TransRockies day 7

We started with a warm morning and a pleasant sleep in, although I couldn't sleep in too much as Cindy and Tori started giggling early. Perfect day for a bike race, and the superfans were present. It was a hard, fast start. Mckee got a good inside line, and I was back about 20 spots and had to work hard to make my way back up. We rode powerlines and gravel road, it was basically a 48k time trial stage, but with a couple kilometers of singletrack at the end.

It seemed like the right thing to do was to burn as many calories as humanly possible, no sense in saving them. Mike and I teamed up on the hills, and I tried to drive the paceline as hard as possible, pulling hard and not really letting anyone else pull except when I had to scarf down gels. It was fun. At one point I tuned out for a minute on a fast downhill section and went straight off the trail into the bush at 40kph, then over the handlebars like Jan Ulrich's crash from a few years back.

We looped down under the bridge and started climbing the telephone track. The short, steep sections were taking a toll on everyone's legs after the high speed hammer. We were in a group with Mike Piker and Tim, who were being chased by their arch rivals. We did what we could to help them out, and formed a deadgoat paceline. I dropped back after a hilly part to eat some more gel and refuel for the effort, it was hard work to that point.

We made it to the singletrack and gave it gas, passing a few teams. It was a blast. We had Wendy and Norm in our sights once again, we always seem to get to the same point, but man do we ever take different paths to get there.

Mom, dad, and everyone was at the finish. Zenone my Italian buddy who rode my Turner bought me a couple bottles of champage, and poished the bike to a shine. We stayed around chatted for a couple of hours, then made it up to the ski hill to lounge around the pool until dinner. Felt nice just to relax 100% and not have to recover or prepare for the next day. We watched guys in the mountain bike park as we lounged - all bike, all the time.

Dinner was the usual gong show. We showed up early and impersonated volunteers, chowed down on the food, went through the awards rigamarole, got our t-shirts and watched the highlight video. Turns out a lot of people had enough energy to dance up a storm.

We ended up dropping Mike off after midnight in what you'd call "fairly rough shape", and made it back to our condo.