparently the brutal course. 68 miles, 5 kom's tons of other non point climbs. Brutal. Minturn had the race strategy, wait for the second to last climb and move. Sounds good. I dodged rocks and potholes while guys fell off and I moved up. Tailgunner.
At a certain point we were in the cantwel cliff state park. We were surrounded by pine that had baked in the arid sun all day. It was such an awesome smell. I havent smelled pine so suddenly or intensely since I stepped off an amtrak train like 4 years ago in Montana. I smelled the pine and looked at the lead cop car towing the pack up a gradual hill and was just so stoked to be right where I was, it was exactly what I wanted to be doing at that second. Awesome.
Dudes were slipping away all day and being brought back and then more would go. Nothing was too intense until Heckman got away, it was the move to be with for sure.
Minturn nailed the second to last climb with some gnarly dudes (one who as been caught for doping!) and they bridged up. Minturn popped, we passed him. Bummer.
The last climb was insane. It went up and up and up. Then we went around a turn and down a slight hill... which put us out at another HUGE climb. I have never heard the F bomb so many times. I heard a dude say "I f' ing hate this." awesome.
There was a dude who was so overgeared that he was RUNNING up the hill and keeping decent pace. I looked down when the dude was running up the hill and realized we were going 7mph. Bummer.
30 man sprint for 4th. I think I got 28th. Awesome.
Awesome